Reframing proficiency, literacy and culture in the classroom

1. Reframing proficiency, literacy and culture in the classroom Welcome! Please Make yourself comfortable and complete Question set #1 in your workshop Journal

2. Clarify and reconfigure concepts of proficiency, literacy and culture in LOTE (Language Other Than English) teaching and learning. Explore interconnections between proficiency, literacy and culture that are essential to ultimate attainment in a LOTE. Introduce the Sociocultural Lesson Plan Model, which is centered on the integration of proficiency, literacy and culture-oriented learning outcomes. Create an original Sociocultural Lesson Plan Discuss the creation of a learning community dedicated to promoting more culture and literacy-enriched language teaching practices.  1. Objectives of the training

3. Greetings/Introductions Pre-test: proficiency, literacy and LOTE Group warm-up discussion: What is proficiency? …literacy? …culture? …how do they connect? Two models for promoting connections between proficiency, literacy and culture in LOTE teaching Sociocultural Lesson Plan Model (SLPM) demos Workshop: Creating an original SLPM Lesson Plan Presentation of plans Begin a conversation about further refinement and promotion of the approach advanced in this workshop  1. training SCHeDUlE

4. Proficiency • At the height of the proficiency movement, over 70 distinct definitions of proficiency in another language emerged (Schulz, 1986). • Canale and Swain (1980): • Grammatical competence (“What form of the verb?”) • Discourse competence (“How do I close a letter to a friend?”) • Sociolinguistic competence (“How do I greet Sr. X?”) • Strategic competence (“Can’t remember the exact word. What’s another way to say that?” DEFINING TERMS

5. Literacy • “Defining literacy, like betting on the lottery, is a risky business. Where once­many years ago­its definition was simple and non-controversial, now a wave of political, economic, and educational theories have impinged on the definition, pulling it in different directions. Literacy definitions have become the battleground over competing social theories, obscuring a common core of understanding that crosses most interests.” –Richard Venezky (1998) DEFINING TERMS

6. The focus on linguistic proficiency neglects the discourse-level of communicating capably across cultures. Evidence: • Good grammar computation not translating to basic functions in the target culture (Pearson, 2006). • The discourse level centers on… • Literacy… • Conceptions of literacy: capital ‘L’, critical theoretical stances (literacies), digital literacy • From basic writing systems to arts and letters, literacies often carry centuries of sociocultural history and meaning-making that are just as important as proficiency. • “…any organized and reasonably stable area of skill or knowledge and its associated discursive practice(s).” Defining Terms

7. III. The Composite Textual Comprehension Model (White, 2008) • Based on the notion that the goal of language use, whether interpretative or interactional, is communication for COMPLETE comprehension. • To achieve this goal learners need the ability to… • 1. …decode messages at the surface level. • 2. …understand discourse markers and extended discourse • 3. …comprehend the cultural subtexts upon which the conversation is built

8. III. The Composite Textual Comprehension Model (White, 2008) • Extends Grice’s (1975) Maxims of Conversation (quantity, quality, relevance and manner) to center attenion on a… • Maxim of Cultural Appropriateness: • 1. Avoid transfer of personal cultural practices/perspectives onto the C2. • 2. Do not assume that cultural values transfer across linguistic borders.

9. III. The Composite Textual Comprehension Model (White, 2008)

10. III. The Composite Textual Comprehension Model (White, 2008)

11. So, how do we connect proficiency and literacy? • Culture: • “…a historically transmitted semiotic network constructed by humans...which allows them to develop, communicate and perpetuate their knowledge, beliefs and attitudes about the world” (Geertz, 1973, p. 89). • “…a set—perhaps a system—or principles of interpretation, together with the products of that system” (Moerman, 1988, p. 4). • …a combination of cognitive, sociolinguistic and behavioral capacities (AATF, 1989) DEFINING TERMS

12. Culture… • Vygotsky (1986): Animals can only react to nature; human beings, thanks to our ability to fashion tools, can transform nature by moving, naming, shaping, and generalizing what’s happening around us. Cultures are colored by particular toolkits: • 1) physical tools: pencils, hammers, chopsticks… and • 2) symbolic tools: spoken language, writing, grammar, road signs, post-its, e-mails, texts, spam… DEFINING TERMS

13. Culture • National Standards (1999) • Problem: What if a product can be a practice (or vice-versa)? DEFINING TERMS

14. Culture • Instead of the ‘3 P’s’ Pyramid, Tang (2006) proposes ‘2 M’s’: • Cultural mind • Cultural manifestations (products and practices) DEFINING TERMS

15. Culture • …something that progresses through several stages (Seelye, 1993) *based on Seelye (1993), the AATF framework (1989), the National Standards (1999) and Vygotsky (1986) DEFINING TERMS

16. Culture is… • At the center of • proficiency and • literacy development DEFINING TERMS

17. There are reasonably measurable symbolic capacities that learners must attain, representing the broadest possible range of mediation within and across social systems. Expansion from first to second symbolic capacities produce a third set that connotes a higher level of symbolic capability. Second symbolic capacities Model

18. First symbolic capacities

19. …PLUS SECOND symbolic capacities

20. = greater symbolic capability

21. Vygotsky’s (1986) water molecule metaphor for development: we cannot study water by breaking it down into its component elements (oxygen & hydrogen atoms); water is the dynamic interaction of these elements. A walk through the Second Symbolic Capacities Model

