Dictogloss in the works

It's been a white since I mentioned dictogloss. Yesterday I did the research class for the dictogloss collaborative chapter for the TESOL Classroom series.

The group are 2 Jr high school boys and 2 Jr High School girls, all 2nd year students.

My aspect of the dictogloss for this chapter is the V-task approach, or collaborative learning in the classroom and creating student autonomy.

Although the passage I used for the class was long, and the approach I took was different from my colleagues, I was really impressed with the results.

My focus in my conversation class is on the use of interlanguage and using the language outside of the 'set phrases' taught in the textbook. The students responded really well to the conversation, often the discussion becoming very heated at times, one student having heard 'Well', another student having heard 'Wow', yet in context 'wow' just didn't fit. The discussion about the language becomes the most prevalent. The final conversation had 'good' mistakes, and there were some not so good mistakes, but the whole approach to the learning was a great experience for the students.

We've only got a month to get this chapter done!

This is R-chan.
She is currently in SuperKids 4, yet, most of the lessons we do are from a variety of sources, as well as from whatever R-chan wants to do. She pretty much decides what she wants to learn. She has gone from a student who followed the PPP method to one of now who much prefers learning things on her own using a much more holistic method. So the SuperKids 4 book isn't followed from the traditional PPP format it was designed for, but instead we move around a lot, covering things from the book but in a TBL format.

The picture here was taken after we played 2 games.

The first game was based on the lesson in SK4 making comparisons between 2 animals.
We played the memory game. But when two cards were turned over they had to be compared in some way.

So I went first.
I turned over the ostrich and hippopotamus cards. I said 'An ostrich is faster than a hippopotamus'. Her response was one of '???' So I said the word 'fast' again and then repeated my sentence. This time going slower and emphasizing the faster.
She agreed and then it was her turn.

She turned over the lion and the elephant. 'Elephant big is lion.' Far from a perfect sentence, but the word order was correct.

The game progressed to the point where she heard enough of my language so that she could begin to create the comparisons herself with much more sentence structure.

Then came the moment that defines the new v-task. She asked me to help her with a new word so that she could make the sentence.

She turned over the elephant card and the bear card. She could have said bigger, but she asked me 'How do you say 'omoi' in English? I replied 'heavy', I didn't want to give the comparitive form, she didn't ask for it. Her sentence 'A elephant is heavier is than bear.' Her interlanguage was working its way through and she was discovering that the adjective -er form was used for comparisons. The word order remained correct and the emergence of the -er form told me she was on her way.
The rule she then applied to the peacock and snake card which she used the word beautifuller.

The next game we played was designed to reduce this simple form to something more applicable. In the picture, on the table you can see all of the cards face up. The object of this game was to choose an animal and the other person had to guess which animal it was.

I went first. I chose 'elephant'. She guessed lion. I said 'it's bigger'. She then said 'rhinocerous'. I replied 'It's heavier'. So every animal she guessed I used her new guess to compare it to my animal. She was pretty much in tune with this game. It was simpler, the language was simpler and it allowed me also to focus on the 'more' structures, although these structures were not part of her ZPD on this day. She wasn't able to distance this zone.

It came to the point in this game though that she could guess my animal within 3 guesses based on the clues I gave her. Also using the idea of the v-task, I added new adjectives and in order for her to guess the animal, she needed to know what this new adjective meant. She was allowed to ask me. I used slower, more beautiful, taller (she got the word longer, but the concept of taller wasn't there until I had picked giraffe as my animal to introduce this new adjective). She immediately guessed 'giraffe' and then turned around and used 'taller' herself in her next turn.

Having a student by themselves at this age can sometimes be very tedious, but R-chan has the personality and the motivation to be able to learn on her own.

Other things we do in class;

She does 10 minutes of reading out loud, from Penguin Readers 'Anne of Green Gables' level 2 book. At the 10 minute mark, I stop her and we look at the progress she has made based on previous week's readings. She can read a little over a page in 10 minutes, as opposed to 3/4 of a page from when she first started.
She also signs out a book a week from our library, she picks it. She has read over 50 books since the library began.We have a variety of readers from various publishers, so there is a variety for her to choose from. She has no favorites, but she has read a lot of the Story Street series from Longman. She is reading level 5 of that series. Sometimes she chooses a much lower level book than she is more capable of, but it is her choice.

We also do a lot of writing in class, she does study a little grammar when the need arises, or when the homework dictates that grammar needs to be covered, but I design the lesson around a more 'noticing' approach. For example when we covered past tense. I laid all of the cards on the table, so she could see the words. I asked her to point out similarities between the cards, and she immediately pointed out the -ed ending.

A pleasure to teach. Her dream is to work at Disneyland as a guide.

Good luck R-chan!

Mark