She had wanted to know how to skate backwards since childhood. Ever since the days of skates that you attached to your shoes, she had envied the girls who got to wear those pretty skating skirts at the roller rink, do their arabesques on one foot, and skate backwards. It was the romance of the beauty of it all: lovely skaters in lovely costumes, and it was the feeling of freedom -- gliding across the floor, that made her love skating and watch it, in the form of ice skating and ice dancing, whenever the Olympics were on TV.
So now at the age of 48 she decided it was time. In the midst of wanting to assert her own sense of identity and individuality again, she began roller skating and roller skating lessons. It was fun. Just gliding along the floor was fun. It was fun watching the kids, mostly girls, dream of being Peggy Fleming on roller skates. It was fun learning to skate backwards and doing so around the whole rink during warm-up. She even learned more than she had envisioned: the airplane, the scorpion, and a small jump or two.
After a while her coach encouraged her to enter the competitions. Silly. What for? She hadn’t intended to compete. But then she began thinking about it, how it might be fun, being there with all the hoopla, watching the kids and their mothers, and trying it out herself. So she began learning figures. Figures didn’t appeal to her too much, but she knew they were the first step, and dance skating would come after that. So she practiced, and before she knew it, it was the big day. She, along with all the ten-something-year-olds and their mothers, went down to the convention center for the competition.
The girls were excited. They got to wear make-up and all those beautiful, grown-up-looking skating costumes. And if they didn’t fall, they had fun and were happy playing at trying to be the best.
When it was time to do the figures, she got in line with the other little girls and the one other adult who had also dared to enter the competition. When her turn came, she did her figures, and she did them better than she had ever done them before. Then they waited for the posting of the results.
Once the rating sheets were hung on the wall, everyone went over, and they all stood there looking for their names or the names of their children. And there she saw her ranking: not just last, eighteen out of eighteen, but way below the skater who was seventeen on the list! She had done her very best. She had done better, she felt, than ever before, and yet she was not only the worst, but much worse than anyone who was competing! She thought, if she as an adult felt bad, how must the girls and boys feel when they were the worst? She stood there for a while, watching the mothers and the children looking for their rankings.
After the crowd had dwindled, she saw a lone mother come over to look at the figures rankings, searching for her daughter’s name. The mother’s finger worked its way down the list of names until she found the one she was seeking, number seventeen out of eighteen. And then an exclamation burst from her lips: “Thank God she’s not last again.”
The day was done. They packed their bags. The hall got quiet as everyone filed out. And as she, the 48-year-old figures competitor, climbed into her car, turned on the ignition, and began driving away, a smile slowly crept over her face.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Reading, Teaching German, and the Web
Teaching German, Spring 2009
The Web and Language Learning
The world has indeed changed. What is it that all German students, regardless of level, can take with them into the “wider world” when they leave our courses? What is it that they can continue to do if so inclined? One skill that should help them continue their use of German is the ability to read “intelligently,” especially the skill to read the web: to know what sites are reliable and for what, and to know how to glean meaning from texts. In addition, if they are interested in keeping their language competence in German fresh, reading for pleasure will help them do so.
Issues about Online Translation Tools
I know many faculty members are against the use of online translating websites, and certainly they often provide terrible translations. However, if students understand exactly what online translation tools can and cannot do, they can learn to use them wisely. It is similar to the calculator. When that came out, people were against using it, because it was feared that people would no longer be able to do math in their heads. That fear has been realized, to some degree. However, I would not be without my calculator nowadays when I balance my checkbook. (Yes, I’m one of that very small minority of people who uses checks and aggravates the people standing in line behind them!)
The Positive Aspects of Online Translation Tools
After having sat in on my colleague’s translation course, where he used translation memory and translating tools that are used in companies to provide the raw data for huge numbers of words that must be translated as accurately and quickly as possible, after seeing how students can be scaffolded to create culturally sensitive, polished English translations of texts translated from the second to the first language, I am convinced that even the poor translating tools accessible to all can be used to help further language acquisition instead of simply allowing students to cheat. They can provide the raw data, like dictionaries do, for students to use as they attempt to glean meaning from difficult texts. As I have seen in my colleague’s class, such raw data is only the beginning, for students have to grapple with textual meaning, culture-specific meanings in certain words, phrases, and texts, in order to fully understand a text.
So next semester I plan to begin by demonstrating to students, by way of examples, just what the online tools can do, and what they cannot do, how one has to be aware of where they go wrong and how they can change the meaning of a sentence or even the implications of a whole text. I want to show them the difference between dictionary based translators, as I believe babelfish is, and data-based translators, as I believe the google translator is. I’ll show them when a translator is doing a good job, and when it is “sending the wrong meaning.” I’ll demonstrate that they will have to learn how to be the “arbiter of meaning,” so to speak, how to know when the translator is right on, when it is not. And that will require them to analyze the original text in some depth.
We can teach them how to navigate the web. We can teach them that cultural meaning is hard to translate. We can teach them to beware of literal translations. We can teach them to use context, their logic, and their background knowledge to know when a translation is going wrong, doesn’t make sense, is not coherent. For example, if the translation tool translates ‘Lager’ as ‘camp’ when the context dictates ‘Lager’ as referring to beer, then students need to learn to watch the context for clues as to which word is conveying utterly in appropriate meaning.
