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Ans 1 a): Accuracy vs Fluency

Taken as a given that students needs should always dictate what you teach them, the question of
whether it is more important to work on accuracy or fluency in the language classroom remains.

Many teachers believe that fluency is a goal worth striving towards only with students who are at a fairly
advanced level. Other teachers, strong in the belief that the learning of a language is about
communication, feel that fluency should be the main goal in their teaching and that it should be
practiced right from the start.

More traditional teachers tend to give accuracy greater importance; more liberal teachers tend towards
fluency.

Often a rigid educational system where tests and exams are the focus, will have students (and their
traditional teachers) believe that language accuracy is what matters most, and giving the correct
answers often becomes an obsession. Students who have been taught this way can complete any
grammar gap-fill you care to give them, but will struggle to order a coffee in a real English speaking
situation.

On the other hand, a more communicative approach will produce students who can converse at length
on almost any subject but could well make horrendous spelling and grammatical mistakes in their
writing.

In the end, however, it really boils down to the the needs of the student.

Ans 1 e): Role play and simulations are forms of experiential learning (Russell & Shepherd,
2010). Learners take on different roles, assuming a profile of a character or personality, and
interact and participate in diverse and complex learning settings.

The terms "role play" and "simulation" are sometimes used inconsistently or interchangeably.
However, "simulations" often involve a familiar or realistic situation in which a participants role
may not be as prominent or distinctive as it would be in a role play. Frequently simulations
incorporate role play, leading to the term "role-playing simulation". The difference is generally
one of degree rather than kind.

Role plays and simulations function as learning tools for teams and groups or individuals as they
"play" online or face to face. They alter the power ratios in teaching and learning relationships
between students and educators, as students learn through their explorations and the viewpoints
of the character or personality they are articulating in the environment. This student-centered
space can enable learner-oriented assessment, where the design of the task is created for active
student learning. Students are actively involved in both self and peer assessment and obtain
sustainable formative feedback.

Ans 1 d): Reading comprehension is as the level of understanding of a text/message. This understanding
comes from the interaction between the words that are written, and how they trigger knowledge
outside the text/message. Comprehension is a "creative, multifaceted process" dependent upon four

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language skills: phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Proficient reading depends on the ability
to recognize words quickly and effortlessly. It is also determined by an individual's cognitive
development, which is "the construction of thought processes". Some people learn through education
or instruction and others through direct experiences.

There are specific traits that determine how successfully an individual will comprehend text, including
prior knowledge about the subject, well-developed language, and the ability to make inferences. Having
the skill to monitor comprehension is a factor: "Why is this important?" and "Do I need to read the
entire text?" are examples. Lastly, is the ability to be self-correcting to solve comprehension problems as
they arise.

Reading comprehension levels

Reading comprehension involves two levels of processing, shallow (low-level) processing and deep
(high-level) processing. Deep processing involves semantic processing, which happens when we encode
the meaning of a word and relate it to similar words. Shallow processing involves structural and
phonemic recognition, the processing of sentence and word structure and their associated sounds. This
theory was first identified by Fergus I. M. Craik and Robert S. Lockhart.

Ans 1 f): Good writing is the type of thing that most people know when they see it. Evaluation is also
subject to all kinds of personal capricesI hate dangling modifiers, It drives me crazy when students
dont know how to designate a title, Doesnt anyone know the difference between further and
farther? The problem is that even when a writer gets all of this perfectly, the text may not be well
written. The ideas may not be insightful or the style may not be engaging, or the argument may not be
fully developedeven in a paper with perfect grammar.

Teaching writing is not an impossible task, though. If it were, my entire career would have to be
classified as a failure. It does require a balance of guiding students through the process of writing and
helping them to understand and evaluate the products of writing. It requires that students buy in to the
importance of writingand that means that they have to see writing valued in all classes.

The best thing a Writing Across the Curriculum program can do toward this end is to train professors
how to evaluate student writing. The best thing a teacher of writing can do is spend one-on-one time
with students, guiding them and helping them to shape their ideas. I know that once my students were
able to see how rewarding it was to articulate an idea or gain an insight, they became excited about
writing and even surprised themselves. To me, that is what education is all about.

Ans 2: Possibly the most useful tools there are for learning a language are writing implements, such as
pens and pencils, and something to write on, such as paper or a notebook. You can use them not only to
make notes and lists of vocabulary, phrases, etc, but also to practise writing in your L2.

The range of other materials and tools available to help you with your language studies is huge. From
language courses and dictionaries, to mp3 players and portable translators. All of them can help you in

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different ways, and your language learning goals will determine, to some extent, which ones are most
useful to you.

Below is a guide to the types of some of the language learning materials and tools currently available.

Language courses

Language courses come in a variety of guises, including traditional ones, all audio ones, CD-ROMs and
online ones.

Traditional courses

The traditional ones tend to consist of textbooks containing dialogues, exercises, notes on grammar, and
maybe cultural information. Accompanying cassettes, CDs and/or mp3s are often available.

Most such courses are intended for complete beginners or people with only minimal knowledge of the
language. Intermediate and advanced-level courses are available for some of the more popular
languages, such as French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Examples of this type of course include:

Linguaphone - available for 100 languages and include all audio courses, explorer courses for those
who just want to learn the basics, and in-depth courses for more serious students.

Teach Yourself and Colloquial courses - these are similar and are available for a wide range of
languages. They focus on teaching you everyday language, and introduce you to new alphabets or other
writing systems where appropriate.

All audio courses

This type of course usually consists solely of cassettes or CDs, though some may also include a limited
amount of printed material. All dialogues, exercises, instructions and explanations are recorded and the
focus of these courses is teaching you to understand and speak the language.

