bodner084

(taken from: http://freenuts.com/images/corpus-byu-edu.jpg )   By Agung Kristianto, ELL Instructor at MCC I attended a workshop facilitated by Dr. Randi Reppen at the MIDTESOL Conference. In this workshop, she focused on the use of corpus research (research on large collection of natural language) to inform language teaching decisions and resource in the language classroom. She also proposed the use of corpora as a resource for material development and student activities. She started the workshop with providing the rationale of using corpora for vocabulary and grammar instruction. She claims that using corpora can provide insights into language use where intuition fails. In addition, she believes that corpora can serve as teaching materials by providing examples of authentic language.  Then, she continued to share some online corpus and corpus softwares. Some example of free online corpora are COCA ( http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ ) , Word and Phrase (focused on academic language...

By Agung Kristianto, ELL Instructor at MCC I attended a workshop entitled “Challenges and Opportunities for English Learners (ELs) in Mathematics and Science Language” facilitated by Dr. Lia Plakans, Renka Ohta, Crissa Stephens, and Warren Merkel at the Iowa Culture and Language Conference (ICLC) pre-conference session. In this workshop, the facilitators proposed the following ideas: bridging language, math, and science for ELs; recognizing linguistic challenges; supporting language learning opportunities; and cultural considerations. First, the facilitators suggested that language teachers should be aware of the challenges of ELs. These challenges depend on the following factors: their English language (L2) proficiency, first language (L1) and home culture, prior educational experience, literacy levels in their L1 and L2, and grade level. Having known these challenges, the facilitator argued for the following strategies to bridging the language challenges. That is, by minimizing lingu...