Google Images: What They Can Do for Foreign Language Students
I also want students to understand the help that google images in German can provide, given that students learn to be aware of the source of the pictures (i.e., do they come from German-speaking sources?). Especially concrete nouns and verbs, but even other words or word phrases can produce 1) visual images, and 2) verbal and visual context. Sometimes a picture, or 20 pictures, are worth a thousand words, for they provide students with a visual image of how that particular object or idea is conceived of in the L2 culture. Students who process language more visually may be benefited, too. I have also noticed that the words underneath the picture are usually within a context of a phrase or sentence, so that interested students can see how they are used as well. I want to alert students to this potentiality of images. For example, the word ‘Lindwurmbrunnen’ was an important concept in a paragraph about the city of Klagenfurt, Austria, in a text students were asked to read recently. If you look up ‘Lindwurmbrunnen’ in google.de images (Bilder), you’ll find a number of pictures of it. You’ll also find phrases like “Lindwurmbrunnen in Klagenfurt” or “Klagenfurt - Der Lindwurmbrunnen.” Even words like ‘love’ (‘Liebe’) have visual representations on the web. Words like ‘honesty,’ while producing pictures, are more difficult to comprehend; however, with an online dictionary like Leo, the word can be understood, and students who are interested can see how the word is used in picture and text. Verbs like ‘laufen’ (‘to run’) are fairly concrete and easy to depict, while words like ‘verstehen’ (‘to understand’/’understanding’) need both the dictionary and the visual uses.
Using the Web to Understand Key Cultural Concepts
Students should also be taught how to use the web to decipher key words, phrases, and concepts. For example the German word ‘Heimat’ cannot be easily translated into English. According to Leo it means ‘country,’ ‘home,’ ‘homeland,’ ‘home country,’ ‘native country,’ or ‘home depot!’ However, even a quick scan of Wikipedia shows there is much more to the concept (translation follows):
Heimat kann eine Gegend oder Landschaft meinen, aber auch sich auf Dorf, Stadt, Land, Nation, Vaterland, Sprache oder Religion beziehen. Heimat bezeichnet somit keinen konkreten Ort (Heimstätte), sondern Identifikation. Es ist die Gesamtheit der Lebensumstände, in denen ein Mensch aufwächst. Auf sie wird seine Psyche geprägt, ihnen "ist er gewachsen". Als Gegenüber der Fremde wird Heimat im utopischen Sinne auch als der erst noch herzustellende Ort in einer Welt jenseits der Entfremdung verstanden, dies gilt insbesondere für Erfahrungen des Exils.
I used the google translator as the raw data, but polished the translation as best I could:
Home can be a region or landscape, but it can also refer to the concept of village, city, state, nation, homeland, language or religion. It does not denote a specific place (homestead), but rather an identification with something. It is the totality of the circumstances in which a person grows up. A person’s psyche is “stamped” with it, is shaped by it. It happens to him or her: “it grows him/her.” S/he is grown by it. A person is acted upon by it. As compared to that which is strange or foreign, the word ‘Heimat’ is understood in a utopian sense as that quietly constitutive place in a world beyond alienation. This especially applies to experiences of exile.
GOOGLE translation which I used as the raw data to form my own: Home can be a region or my landscape, but also to the village, city, state, nation, homeland, language or religion relate. Denotes home thus no specific place (home), but identification. It is the totality of the circumstances in which a person grows up. It is his psyche characterized them ", he is grown." As compared to the stranger in the home is also as a utopian sense of still herzustellende place in a world beyond the alienation understood, especially those experiences of exile.
(One can also see here why the translator only provides the raw data, and the reader must search further to understand the nuanced meaning of the definition.)
Help with Languages Not Even Studied!
If students understand how these online translators work, then they will be trained in the their even with languages they have not studied, languages such as Spanish for example, and they will know the caveats and what to look for as they are trying to glean meaning from texts in languages other than their native language. As the internet draws us closer to each other, we may indeed want to read a text in a language we do not know. If we know how to use the tools wisely, they can be an aid to us. If we know that cultural meaning is harder to translate, we’ll be more careful when trying to understand a text in another language.
Background Reading in the Native Language
I also want students to understand the value of background knowledge when attempting to read in another language. As scholars have said, if one knows the language and has background knowledge, then that is the ideal. One has many tools to help create meaning from language. If one has one, but not the other, i.e. language proficiency but not background knowledge or background knowledge but not proficiency, one can rely on what one has to compensate for the lack of the other. However, when both are missing, one has a great deal of difficulty. Our students can help compensate by getting some background knowledge in their own language about a topic and then attempting to understand L2 texts. This is another reason why it is good for students to explore their interests. Not only will they be more interested, but chances are they have more background knowledge in many of these areas of interest. In the past we were not allowed to read in our native language about whatever we were studying in the L2. I know from experience that such an approach severely limited my understanding of L2 literary texts, for I had neither the sophisticated language competence nor the cultural background knowledge needed for comprehending these texts in any depth. Later on I learned how to use English translations, articles about the texts, as well as the texts themselves to understand them as texts and within their sociocultural and historical context.
