Angela's Ashes vs. Black Boy

In literature this term we have read several different books. I want to compare to of the books I liked the most, Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt and Black Boy by Richard Wright.

Both books are about a young boy and his childhood and they are also autobiographies with authentic names. One of the similarities between the two books is the poverty theme. Both boys grow up in great poverty with little food on the table. While most of the plot in Angela's Ashes takes place in Limerick in Ireland the story by Richard Wright takes place in the southern states of America. Frankie, the main character in Angela's Ashes is struggling with his strict Irish Catholic upbringing while Richard faces the reality of racism.

Both books are written from the author's point of view. We see through the eyes of the main character. These are stories from their childhood and how they looked upon different events in life. We follow the characters through different episodes in life among them the different jobs both characters have. If you compare the two books you see that they are both written through the naive eyes of a child. There's not a lot of feelings described in the books but the stories are detailed enough. You get a good impression of how they actually lived and what they had to go through in their childhood.

Another important similarity between the books is the role of the Fathers. Frankie's father is a drunk who drinks up his entire wages week after week and leaves little to his family to live on. Richard's father leaves them when Richard is a little boy. The fathers forsake their families and they all have to live in poor conditions. The mothers in the books are strong women. They have to be tough to survive and bring up their children on tough love. Frankie and Richard learns to be independent at an early age.

Both Frankie and Richard are clever boys. They love to read and do it well in school. From an early age they both have dreams of getting away from where they live. They want to make a better life for themselves and work hard to make it happen. Frankie wants to travel to America and Richard wants to leave the south of America and go north to Chicago where it's easier for black people to get a good job. They both reach their goals.

Let's go into the book!

In class the other day we visited a web site called Into The Book

It's a reading comprehension resource for students and teachers where they focus on eight research-based strategies.

For each strategy there were different materials you could download. We looked at some songs and posters.

The eight strategies presented are:

1. Prior knowledge: Use what you already know to help understand something new!

2. Making Connections: Make connections between different things you read!

3. Questioning: Ask questions to understand what you're reading!

4. Visualizing: Create a movie in your mind while you're reading!

5. Inferring:Use clues to figure out what it really means!

6. Summarizing: Tell what's important!

7. Evaluating: Make judgments about what you read and explain why!

8. Synthesizing: Put the pieces together to see them in a new way!

I find this really interesting! By using these strategies when reading books the students will get an extremely good understanding of the content. You actually get something out of the reading, it's not just empty words. Think of everything they will remember and understand. All the hidden meanings they will find and all the new discovering's they will make. If they constantly use these strategies they will develop an excellent study technique and that's a good advantage later in life.

This is fascinating!

"Into The Book": http://reading.ecb.org/index.html

CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning

Content and Language Integrated Learning is an interesting way of learning a language. The meaning of CLIL is to teach a normal subject or topic in a foreign language. By doing this the focus is on the subject/content. We watched a clip from a CLIL lesson where Social Science was taught in English. The pupils got an assignment and before they started they made a word list on the blackboard with important keywords on the topic. By doing that they all got a vocabulary helper and also different cues to use when discussing and working with the topic. They were then divided into different groups. While working in the groups they were supposed to speak in English, but if they felt they could express themselves better in Norwegian they were allowed to do so. The teacher walked around to the different groups but she never corrected their language. This was a Social Science lesson and not an English lesson, so correcting their language wouldn't be right. The pupils will develop automatically and often correct their own mistakes (Krashen's thoughts of the monitor.)

When you look at Krashen's theory you can see that CLIL expresses a lot of his thoughts about language learning.

One of Krashen's main points is that language is acquired, that it's a subconscious process. When they had a Social Science lesson in English the focus was on the subject/content and not the language. When the pupils understand the meaning, language is acquired subconsciously. They don't think of the language itself, but by using it to express themselves on a topic they develop their English without even knowing. It's important that the topic discussed is comprehensible, that the pupils have knowledge about it. Krashen calls it Comprehensible Input. The comprehensible input must be in the zone of what you can do independently and what you can reach with help from others. Then language will be acquired automatically. When the pupils were put in groups they were able to help each other.

I think CLIL is a good way of learning a language. You certainly make the different subjects more fun! I think I would have liked having for example Social Science or History taught in English and I think I would have improved my English skills by doing so.

Check out these sites!!

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/content-language-integrated-learning

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?sectionType=listsummary&catid=100294

L2 learning as the development of a complex cognitive skill

Practice, practice, practice!

New theories evolve and in comparison to Krashen's theory of language acquisition being a subconscious process, the new theories focus on the importance of PRACTICE. Learning a second language as the development of a complex cognitive skill. I looked up the word Cognition in the dictionary and got this explanation: the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and the senses. A result of this; a perception, sensation, notion or intuition.

So in order to become more fluent in a language you have to build on already existing knowledge. To manage that we have to put our knowledge in our long-term memory. If we only save it in our short-term memory we will forget it because the short-term memory has a very limited capacity, there's just not enough space there. And this is where the practice comes in. If you use time on practicing, your knowledge will get saved in the long-term memory and not the short-term. When you practice a language it gets more and more automatized. This is also described in Barry McLaughlin's hierarchy of goals;

First-order goal: to express a particular intention

Second-order goal: to decide on a topic

Third-order goal: to formulate a series of phrases

Lower-order goals: to retrieve the lexicon needed

to activate articulatory patterns

to utilize appropriate syntactic rules

to meet pragmatic conventions

When you look at the goals on top you see that the main function of these goals is to express meaning. On the bottom you see that the focus is on how to find the right words, to be able to use the proper grammar and form phrases. This is the difference between a native speaker and a speaker who isn't fluent. The native speaker would focus on WHAT he wanted to say and not HOW he would say it. To express a particular intention is the main focus. The more you practice your second language and the more knowledge you store in your long-term memory you will in time notice that your language skills improves. You will then use less energy on looking for the right words in conversation and it will be easier to express what you really want to say.

