How Do
We Teach
A Language?

Greetings to all students who plan on teaching a language. You have arrived at a cybersite devoted to Special Methods of Instruction in Foreign Languages, a three-semester course for interns in the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program at the University of Arkansas.

The Special Methods web also provides internet-based resources for anyone interested in learning how to teach a language. The special methods we explore on these pages apply to a variety of educational settings from K-12 to colleges and universities, community classes, and language schools.

During the first of their three semesters of intensive study, MAT students focus on the theory of language acquisition and the methodology used to teach languages, some of which are deemed "foreign" by designers of curriculum and instruction. The second semester is devoted to planning and assessment. The third examines implementation and differentiation of instruction.

Readers can consult the MAT Interns homepage for timely information about the class, references to other pages in the Special Methods web, announcements about coming events and student accomplishments, and miscellaneous tidbits related to language learning.

The Special Methods web exemplifies one of the guiding principles of CornDancer.com, a developmental website devoted to the exploration of ideas and the creation of a cyber community of scholars. We believe that information should be open to all and shared freely — not hidden away behind passwords and exclusive subscription services.

My students contribute to the Special Methods web in many ways. Examples of their work can be found in Bio Poems, an instructional activity designed to help teachers find out about students' backgrounds and experiences. Each bio poem assists in building a learning community within the classroom, a key element in creating an engaging and meaningful environment. Students in another of my classes, Classroom Management Concepts, have also written some delightful and creative Bio Poems for their class cybersite.

In the Special Methods Reading Room, visitors will find an example of an activity called “Name Poems,” a method of instruction that develops vocabulary, addresses multiple intelligences — and again, builds the learning community.

Other places within the Special Methods web add new content each semester as we continue to document and share the learning experience. The Gallery contains portraits and photos of our own professional learning community of language teachers at work and at play. We continue to write entries for the Special Methods Glossary, a reference resource for language students and teachers.

Web Links, a recent addition, contains brief descriptions of pertinent websites related to professionalism and pedagogy. The Lessons and Activities section begins with an activity designed to help my foreign language interns practice vocabulary in their target languages.

Contributions are always welcome.   I encourage you to share your successful lessons, activities, web links, and glossary items with our family of language educators.

Freddie A. Bowles
Assistant Professor of Foreign Language Education
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
University of Arkansas
fbowles@uark.edu

Life is crazy and meaningful at once. And when we do not laugh over the one aspect and speculate about the other, life is exceedingly drab, and everything is reduced to the littlest scale. There is then little sense and little nonsense either. When you come to think about it, nothing has any meaning, for when there was nobody to think, there was nobody to interpret what happened. Interpretations are only for those who don't understand; it is only the things we don't understand that have any meaning. Man woke up in a world he did not understand, and that is why he tries to interpret it.
      — C. G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959