The Importance of Understanding How to Read the Web in General
Students are somewhat savvy about reading the web. They know that Wikipedia cannot be relied on 100%, for example. I want to help them navigate between fact and opinion, argument and description, exposition and narration. That will help them when writing, as well as when reading, if they are explicitly made aware of it all.
For Further Reading of My Own
Finally, I want to carefully read Swaffar, Byrnes, and Arens’s 1991 Reading for Meaning. It will help me be even better at teaching my students a “skill for life,” whether reading German, English, hard copy, the web, or some language they have never even studied!
The Web and Language Learning
The world has indeed changed. What is it that all German students, regardless of level, can take with them into the “wider world” when they leave our courses? What is it that they can continue to do if so inclined? One skill that should help them continue their use of German is the ability to read “intelligently,” especially the skill to read the web: to know what sites are reliable and for what, and to know how to glean meaning from texts. In addition, if they are interested in keeping their language competence in German fresh, reading for pleasure will help them do so.
Issues about Online Translation Tools
I know many faculty members are against the use of online translating websites, and certainly they often provide terrible translations. However, if students understand exactly what online translation tools can and cannot do, they can learn to use them wisely. It is similar to the calculator. When that came out, people were against using it, because it was feared that people would no longer be able to do math in their heads. That fear has been realized, to some degree. However, I would not be without my calculator nowadays when I balance my checkbook. (Yes, I’m one of that very small minority of people who uses checks and aggravates the people standing in line behind them!)
The Positive Aspects of Online Translation Tools
After having sat in on my colleague’s translation course, where he used translation memory and translating tools that are used in companies to provide the raw data for huge numbers of words that must be translated as accurately and quickly as possible, after seeing how students can be scaffolded to create culturally sensitive, polished English translations of texts translated from the second to the first language, I am convinced that even the poor translating tools accessible to all can be used to help further language acquisition instead of simply allowing students to cheat. They can provide the raw data, like dictionaries do, for students to use as they attempt to glean meaning from difficult texts. As I have seen in my colleague’s class, such raw data is only the beginning, for students have to grapple with textual meaning, culture-specific meanings in certain words, phrases, and texts, in order to fully understand a text.
So next semester I plan to begin by demonstrating to students, by way of examples, just what the online tools can do, and what they cannot do, how one has to be aware of where they go wrong and how they can change the meaning of a sentence or even the implications of a whole text. I want to show them the difference between dictionary based translators, as I believe babelfish is, and data-based translators, as I believe the google translator is. I’ll show them when a translator is doing a good job, and when it is “sending the wrong meaning.” I’ll demonstrate that they will have to learn how to be the “arbiter of meaning,” so to speak, how to know when the translator is right on, when it is not. And that will require them to analyze the original text in some depth.
We can teach them how to navigate the web. We can teach them that cultural meaning is hard to translate. We can teach them to beware of literal translations. We can teach them to use context, their logic, and their background knowledge to know when a translation is going wrong, doesn’t make sense, is not coherent. For example, if the translation tool translates ‘Lager’ as ‘camp’ when the context dictates ‘Lager’ as referring to beer, then students need to learn to watch the context for clues as to which word is conveying utterly in appropriate meaning.
Google Images: What They Can Do for Foreign Language Students
I also want students to understand the help that google images in German can provide, given that students learn to be aware of the source of the pictures (i.e., do they come from German-speaking sources?). Especially concrete nouns and verbs, but even other words or word phrases can produce 1) visual images, and 2) verbal and visual context. Sometimes a picture, or 20 pictures, are worth a thousand words, for they provide students with a visual image of how that particular object or idea is conceived of in the L2 culture. Students who process language more visually may be benefited, too. I have also noticed that the words underneath the picture are usually within a context of a phrase or sentence, so that interested students can see how they are used as well. I want to alert students to this potentiality of images. For example, the word ‘Lindwurmbrunnen’ was an important concept in a paragraph about the city of Klagenfurt, Austria, in a text students were asked to read recently. If you look up ‘Lindwurmbrunnen’ in google.de images (Bilder), you’ll find a number of pictures of it. You’ll also find phrases like “Lindwurmbrunnen in Klagenfurt” or “Klagenfurt - Der Lindwurmbrunnen.” Even words like ‘love’ (‘Liebe’) have visual representations on the web. Words like ‘honesty,’ while producing pictures, are more difficult to comprehend; however, with an online dictionary like Leo, the word can be understood, and students who are interested can see how the word is used in picture and text. Verbs like ‘laufen’ (‘to run’) are fairly concrete and easy to depict, while words like ‘verstehen’ (‘to understand’/’understanding’) need both the dictionary and the visual uses.