To focus more on meaning and less on words is an important goal for me in learning to speak english. I want to be able to express myself and speak my mind without wasting time on looking for the right words. I want my language to be automized and that means PRACTICE!

Acquisition versus learning

Stephen Krashen has a monitor theory which contains five hypotheses. The first one; The acquisition-learning hypothesis states that acquisition is a subconscious process. You can compare it to the way a child learns its first language. By learning a language the process takes place in a conscious state of mind. You learn rules and grammar and Krashen says that learning cannot lead to acquisition.

The second hypothesis is the monitor hypothesis. It tells that the things we learn about a language can only be used as a monitor. What he means by that is that our knowledge about a language can be used to correct our own writing and speaking. But in a realistic conversation situation it's not likely that we have time to monitor our own speaking.

The natural order hypothesis tells that acquisition of grammatical structures comes in a predictable order. Some structures come early others late.

The input hypothesis speak of acquisition. Comprehensible input is very important. The learner must be exposed to input on an slightly higher level than he is presently at. This is a formula called i+1. The i stands for current level of competence and the 1 stands for a level just above the level of competence. The importance of comprehensible material is emphasized. The learner has to understand the meaning first, and then they acquire a new language. Fluency emerges over time if you are exposed to it on a right level and in right amount. Another important side of this hypothesis is the learners already existing knowledge. If a learner has knowledge of a topic it becomes more comprehensible.

The last hypothesis is the affective filter. It tells of the learners emotional state and that it can block or pass different input. The learner has to be motivated and have self-confidence to be able to really acquire something. If a learners affective filter is raised he won't learn anything. That is why it is so important to make the learners feel comfortable and don't make them do anything they're not ready for. By pushing people to do something they find scary you may rise their affective filter and they won't learn a thing.

So to summon it up; learning cannot lead to acquisition. Your knowledge can be used as an error controller but it won't make you speak a language more fluently. You can only improve your fluency by being exposed to a language over time and this is a subconscious process.

The reason why I'm writing this is to help me understand and remember. I know I'm summoning up the topics in the book. But by writing it down it's easier to sort out the differences in the topics. And things make more sense than if I just read it. So this is kind of my middle stage. I try to make reason out of these theories and print them into my mind.

It's amazing how the mind starts processing the minute you get different kinds of input. By writing, reading and resting and by putting it down on paper I have already developed new thoughts about the topics. It's fascinating to read Chomsky's theory about how we are born with an ability to learn language and understand grammar to a certain point. But is it really so easy when it comes to learning a second language and even a foreign language. It is said that some languages are more similar to each other. Some languages are easier to learn if they can be linked together in certain areas. If these "boxes" match at several points, the languages may be quite similar. I guess it's like swedish and danish for Norwegians. In the language boxes the patterns are similar and because of that we can understand each other and learn the other ones language quickly.

The theory states that the learner is not active in this process. The person simply learns the language by being exposed to it. It could work in reality if you moved to a place where they only spoke a foreign language and you were exposed to it constantly over a long period of time. When you learn a language this way i think you acquire it. You understand the language in a completely different way than if you only learn the rules and theory of the language. That's the difference between native speakers and speakers that have the language as their second language or foreign language. When we learn English for example we get a lot of input from our teachers. We learn grammar and practice our knowledge. This is different from acquisition because we actively learn something. At the same time we get input in a passive way. By listening to english music and watching english movies and series we acquire knowledge without even knowing it. By combining these to ways of both active and passive learning and also by being in the right environment you can speed up the learning process.

Getting to know English Didactics

What do I know about English didactics? What have I learned by now?

The main topics so far has been different learning theories made by different people during the last thirty to forty years. These theories tell us about the human ability to learn a foreign language. To be honest my memory has not saved a lot of it, even though some of it did make sense and I managed to understand it. The job that lies ahead of me now, is to get these theories organized and separated. In that way I can draw parallels between the different theories and think for myself what can or cannot work in a realistic teaching situation. In need to really understand it and make it my own.

I need to know the theories of Chomsky, Vygotsky, Krashen, Ausubel and McLaughlin.

What I now know something about is Chomsky's "LAD" theory: Language acquisition device, the "black box" we humans are born with. Our language develops naturally when we are exposed to it and this faculty is known as Universal Grammar. The theory connects the way a child learns its native language to the way a person can learn a second language. It states that we are able to learn a second language simply by being exposed to it. The learner is not active in the process. Vygotski took the theory further. He meant that social interaction is the most important way to learn a language. Role models like parents or teachers are important when a child is developing its language. By asking questions and demonstrating the child learns faster. Children imitate what is said around them, but on the other hand that does not explain the ability they have to form their own words. The irregular verbs are a good example of that ability. They learn certain words and learn how they end. Because of that the irregular verbs get a regular ending even though they most likely have not heard these words from any adult. That means that there must be an ability in all of us which we are born with that helps us form words naturally.

Another theory I have to learn and understand is Krashen's Five Hypotheses. I will come back to you when I have studied it better...