|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
Welcome,
Willkommen,
Bienvenida,
Bienvenu,
and Üdvözöljük
to Our New
Foreign Language
MAT Interns!
Monday, July 5, 2010
We begin the 2010-2011 MAT program in just a few hours. You will experience an intense summer session filled with lots of information about teaching and how students learn, how to teach a foreign language, and how standards and accountability frame our content areas and profession.
In our special methods class, we will start the semester by learning about our professional organizations and how they guide, shape, and support contemporary curriculum. You will have the opportunity to join your own Specialized Professional Associations and discover how they support your growth as a professional and provide instructional support for your students, too.
The focus of the summer methods class is theory and methodology. Chapter One of Shrum and Glisan’s Teacher’s Handbook (4th ed.) introduces you to the field of Second Language Acquisition. You will also take a survey to check your own beliefs about language learning. Chapter Two builds on the information from the Preliminary Chapter to show you how to weave the standards into the context of the foreign language curriculum.
The next chapter takes the standards and the curriculum to show you how to plan for instruction. Chapter Three is the foundation of the internship. You will use this information to help you plan three “Mini-Lessons” you teach to your classmates.
The next two chapters take you into the classroom to look at how foreign languages are taught at the elementary and middle levels. The last chapter of your summer-term studies begins a series of chapters focusing on how to integrate the three modes of communication into the classroom. Chapter Six looks at the interpretive mode through an integrative approach.
Throughout the summer semester, we will develop activities that you can use in your own lesson planning. By the end of the summer term, you will be prepared to step into a classroom with an understanding of how languages are learned and how they are taught. You will also become familiar with the lingo of the classroom and the practical skills needed to plan and present a lesson based on national and state frameworks.
To assist your development as an emerging professional in the field of foreign language education, Planet Gnosis provides a transparent Special Methods website that you can access from any browser. Take a moment this week to visit the several web pages related to Special Methods of Instruction. You'll find the links on the left sidebar of this page. Class handouts will be available for you to download as printer friendly PDFs. You will also find several subsites devoted to language learning and teaching on Planet Gnosis.
So, let’s click our figurative heels together and step onto the yellow brick cyber road to see if we can find the great and wondrous Oz! The Ruby Red Slippers will lead to your calendar and syllabus.
Dr. Bowles
Freddie A. Bowles
Assistant Professor of Foreign Language Education
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
College of Education and Health Professions
Stone House South F09
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, AR 72701
Office: 479-575-3035
fbowles@uark.edu
Different languages — I mean the actual vocabularies, the idioms — have worked out certain mechanisms of communication and registration. No one language is complete. A master may be continually expanding his own tongue, rendering it fit to bear some charge hitherto borne only by some other alien tongue, but the process does not stop with any one man. While Proust is learning Henry James, preparatory to breaking through certain French paste-board partitions, the whole American speech is churning and chugging, and every other tongue doing likewise.
— Ezra Pound, "How to Read," 1929
|
Planet Gnosis is directed by Dr. Freddie A. Bowles, Assistant Professor of Foreign Language Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Planet Gnosis is dedicated to the exploration of education and teaching. It is a cybersite of CornDancer.com, a developmental web for the Mind and Spirit. Submissions are invited. |