Using the Web to Understand Key Cultural Concepts
Students should also be taught how to use the web to decipher key words, phrases, and concepts. For example the German word ‘Heimat’ cannot be easily translated into English. According to Leo it means ‘country,’ ‘home,’ ‘homeland,’ ‘home country,’ ‘native country,’ or ‘home depot!’ However, even a quick scan of Wikipedia shows there is much more to the concept (translation follows):
Heimat kann eine Gegend oder Landschaft meinen, aber auch sich auf Dorf, Stadt, Land, Nation, Vaterland, Sprache oder Religion beziehen. Heimat bezeichnet somit keinen konkreten Ort (Heimstätte), sondern Identifikation. Es ist die Gesamtheit der Lebensumstände, in denen ein Mensch aufwächst. Auf sie wird seine Psyche geprägt, ihnen "ist er gewachsen". Als Gegenüber der Fremde wird Heimat im utopischen Sinne auch als der erst noch herzustellende Ort in einer Welt jenseits der Entfremdung verstanden, dies gilt insbesondere für Erfahrungen des Exils.
I used the google translator as the raw data, but polished the translation as best I could:
Home can be a region or landscape, but it can also refer to the concept of village, city, state, nation, homeland, language or religion. It does not denote a specific place (homestead), but rather an identification with something. It is the totality of the circumstances in which a person grows up. A person’s psyche is “stamped” with it, is shaped by it. It happens to him or her: “it grows him/her.” S/he is grown by it. A person is acted upon by it. As compared to that which is strange or foreign, the word ‘Heimat’ is understood in a utopian sense as that quietly constitutive place in a world beyond alienation. This especially applies to experiences of exile.
GOOGLE translation which I used as the raw data to form my own: Home can be a region or my landscape, but also to the village, city, state, nation, homeland, language or religion relate. Denotes home thus no specific place (home), but identification. It is the totality of the circumstances in which a person grows up. It is his psyche characterized them ", he is grown." As compared to the stranger in the home is also as a utopian sense of still herzustellende place in a world beyond the alienation understood, especially those experiences of exile.
(One can also see here why the translator only provides the raw data, and the reader must search further to understand the nuanced meaning of the definition.)
Help with Languages Not Even Studied!
If students understand how these online translators work, then they will be trained in the their even with languages they have not studied, languages such as Spanish for example, and they will know the caveats and what to look for as they are trying to glean meaning from texts in languages other than their native language. As the internet draws us closer to each other, we may indeed want to read a text in a language we do not know. If we know how to use the tools wisely, they can be an aid to us. If we know that cultural meaning is harder to translate, we’ll be more careful when trying to understand a text in another language.
Background Reading in the Native Language
I also want students to understand the value of background knowledge when attempting to read in another language. As scholars have said, if one knows the language and has background knowledge, then that is the ideal. One has many tools to help create meaning from language. If one has one, but not the other, i.e. language proficiency but not background knowledge or background knowledge but not proficiency, one can rely on what one has to compensate for the lack of the other. However, when both are missing, one has a great deal of difficulty. Our students can help compensate by getting some background knowledge in their own language about a topic and then attempting to understand L2 texts. This is another reason why it is good for students to explore their interests. Not only will they be more interested, but chances are they have more background knowledge in many of these areas of interest. In the past we were not allowed to read in our native language about whatever we were studying in the L2. I know from experience that such an approach severely limited my understanding of L2 literary texts, for I had neither the sophisticated language competence nor the cultural background knowledge needed for comprehending these texts in any depth. Later on I learned how to use English translations, articles about the texts, as well as the texts themselves to understand them as texts and within their sociocultural and historical context.
The Importance of Understanding How to Read the Web in General
Students are somewhat savvy about reading the web. They know that Wikipedia cannot be relied on 100%, for example. I want to help them navigate between fact and opinion, argument and description, exposition and narration. That will help them when writing, as well as when reading, if they are explicitly made aware of it all.
For Further Reading of My Own
Finally, I want to carefully read Swaffar, Byrnes, and Arens’s 1991 Reading for Meaning. It will help me be even better at teaching my students a “skill for life,” whether reading German, English, hard copy, the web, or some language they have never even studied!
Friday, December 5, 2008
Last Day of Classes
The end of another semester -- almost. Students got a kick out of Sankt Nikolaus filling their shoes with candy -- yes, even adults students. They teased me, saying that I played St. Nikolaus just before giving them their course evaluations to fill out, in order to garner better evaluations. There was a real good atmosphere today in class, and I left hoping that the final exam will be a good experience for them, a culmination of a semester of learning -- writing about themselves in German, reviewing the "cultural sentences" and intercultural communication blogs to come up with a sense of how you explain your own culture to a German or vice veresa, listening and reading, hopefully with a sense that they can indeed make sense of the language when it comes their way or they go out looking for it. One of my goals is to help them develop good reading strategies, especially for the web, for many of them will continue German, if at all, on the web.
In fact, next semester I'm going to work even more on helping students navigate the web in another language, as well as help them become more expert at determining the reliability of sites, or for what they are reliable. I'm looking forward to starting again -- starting some changes, continuing some others, without overburdening myself and the students.
Well, it's off to yoga again -- on a full stomach after a pretty darn good holiday party. My spirits are up. My attitude is re-framed, focusing on what can be done, and turning away from what can't. That will be my New Year's resolution, too.
In fact, next semester I'm going to work even more on helping students navigate the web in another language, as well as help them become more expert at determining the reliability of sites, or for what they are reliable. I'm looking forward to starting again -- starting some changes, continuing some others, without overburdening myself and the students.