22. Like water, symbolic capacity must be not be approached atomistically; just as the bond oxygen shares with its two hydrogen units forms a unique molecule, symbolic capacity has to be understood in terms of a central cultural core that is simultaneously the origin as well as the beneficiary of mediational activity in two key symbolic systems, proficiency and literacy. A walk through the Second Symbolic Capacities Model

23. Like water, literacy and proficiency are dynamically interconnected. Like the electrons whose laps around the three atoms keep the water molecule together, mediational activity centered on the use of a myriad of physical and psychological tools, is the thread that holds symbolic capacity together. A walk through the Second Symbolic Capacities Model

24. Kasper and Rose (2002) on five stages of L2 socio-pragmatic development (lags behind linguistic development): 1) prebasic competence, which is context-dependent and lacks syntactical development, 2) a formulaic stage that involves use of the imperative, 3) an unpacking stage in which imperatives generalize to more indirect forms of requests, 4) pragmatic expansion, a stage at which requests repertoires increase in number and syntactic complexity, and finally, a 5) fine-tuning stage marked by adjusting requests around a diversity of goals, participants and settings. Activities for INTEGRATING CULTURe AND proficiency

25. Huth and Taleghani-Nikazm’s (2006) five components of socio-pragmatic L2 instruction: 1) Guided reflection on the nature of particular conversational practices: the formulas, setting topics 2) Compare and contrast L1 and L2 interaction with regard to particular turn-taking sequences: create worksheets and transparencies that facilitate exploration of key differences between L1 and L2 with regard to a particular speech event. 3) Interpretation of authentic a/v sources accompanied by transcripts 4) Opportunities to re-create and practice the particular speech act represented (i.e. role plays) 5) Evaluation of the cultural perspectives that pervade the conversational practice under study. Activities for INTEGRATING CULTURE AND proficiency

26. Cultural Gouin Series (Knop, 2008): Take a C2 practice/event and stage it in 6-8 statements that… • …are formulaic • … avoid changes in time, person. • …are enhanced by linguistic (emotive quality, chunking, ‘motherese’) and extralinguistic (props, clip art) cues Activities for INTEGRATING CULTURE AND PROFICIENCY

27. Como hacer el chilate: Se pone a tostar el maíz en un comal. Una vez tostado se muele, pero para hacerlo se moja …y se cuela. Usualmente se hace con un colador fino. Después de hecho esto se ponea cocer y mientras hierve se le agrega la pimienta gorda y el jengibre . Activities for INTEGRATING CULTURE AND PROFICIENCY

28. Literacy event exploration (Kramsch, 2003): Have students collect authentic texts (i.e. blogs, vodcasts, newspapers, photos…). Foci for graphic organizers, Venn diagrams, Q&A include: • Events depicted • Target audience • Purpose • Register (i.e. formal, informal); related to audience • A stance or tone (serious, ironic, enthusiastic) • Prior text (relationship to a particular discourse) • Setting/perspective Activities for integrating culture, proficiency and literacy

29. Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) with Forced-Choice Response Exercises Students are provided a detailed account of a situation and asked to choose the most appropriate response from a list. As a whole, the class can discuss the response and provide rationale for the choice that was made. Activities for INTEGRATING CULTURE AND proficiency

30. Activities for INTEGRATIng CULTURe AND Proficiency

31. I. Key features: The SMLP is centered on… …dialogic and cross-symbolic exploration of a discursive practice (Young, 2009): filling out a form, attending a dinner party, genre of writing, driving, art, rap, folksong, subway map, blog, editorial… …the promotion of trans-cultural, trans-literate, and translinguistic capability… Stages that move from exploration to reproduction and critical awareness of similarities and differences between first and second culture (NSFLL 4.2) and language (NSFLL 4.1) The sociocultural model lesson plan

32. I. Activation of schemata: Lexically and morpho-syntactically simple top-down and bottom-up leading questions about cultural conventions (in L2) that pertain to the text students are about to explore. The teacher then collects students’ comments, translating them into L2 if offered by students in L1. These may serve as hypotheses to test later in the lesson. The sociocultural model lesson plan

33. II. Text Interpretation: Combine bottom-up and top-down leading questions to process text The sociocultural model lesson plan

34. III. Sociocultural interpretation (top-down): Lead learners through an examination of the points raised in the activation stage. Sample leading questions include: • What similarities do you see between the way native speakers approach ‘X’ and our approach to ‘X’ (for examining L1 and C1 assumptions). • Which of our assumptions about this text were correct? …incorrect? • What are the rules for carrying out this speech event in the L2? (address relevant • grammatical, lexical, discourse & socio-pragmatic elements) The sociocultural model lesson plan

35. IV. Sociocultural presentation: Students develop an adaptation/ recreation of the presented text. Wendy’s demo Mark’s demo The sociocultural model lesson plan

36. V. Sociocultural debriefing: Teacher and students examine appropriateness simulations against the elements identified at Stage III (…and, if applicable, assumptions generated at Stage I). May be some lingering transference of L1 and C1 to the L2 and C2 features imbued in text. Bill’s demo Wendy’s demo Mark’s demo The sociocultural model lesson plan

37. Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended: Create or adapt authentic texts Embed videos, clip art and other media Easy, expansive file-sharing Sample Technologies that are SMLP-friendly:

38. QuestGarden Format can be adapted to lesson plan model Offers nice design templates and opportunities for feedback. Easy to embed pictures, clip art, videos through links. Sample: Corrido webquest Technologies that are SMLP-friendly:

39. Questions? Feedback appreciated: warformk@buffalostate.edu whitewl@buffalostate.edu wwa9b@virginia.edu Thanks and enjoy the conference! From second language acquisition to second symbolic capacities