I had a student come up to me and ask for extra reading so she can prepare for grad school. I asked her what she wanted to study specifically so that I could recommend the most appropriate books. She said, "SLA."
Well since I'm the SLA teacher in our graduate certificate program, that made me quite happy. I know that she may have made up her mind long before she stepped into my class, but I also know that I might have inspired her. One thing I know for sure is that I didn't squash her dreams. That's something since the classroom is often a discouraging place, especially when exams and grades are involved as they are in our TESOL program.
I'm not sure why (although I have my theories) but it seems to me that too few of us have adequate insurance when we leave our homes to teach abroad for the first time. International health insurance is available, but we have to know to look for it. Here I'm sending you to a company that specializes in helping expats in China and has offices in the UK, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.
They can help you (for example) with home insurance while you're in China. This means insurance for public liability, temporary accommodation, replacement locks & windows, and personal accidents. You can also benefit from fire insurance as well as several other kinds of insurance (like the critical travel and health insurance plans).
As I correct hoework assignments in which my trainees explore the relationship between emotions and the CPH, I'm reminded of my own middle school, high school, and college language learning experiences.
I studied Spanish for a year in middle school and for 2 more years in high school before switching to Latin. It was a big mistake, but my reasoning was that Spanish III would be too difiicult for me since I hadn't learned any Spanish so far. It was better to start off fresh than to continue a more advanced Spanish course that I wouldn't be able to follow.
In some ways I blame my emotions for slowing down my language learning although the real culprit is probably the grammar translation method and the teachers who used it.
I didn't do well in middle school Spanish. I was afraid of making mistakes, a common problem for kids going through puberty, particulalry boys who have a crush on the teacher and a few girls in the class. Then I was caught cheating on a quiz.
I wanted a more efficient way to study the colors than the list of translations in my notebook so I labeled various book covers, notebooks, and my "Jaime" name tag (that name tag didn't help my emotions since I ended up getting called "hiney") with the Spanish words for the various colors. The teacher saw amarillo on my yellow book cover, took my quiz, and gave me a zero. That was discouraging, of course.
Anyway, learning Spanish was always stressful and never fun or interesting. I was never given a chance to overcome my puberty-related hardships (my desire to appear cool and smart, my shyness, etc.). When my parents decided I needed a Spanish tutor to get my grades up I went to her house and got tested on translations for a while. She wasn't attractive like my middle school teacher and there was no one else there so I felt pretty secure. I still didn't learn enough Spanish but I think I did learn something with the more comfortable environment.
Then it was on to highschool where the bully behind me would kick my chair (or me) while the teacher pretended not to notice. Talk about bad learning conditions. Eventually I stabbed his hand with my pen. He threatened to kill me but stopped kicking me. No surprise that I couldn't learn in that classroom, is it?
Latin was far worse, but I'll blame the Latin teacher I despised for that. Mrs. Dartmoth or Dortmouth or something like that.
Grading SLA quizzes is always interesting. First, there are a number of concepts that need to be discussed and then I ahve to evaluate how well each concept was analyzed. So if the question has to do with comparing environmental influences in L1 acquisition according to Behaviorists and Cognitivists, I need to make sure that the student mentions both input and language models. They must be in the correct context - too many students talked about Behaviorism and input which tells me that I didn't empahsize input as solely a Cognitivist idea strongly enough.
Then the hard part - the student needs to analyze the differences between models in Behaviorism and input in Cognitivism. And there should be some mention of models being imitated and then a good explanation of reinforcement compared with input triggering the LAD to begin gathering rules from the rules that make up the input. Which of course meand we should compare rules and habits. Reinforcement with the LAD organizing systems based on rules plucked from the input is another issue.
And that's just question #1... Obviously, the few students who ace this timed essay test have achieved something really great.
By the way, correcting quizzes isn't my only excuse for not blogging more frequently. I've also had a lot of work done behind the scenes to amke this blog run on newer software and be more resistant to spammers. Let's hope it was worth it!