Well, it's off to yoga again -- on a full stomach after a pretty darn good holiday party. My spirits are up. My attitude is re-framed, focusing on what can be done, and turning away from what can't. That will be my New Year's resolution, too.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
The Best and the Brightest
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
It seems to me that there are at least a couple of views of how higher education should be structured. One is ivory tower and elitist, and one is democratic and inclusive. There may even be that rare breed of person who values aspects of both.Those who are of the first mind believe that the bar should be set high, so high that only the “best” – the most intelligent, the best prepared – can succeed. They believe higher education is not for everyone. They believe it is only a select few who can succeed; that these few are the only ones worthy to eventually join their own selective and exclusive group. They believe that not only the reputation of their institution, but their own reputation, must be guarded and protected in this way. They are sometimes part of a group that says, “Either you have it, or you don’t. End of story.” They are sometimes part of a group that confuses intelligence and background/privilege. When they are at an institution of higher learning where the students don’t “measure up” to the institution from which they came, they are angry and frustrated, and they sometimes have such attrition rates that they have to face the situation. And they do. In whatever way they can.
One of the saddest aspects of academia is the confusion of intelligence with background and privilege, for it does not give those who might have the desire, the motivation, the mind, a chance. These people have to fight harder to succeed, and they are not necessarily the easy ones to teach. Those who are prepared, who have come from the college preparatory schools, and, in the case of language learners/speakers, those who have grown up with the second language and culture – those students, who have all the above attributes, are easy to teach. They are more docile, more trained in the etiquette of academia, and skilled in its labyrinthine ways. And it is easy to pretend that one is a great teacher, because the students are great learners.
It is almost as if some people do not know how to teach/facilitate learning in any but those who already know how to learn. I compare those people to virtuoso pianists who can play the most exquisite music. That ability and skill, however, do not necessarily transfer into excellent teaching/facilitation of learning. Some academics are exquisite masters of the word. They are great masters of content. They believe by virtue of mastery of word and content, one is a great teacher. OR others assume that "teachers are born, not made." I wholeheartedly disagree with both propositions.
I should not be so hard on these academics, for like me they have been influenced by their background, education, and upbringing. And yet, when I see students not given a chance, and not given a helping hand up to the next rung of the ladder, not encouraged to try, not believed in for their potential, sloughed off like a pair of dirty, old shoes – when I see people not willing to at least try to work with them, when students are blamed for their “stupidity,” “arrogant behavior,” or “moronic mentality,” I am saddened by the waste, and am reminded that “a mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
Such attitudes have permeated my experiences in education for almost fifty years, and I am reminded that teachers, instructors, and professors often love to complain about students. It’s the academic pastime. And once again, I am reminded of Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, when he treated those students (actually even those considered the "best and the brightest!") with disdain. I just looked at the trailer of the movie on Youtube and was impressed with what he later said: "Perhaps it is good to have a beautiful mind. But an even greater gift is to discover a beautiful heart."
And what if, just what if, although we are not consciously being racist or "classist," those whom we keep out are the great-great-grandchildren of slaves, the great-great-grandchildren of victims of the Texas Rangers, the great-great-grandchildren of poor migrant workers -- "black," "brown," or "white?" (Actually, we are various hues of beige, brown, and black. But that's another tangent for another day.)
There are others of us who – Anathema! Blasphemy! – believe that we have an obligation to the students whom we have let in to our institutions. That we have an obligation to begin at the level they are at, and help them step up to the next rung of the ladder, give them the tools to reach beyond their current level of skill and understanding, to help them become excited about the field we live in. The belief that eventually they too can reach that high bar, even if it takes a little longer, even if the route is more circuitous, even if there are more boulders in the road. On our part it takes more work, it takes more willingness for risk, it takes more humility. It takes not being worried about what people will think – about reputation. It takes believing in the goal – to educate those who were not privileged to be so in the past. It means having your eye on the current ball, not on the ball that glitters somewhere off in reputation land. And … perhaps … it means being different.
And I know those others will counter what I have said: “They won’t take advantage of it. They still will not succeed. Some really won’t be able to ‘do it’.” To which I say, those are statements that keep one’s eye off the ball. Maybe in some cases all of that will be true. But what about those whom you’ve inspired? What about those you’ve given confidence to? What about those who do have the potential, the desire, and the time? Or they will say, “It will hold back those who are ahead.” To that I say, I believe there are teaching methods that will allow for both, even for the one to help the other learn and thereby learn even better him/herself.
And what about our ideals, our subject matter? Why don’t we want to inspire others to find the pleasure in exploring the fields we get such pleasure in exploring? Why don’t we have the attitude, “The more who are inspired by ideas, the better”? There is little that is more satisfying than seeing a spark of interest burst into flame.
But perhaps some people just don’t like to teach, or perhaps they have not experienced the pleasure, yes the "high," that comes from a class hour well spent. Perhaps they are more the introspective kind, the kind that like to read and think on their own, alone, without the bother of other people. But they have to teach, because that is part of the job. Or maybe, just perhaps there are a few who don’t even care that much for any of it, but it was an easy gig to get into, because they had all the background, or it was easy for them to make the grade, and what they really like is the prestige that they can garner for themselves within a group of exclusivity. If the group becomes all-inclusive, then how can they be set apart as someone special? It reminds me of the old high school clique, where only the cool students got a seat at the table. Is that too harsh a judgment?
