First,
Consider
Your Goals and
Expectations
for the New Semester
— Then Complete the
Diamond Poem
Assignment.
 

September 7, 2009

Dear Interns:

Greetings and welcome to the second semester of Special Methods. We have several goals this semester to assist you on your journey as an emerging professional in the field of foreign language education.

One of our goals is to expand your knowledge of strategies and activities to teach the four skills of communication: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. We will also address the three modes of communication: interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational.

We will take a close look at how to design assessments — formative, summative, and performance — and how to create appropriate rubrics. Another goal expands your expertise in creating daily lesson plans that you will incorporate into a thematic, interdisciplinary unit.

Finally, you will have the opportunity to take part in a six-hour professional development conference to introduce you to other educators in our field and gain insight into how to present content information to a wide range of other teachers and scholars.

Your first assignment is to create a poem in your target language. Blaz (2002) refers to the five-line poem as a “diamond” poem, while other professionals identify it as a “cinquain,” referring to the number of lines. The goal of this assignment is to practice using a beginning level activity for Standard 1.3 that could be used in one of your internship classes and possibly be incorporated into your unit plan. Although the assignment appears fairly simplistic, requiring only five lines that incorporate specific vocabulary, the cognitive dimension is a bit more challenging.

For a detailed description of the lesson, including step-by-step instructions, click on the diamond.

You can also find your syllabus and calendar by clicking on the appropriate links on the left sidebar.

Good luck and welcome to a new semester of teaching and learning.

Dr. FAB 

Freddie A. Bowles
Assistant Professor of Foreign Language Education
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
College of Education and Health Professions
PEAH 314
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