Food for Thought: "It's important to keep walking..."
The Reading materials for this week have been really exciting and most of them quite new for me, so I gained much stimulating information and for this I am very grateful to everyone who posted Discussions on Nicenet. Reading is indeed a mystery, as Hector mentions on his blog, a mystery that belongs to us humans. I was also intrigued by the way words in a text seem similarly woven as in quilt. I guess there's no wonder it is called "texture," when in fact they have such analogical patterns.
Furthermore, I would like to share one particular site that I've grown very fond of during this week and which I already shared with my classes, because they need to develop their storytelling skills and this site is the right one for that particular need they have: http://stickyball.net/esl-writing-exercises-and-activities.html They loved it! I hope they will keep their enthusiasm and keep on working on it weekly.
Moreover, during the past few weeks, I've been keen on discovering what helps people build these connections within a text so as to make it intelligible and cohesive. My ninth graders seem to lack that at this point. They have this bad habit to think in Romanian structures that they desperately strive then to translate, failing of course because the structures are rather different and what works for a Romanian storytelling does not in English narrative. This is why I also recommended them the famous FoldingStory site I've encountered in one of the discussions of our class, on Nicenet, and I am eager to see the changes this might trigger among my students: because the individual contribution is quite short, there's no pressure regarding the "response," as there are no wrong answers when it comes to literature, there is suspense and curiosity to see how the story develops, and on top of all, they get to learn from each other. I think that it will be very beneficial for them, especially since they are already familiar to a certain extent: we sometimes play a similar game in class--we form a "train" and everyone is supposed to continue the sentence by adding an appropriate word. It teaches them a lot about syntax and word order and they've made lots of progress as they now spot the error as well as correct each other whenever one places a noun instead of an adverb and so on so forth.
On the other hand, I would like to share a really wonderful method I've discovered this week on the following blog: http://blog.thelinguist.com/ What I liked most about it, is the fact that this LingQ programme can really help my students keep track of their learning and build up their vocabulary and definetely increase their confidence in English production!
Hi Alina, I hope everything is fine there in Romania. First, thanks for the links to those interesting web sites; they are very useful for any learner of English as a second language.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I understand you when you say that your students think in their native language and not in English for here in Costa Rica it happens the same with my students in their early stages, and I think it is due to the number of hours they spend listening to their native language. If they had more time to think in English, their brain would get used to thinking in English so translation would not be necessary.
Third, I have become very interested in your research on texture and how meaning is acquired so if you have the chance, I would love reading about it.
Well, I hope you have a wonderful week six.
Best regards,
Hector.