You might be thinking by now, wow, what an emotional stake I have in this issue. Yes, it is true. … Why? I was one of those in whom people did not believe – everywhere I went, whether it was in retailing, whether it was in academia. But I had persistence, and I proved I could learn. And I succeeded. And that – that is a story for another day.
Good morning, and talk to you later.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
More Thoughts on Education in the World of Languages
Good morning, World!
What will the day bring? Oral exams. Interaction. A fun lunch with our lab director. Meetings. Working out at the Y? Purchasing that last item for the German club “Christmas Party?” Oh, yes, wrapping the white elephant. Perhaps a few moments for introspection.
I was reading Barbara Ganley’s blog entry that my colleague Pete sent me yesterday. She was asking why we need all these end-of-term exams, papers, etc.:
Which brings me to December as end-of-term season. Over Thanksgiving break, I watched my younger daughter wade into the four term papers she has to write, the three presentations to prepare and several final examinations to study for. And she attends a college that on paper, at least, understands the foolishness of grades and short-term-memory learning and the disconnect that comes from single-discipline-based majors. I also see on Twitter that people across the world are grading papers and preparing exams. Every course in every institution seems to follow the same pattern, the same kinds of assignments over and over and over. Where is the creativity? The larger view? Do we think students are that dull that they need to repeat the same exercise scores of times?
http://bgblogging.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/december-arrives-a-quasi-hypertext-musing-on-storytelling-and-stories/
Something I have to think about. Yes, what about our students? When they take German as a requirement course, what is it that they come away with? How do our exams help or hinder them?
I have morphed through so many ways of teaching the languaculture matrix, and there is actually no solution. Too many variables. Too much choice. Too little time. I don’t really long for the “olden days,” but they were indeed simpler: grammar and translation for a year, then in the 2nd year redo it, because all had been forgotten (it was called grammar review), then in the 3rd year, if you were not fortunate enough to have the money to spend abroad, read literature that you could hardly get through, and in the 4th year more of the same. You came out with a pretty good understanding of the basics of formal grammar, you knew about some of the “great works,” but you couldn’t really use the language, and you didn’t really understand the culture. Unless you were among the lucky few who grew up with the language and culture, or who had spent time abroad. If you were lucky you went on to an immersion program and then finally got a scholarship to go abroad for a year.
It was a holdover from the days of the privileged, and even today still is in some places. Those days that Wilga Rivers used to talk about, the late 19th century when the WHITE SONS of the wealthy got a liberal arts education to “round them out” as future statesmen, when they took their year abroad to develop themselves, when Latin and Greek were considered the ideal languages to study and the “modern” languages and literatures were still looked upon as vulgar, in both senses of the word.
What a different world we live in today! What a different world from the one I inhabited when I began taking Latin in 1961, French in 1964, and German in 1966. Textbooks, ideas, pedagogy, second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, connectedness to the world were either completely different or did not even exist yet.
Nowadays, it’s much different. But, whew, oh so overwhelming. Take the classroom, for example. Take technology, for example.
Yes, take the classroom. After having spent a semester with my Russian colleague Lonny in my colleague Pete’s cross-listed Russian/German translation and localization course, ideas sparked by being there, talking ideas, talking curriculum, talking collaboration and plans, and just having fun in general – after having spent a semester interacting with my undergrad and grad French, German, and Spanish students in yet another crosslisted course about ideas I’ve been reading about – a text-based, genre-based foreign language curriculum, and being influenced by their ideas as well – after having my second semester students blog yet again on my Germans-Americans website on intercultural (mis)communication, after reading and attempting a re-write on an article I finally re-submitted, after reading and interacting in a teaching circle about assessment, after talking active learning at those meetings – after all of that I sat down and did what we used to call clustering, what is now called semantic webs, I believe: bubbles of ideas interacting with bubbles of ideas, and I wrote down my wish list for an ideal course.
Trust and respect
Co-creation of content, syllabus, and rubrics
Honesty – being “as honest as possible”
The pleasure of learning
And it went on and on and on…
And then I thought again. Next semester: possibly four courses because one won’t make. Four preparations. The possibility of four ideal courses. The tiny voice in my head from Angelo and Cross’s assessment book: “start simple.” Well, let it gell over the holidays. Let it gell.
And then there’s technology. Lunch with our lab director Melissa Bowden today to get advice on where to go from here. I’m stuck – whether it’s scanning and organizing, photoshop, blogs, email, or newer technology, I’m at the next threshold, which basically translates into: I’m as far as I can go without help for advanced understanding of it all. Where to go from here. I have come to the conclusion that I will always be frustrated with technology, but each year, as I “master” more, it will be different frustrations: frustrations with advanced aspects of technology I know somewhat well, or frustrations with new technology, as last year’s frustrations become the known or better known and fade into the sphere of background knowledge.
And now, it’s off to see what the day will bring.
What will the day bring? Oral exams. Interaction. A fun lunch with our lab director. Meetings. Working out at the Y? Purchasing that last item for the German club “Christmas Party?” Oh, yes, wrapping the white elephant. Perhaps a few moments for introspection.
