Special Methods I
Summer Semester 2012

Monday, July 9, 2012

Welcome, Willkommen, Bienvenida, Bienvenu, Tsi-lu-gi,and Üdvözöljük, Foreign Language MAT Interns!

Greetings to the 2012-2013 MAT cohort of future language teachers — and welcome to the first semester of an intense, enriching, and challenging program of teaching and learning.

We begin the program with two summer semester classes. Issues and Principles introduces theories of learning, the ethics of teaching, and principles of teaching and learning. Special Methods presents the principles of designing instruction and the standards of learning that frame each of the five content areas.

In our Special Methods class, you begin the semester by reflecting on what you already know about teaching a foreign language. Then you will determine what you want to learn about teaching your language. As an emerging reflective practitioner, you will be continually asked to apply what you learn in your university classes to your experiences and observations as interns in the public school classroom.

We will start with the “big picture” of how professional organizations guide, shape, and support contemporary curriculum. You will have the opportunity to join your own Specialized Professional Associations to 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 take a survey to check your own beliefs about language learning. Chapter Two charts the history of how the Standards for Language Learning evolved and how they are woven into the context of the foreign language curriculum. You will become familiar with the Arkansas Frameworks for each of your content languages by studying documents at the Arkansas Department of Education website:
http://arkansased.org/educators/curriculum/frameworks.html#foreign

Chapter Three provides an outline on how to plan for instruction. It contains foundational information for your internship. You will use this information to help you plan two “Mini-Lessons” to present 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. Chapter Six, the last text of your summer-term studies, is the first of a series of chapters focusing on how to integrate the three modes of communication — interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational — into the classroom. It looks at the interpretive mode through an integrative approach.

Throughout the summer semester, we will develop activities to help you in your own lesson planning. You will also read three peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles in preparation for your action research project.

During the second week of classes on July 19, your mentor teachers are invited to campus to meet you and attend a professional development workshop on mentoring and assessment. Later, we will go on a field trip to the Northwest Arkansas Educational Cooperative in Farmington.

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 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. You will acquire a foundation of scholarly literature about language learning and teaching. You will also meet a network of professionals to consult throughout your MAT program.

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.

Let’s begin the semester with a motivating song, a tradition started with the 2009-2010 class. Check out the YouTube video link below for your 2012-2013 MAT anthem!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG2zyeVRcbs

 
Dr. Bowles

Freddie A. Bowles
Assistant Professor of Foreign Language Education
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
College of Education and Health Professions
Peabody Hall 312
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