Examples of this type of course include:

Pimsleur language courses - the best-known audio courses. They are very good at teaching you
authentic pronunciation and a manageable amount of vocabulary. They also give you a good feel for the
language you're learning. The Level 1 courses are suitable for complete beginners. More advanced
courses are available for some languages.

Computer-aided learning

Various language courses are available on CD-ROMs and DVDs. Each course is different but they
generally include dialogues, audio, exercises and tests. Some also include phrasebooks, dictionaries,
videos, games and provide online and/or telephone support.

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Examples of these courses include:

Teach Me! - include CD-Rom with vocabularly and grammar exercises, a series of graded stories and a
talking dictionary. An accompanying booklet contains the text of all the stories, and an audio CD includes
the vocabulary and the stories. Available for over 40 languages, including Bavarian, Breton, Cornish,
Manx, Occitan, Quechua and Romansh.

Transparent Language - a range of language courses for many different languages. Their site also
includes useful phrases, games, cultural information, articles, quizzes and proficiency tests.

A selection of multi-language courses

Online courses

There are online language courses and lessons for just about every language you can think of. Many are
free, while others require a one-off payment or a regular subscription.

There is considerable variation in the quality and quantity of the material available in each online
course. Some of the free courses are excellent, while others are perhaps somewhat lacking in
organisation and/or accuracy.

Ans 3: At some point, weve all been there; in a class or course, where after several sessions its still
unclear what is expected and how youll be graded. Well, both quantitative and qualitative research
supports the notion that education strategies that help students understand what they are learning and
how they will be assessed allow them to support one another effectively and develop a sense of
autonomy.

In 1998, Barbara White and John Frederiksen, researchers from University of California at Berkeley,
investigated a science curriculum that provided scaffolded activities for inquiry, reflection, and
generalization. Part of this curriculum involved a reflective process during which students were
introduced to a set of criteria for characterizing good scientific research. These criteria were used by the
students to assess their own and each others work. Two middle school teachers implemented the
curriculum with a total of eight classes and were compared to a control teacher with four classes. The
authors found that in order for students to engage in reflective self- and peer-assessment, they needed
to understand first the in-class assessment criteria, in this case the criteria for characterizing good
scientific research. With this understanding, students in the experimental group were able to
meaningfully assess their own work and their peers work.

In 2000, C.A. Tell and some of his fellow researchers reported similar results from the implementation of
a standards-based instructional system. Forty-four secondary school teachers and college faculty were
followed for a two-year period. Qualitative data including teachers journal entries, classroom artifacts
(e.g., assignments, in-class assessments, and student work), survey responses, and transcripts from
team meetings and focus groups were collected and analyzed. From the analysis and triangulation of
this data, the authors found that teachers who shared learning expectations with students by using
scoring rubrics; explained standards, criteria, and expectations; and worked with the students to

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develop student-friendly learning goals reported that the process put their students at the center of the
learning process, helped students continually monitor their own progress, and made the students more
accountable for their own work.

Student Finger PaintingGenerally speaking, students must understand what they are expected to learn
before they can take responsibility for their own learning. In many instances, students have incorrect
conceptions of what they are learning, why they are learning it, and what quality work looks like.

Programs like Keeping Learning on Track (KLT) help provide teachers with practical classroom techniques
and educational strategies to help them clearly identify and share the intended learning and criteria for
success with students. This enables students to better understand what teachers expect them to know,
understand, or be able to do, as well as what constitutes a proficient performance. This allows students
to support each other and take responsibility for their own learning by helping them accurately and
appropriately evaluate learning against shared expectations and make any necessary adjustments to the
learning.

Ans 4: Should listening be taught in schools? Education can be transformed in one generation through
the application and utilization of sound listening techniques. We spend 60% of our communication time
listening, however, we only retain just 25% of what we hear. Listening is a process of extraction that
allows us to make meaning from sound. So few people are listening, the media is resorting to shouting
and screaming to get our attention.

As educators, we are often encouraged to teach strategies for reading to our adult learners, as well as
strategies for writing and even strategies for solving various types of mathematical problems. But we
dont hear nearly as much about teaching specific strategies for listening or for speaking to our adult
learners. What strategies should we teach? and how?

For most of us, listening and speaking is something we do repeatedly throughout every day. Thus we
often take these skills for granted unconsciously implementing important strategies that help us to
communicate with those around us. When a speaking/listening task is more challenging or more critical,
however, you are likely to slow down and think through how to handle it engaging in strategic
thinking.

Here are the 5 ways that listening can be improved:

Listening Positions

Try moving your head around to see whether or not that affects the way you are hearing what you want
to hear.

Silence/Quiet

Listen to the sounds around you. Try to have at least three minutes per day of silence to re-calibrate, so
that you can hear quiet again.

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Mixer

Listen to how many channels of sounds you can hear. Here is a great exercise, enter any space and try to
see whether or not you can identify all the sounds that you hear. If you are at school in your classroom,
where are the various sounds coming from? This happened to me recently when I was trying to
administer a reading assessment. My students were sitting at their desks, and it appeared as though I
was hearing all the sounds in the world. Trying this exercise will improve the quality of your listening.

Savoring

Enjoy the mundane sounds wherever you are. Listen to the hidden choir.Mundane sounds can be
interesting if you pay attention.

ACRONYM: RASA

Utilize RASA: Receive, appreciate, summarize and ask questions while you are being spoken to.
RASA is a Sanskrit word that means juice or essence. Listen consciously in order to live
consciously.

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