I was reading Barbara Ganley’s blog entry that my colleague Pete sent me yesterday. She was asking why we need all these end-of-term exams, papers, etc.:
Which brings me to December as end-of-term season. Over Thanksgiving break, I watched my younger daughter wade into the four term papers she has to write, the three presentations to prepare and several final examinations to study for. And she attends a college that on paper, at least, understands the foolishness of grades and short-term-memory learning and the disconnect that comes from single-discipline-based majors. I also see on Twitter that people across the world are grading papers and preparing exams. Every course in every institution seems to follow the same pattern, the same kinds of assignments over and over and over. Where is the creativity? The larger view? Do we think students are that dull that they need to repeat the same exercise scores of times?
http://bgblogging.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/december-arrives-a-quasi-hypertext-musing-on-storytelling-and-stories/
Something I have to think about. Yes, what about our students? When they take German as a requirement course, what is it that they come away with? How do our exams help or hinder them?
I have morphed through so many ways of teaching the languaculture matrix, and there is actually no solution. Too many variables. Too much choice. Too little time. I don’t really long for the “olden days,” but they were indeed simpler: grammar and translation for a year, then in the 2nd year redo it, because all had been forgotten (it was called grammar review), then in the 3rd year, if you were not fortunate enough to have the money to spend abroad, read literature that you could hardly get through, and in the 4th year more of the same. You came out with a pretty good understanding of the basics of formal grammar, you knew about some of the “great works,” but you couldn’t really use the language, and you didn’t really understand the culture. Unless you were among the lucky few who grew up with the language and culture, or who had spent time abroad. If you were lucky you went on to an immersion program and then finally got a scholarship to go abroad for a year.
It was a holdover from the days of the privileged, and even today still is in some places. Those days that Wilga Rivers used to talk about, the late 19th century when the WHITE SONS of the wealthy got a liberal arts education to “round them out” as future statesmen, when they took their year abroad to develop themselves, when Latin and Greek were considered the ideal languages to study and the “modern” languages and literatures were still looked upon as vulgar, in both senses of the word.
What a different world we live in today! What a different world from the one I inhabited when I began taking Latin in 1961, French in 1964, and German in 1966. Textbooks, ideas, pedagogy, second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, connectedness to the world were either completely different or did not even exist yet.
Nowadays, it’s much different. But, whew, oh so overwhelming. Take the classroom, for example. Take technology, for example.
Yes, take the classroom. After having spent a semester with my Russian colleague Lonny in my colleague Pete’s cross-listed Russian/German translation and localization course, ideas sparked by being there, talking ideas, talking curriculum, talking collaboration and plans, and just having fun in general – after having spent a semester interacting with my undergrad and grad French, German, and Spanish students in yet another crosslisted course about ideas I’ve been reading about – a text-based, genre-based foreign language curriculum, and being influenced by their ideas as well – after having my second semester students blog yet again on my Germans-Americans website on intercultural (mis)communication, after reading and attempting a re-write on an article I finally re-submitted, after reading and interacting in a teaching circle about assessment, after talking active learning at those meetings – after all of that I sat down and did what we used to call clustering, what is now called semantic webs, I believe: bubbles of ideas interacting with bubbles of ideas, and I wrote down my wish list for an ideal course.
Trust and respect
Co-creation of content, syllabus, and rubrics
Honesty – being “as honest as possible”
The pleasure of learning
And it went on and on and on…
And then I thought again. Next semester: possibly four courses because one won’t make. Four preparations. The possibility of four ideal courses. The tiny voice in my head from Angelo and Cross’s assessment book: “start simple.” Well, let it gell over the holidays. Let it gell.
And then there’s technology. Lunch with our lab director Melissa Bowden today to get advice on where to go from here. I’m stuck – whether it’s scanning and organizing, photoshop, blogs, email, or newer technology, I’m at the next threshold, which basically translates into: I’m as far as I can go without help for advanced understanding of it all. Where to go from here. I have come to the conclusion that I will always be frustrated with technology, but each year, as I “master” more, it will be different frustrations: frustrations with advanced aspects of technology I know somewhat well, or frustrations with new technology, as last year’s frustrations become the known or better known and fade into the sphere of background knowledge.
And now, it’s off to see what the day will bring.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
My First Entry on a BLog Where I Share My Ideas with THE WORLD
I’ve used blogs in my German courses in various ways since, I believe, the fall of 2006, and I just read that if you make students use blogs, you should do so, too. And I haven’t before. Oh, I have blogged with my students, but I haven't really blogged for the world. It’s not that I don’t have ideas to share, it’s just that blogging is such a public forum. Yet, I must say to myself, if I want others to read my ideas, then why not blog?
I’ve also not been much of a blog follower. Why is that, I ask myself? Well, I don’t know, except to say that reading of any kind is sometimes an overwhelming act for me. It becomes a burden, because what I read often sparks so many ideas I want to set to paper that I cannot read extensively. If I feel the need to read extensively and then end up reading intensively and writing about it, there is some kind of guilt associated with it. Because colleagues in academia, not to mention publishing venues, always expect one to have read “everything.” (What a cop-out!)
Yet I am willing to change and rethink it all. Perhaps it’s because some of the bloggers I’ve been introduced to by a colleague of mine are people who make sense to me. Maybe I can come out of my shell and find like-minded people, who won’t think there's anything wrong with being different.
Also, recently I’ve been energized by colleagues who want to share ideas. I’ve been encouraged by the exchange that has gone on, the hope that has been engendered, the fun of collaboration.
And so I’m here. To reach out. To find out. To find you, whoever you are. To link to you. To read you, as much (or little) as I am willing and able. To find that exciting exchange, interchange, where a diversity of ideas is okay. Or where ideas even have a place, for far too often we in academia draw lines in the sand and forget to have a dialogue across them. We forget to cuss and discuss in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
…which leads me to the draft of an article Pete Smith and Jeannine Hirtle crafted, where they talk about engendering mutual respect and trust among students and between students and their professors/instructors. There are many more ideas in their article that they cite or that they came up with, which strike such a chord with me. Some of those ideas I’ve had and written about myself, but never had the courage to say publicly. For I too believe that there can be no honest (and maybe even respectful) discourse between students and their professors if the old hierarchy is maintained. I’m reminded of the scene in A Beautiful Mind when the professor at the prestigious university tells his students that being there with them was probably a waste of their time and definitely a waste of his!
But back to mutual respect and trust. Students cannot be thoughtfully honest if they do not trust that they can be so. If they do not respect their instructor, or worse if their instructor does not respect them, there can be no trust. It is only through mutual respect and trust that an honest dialogue and discussion can take place. A case in point: we in language and literature departments want our students to think critically (or whatever – reflectively, profoundly, rationally) about literature – and other topics. We want students to interpret literature. But often what happens is that we tell students what the interpretation is, and they memorize and learn it for the test, the exam, the master’s or qualifying exam, and any original thinking is bypassed. What if, however, we argued and discussed with our students as equals? What if we said, let me see if I can convince you of my point of view? What if we allowed ourselves the possibility that it might all fail?
There are at least a couple of philosophies of learning. One is the IQ belief: either you have “it” – the intelligence – or you don’t. It seems many people, both inside and outside of academia have that perspective. The other is this: most everyone, with the appropriate background, time, and motivation, can make it through college. I am, as you probably guessed, of the latter opinion. And it’s based on my experience. But more on that later. This post has gone on long enough.
Goodnight.
I’ve also not been much of a blog follower. Why is that, I ask myself? Well, I don’t know, except to say that reading of any kind is sometimes an overwhelming act for me. It becomes a burden, because what I read often sparks so many ideas I want to set to paper that I cannot read extensively. If I feel the need to read extensively and then end up reading intensively and writing about it, there is some kind of guilt associated with it. Because colleagues in academia, not to mention publishing venues, always expect one to have read “everything.” (What a cop-out!)
Yet I am willing to change and rethink it all. Perhaps it’s because some of the bloggers I’ve been introduced to by a colleague of mine are people who make sense to me. Maybe I can come out of my shell and find like-minded people, who won’t think there's anything wrong with being different.
Also, recently I’ve been energized by colleagues who want to share ideas. I’ve been encouraged by the exchange that has gone on, the hope that has been engendered, the fun of collaboration.
And so I’m here. To reach out. To find out. To find you, whoever you are. To link to you. To read you, as much (or little) as I am willing and able. To find that exciting exchange, interchange, where a diversity of ideas is okay. Or where ideas even have a place, for far too often we in academia draw lines in the sand and forget to have a dialogue across them. We forget to cuss and discuss in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
…which leads me to the draft of an article Pete Smith and Jeannine Hirtle crafted, where they talk about engendering mutual respect and trust among students and between students and their professors/instructors. There are many more ideas in their article that they cite or that they came up with, which strike such a chord with me. Some of those ideas I’ve had and written about myself, but never had the courage to say publicly. For I too believe that there can be no honest (and maybe even respectful) discourse between students and their professors if the old hierarchy is maintained. I’m reminded of the scene in A Beautiful Mind when the professor at the prestigious university tells his students that being there with them was probably a waste of their time and definitely a waste of his!
But back to mutual respect and trust. Students cannot be thoughtfully honest if they do not trust that they can be so. If they do not respect their instructor, or worse if their instructor does not respect them, there can be no trust. It is only through mutual respect and trust that an honest dialogue and discussion can take place. A case in point: we in language and literature departments want our students to think critically (or whatever – reflectively, profoundly, rationally) about literature – and other topics. We want students to interpret literature. But often what happens is that we tell students what the interpretation is, and they memorize and learn it for the test, the exam, the master’s or qualifying exam, and any original thinking is bypassed. What if, however, we argued and discussed with our students as equals? What if we said, let me see if I can convince you of my point of view? What if we allowed ourselves the possibility that it might all fail?
There are at least a couple of philosophies of learning. One is the IQ belief: either you have “it” – the intelligence – or you don’t. It seems many people, both inside and outside of academia have that perspective. The other is this: most everyone, with the appropriate background, time, and motivation, can make it through college. I am, as you probably guessed, of the latter opinion. And it’s based on my experience. But more on that later. This post has gone on long enough.
Goodnight.
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