Doing Foreign Language: Bringing Concordia Language Villages into Language Classrooms - Softcover

Hamilton, Heidi E.; Crane, Cori; Bartoshesky, Abigail

9780131139688: Doing Foreign Language: Bringing Concordia Language Villages into Language Classrooms

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0131139681 ISBN 13: 9780131139688

Publisher: Pearson, 2004

Inspired by the collaboration among Minnesota's Concordia Language Villages, the National Capital Language Resource Center, the Center for Applied Linguistics, and the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, the authors offer lesson plans and supporting activities that capture the essence of this hugely successful program and translated it into equally successful programs for traditional foreign language classrooms. This book reflects ACTFL Standards' five Cs—Communication, Culture, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities—ensuring that future teaches are ready to meet the expectations of students, parents, principals, and communities. For educators, volunteers, and aids teaching foreign languages.

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INTRODUCTION

Doing Foreign Language: Bringing Concordia Language Villages into Language Classrooms introduces readers to the active and engaging language learning philosophy and practices of Concordia Language Villages, the oldest and most extensive live-in summer language camp program for elementary and secondary students in the United States. (Readers unfamiliar with Concordia Language Villages are encouraged to read the section entitled Background on pages xi-xii.) This text is organized around six principles that guide Concordia Language Villages curriculum and programming: Giving Learners Courage, Learner Investment, Linguistic and Cultural Authenticity, Creating a Need to Communicate, Experiencing the Language, and Learning within Extended Projects. Each principle is illuminated by representative best practices from the Villages that are ready to be brought to life within more traditional language classrooms.

Doing Foreign Language is intended for preservice and in-service language educators—including ESL educators—who teach or aspire to teach modern foreign languages to elementary and/or secondary students. Through its activities, teachers can offer their students authentic, invigorating, and challenging ways to make progress toward all National Foreign Language Standards as identified by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). These interconnected opportunities for language use serve as natural active extensions of classroom textbooks, motivating teachers and students to do foreign language together in a wide variety of contexts. Throughout the book, verbal and visual images and guiding questions encourage readers to make connections between Concordia Language Villages principles and practices and the 5 C's (Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities) that form the backbone of the ACTFL National Foreign Language Standards—as well as to envision a range of relevant learning theories and methodologies in action.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK

Chapter 1, Building a Language Learning Community, describes Concordia Language Villages, outlines the goals and principles that guide its curriculum and programming, and clarifies the connections between the practices of Concordia Language Villages and the ACTFL 5 Cs (Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities) mentioned above. Each of the following six chapters explores one of the six guiding principles in greater depth and illustrates it with ready-to-implement classroom activities. Readers with limited time—or those who are primarily interested in understanding the philosophical underpinnings of Concordia Language Villages—can focus their attention on Chapters 1 and 8, along with the brief introductions and It's Your Turn! sections of Chapters 2 through 7.

Chapter 2, Giving Learners Courage, and Chapter 3, Learner Investment, offer teachers and their students long-term programs that set the tone of the classroom as an open, welcoming, comfortable place that both encourages and rewards active participation by all students. Activities outlined in Chapters 4 through 7 provide students with opportunities to develop their use of the target language within rich, intriguing contexts. As they move through the activities in Chapter 4, Linguistic and Cultural Authenticity, students are encouraged to reflect on similarities and differences between cultural products and practices in their target and home cultures. Activities in Chapter 5, Creating a Need to Communicate, gently prod students into using the target language by feeling a real need to communicate. Chapter 6, Experiencing the Language, offers activities that help students draw, on all of their senses—not just those of sight and hearing—to experience the target language more holistically. Chapter 7, Learning within Extended Projects, offers students opportunities to accomplish entire projects with their classmates through the systematic use of the target language. The final chapter, Bringing the Principles to Life in Your Classroom, encourages readers to envision a fertile classroom environment that will allow Concordia Language Villages principles to flourish, activities such as those presented in the book to be successful, and ideas for new activities to grow.

FEATURES

Each activities-based chapter (Chapters 2-7) comprises the following features:

Introduction to the guiding principle highlighted in the chapter
Four extension activities that illuminate the highlighted principle in action
In the Villages feature describes the essence of the activity as it is typically enacted within one or more Concordia Language Villages programs
In the Classroom feature describes one way the Village activity might be adapted to a foreign language classroom
Objectives list expected teaming objectives as related to the ACTFL 5 C's
Language Functions in Focus feature identifies language functions that are practiced in the activity
Preparation and Materials section lists necessary materials and suggests how teachers may prepare for the activity
Generating Interest section describes how teachers may generate interest for the activity among their students by using materials, guiding questions, brainstorming, and demonstrations
Presentation and Practice section describes the body of the activity, focusing on the presentation and practice of both language and content related to the activity
Expansion explains (1) how teachers and students can develop the activity further; (2) how students can apply concepts to other aspects of language learning; and (3) how students can apply concepts to other academic disciplines and real-life situations
Adaptation identifies how the activity can be modified to suit differences across learners, including proficiency level and age; differences in numbers of students in the class; differences in type of school facility and equipment and/or in amount of available time
Options for Evaluation provide several options for evaluating products and processes related to the activity, including Expectations Rubrics, Student Journal Questions, and Portfolio Entries
Customizing This Activity for Your Classroom section prompts teachers to personalize the activity to their own circumstances by considering issues related to choice of content, learner diversity, practical matters and classroom management
It's Your Turn! section pulls together themes that cut across the activities in the chapter. These sections include: Discussion Questions to help teachers visualize the chapter's philosophy and content at work in their classrooms, For Further Reading, and Helpful Web Sites.

AUDIENCE

This book was written with two primary audiences in mind. One is second language educators—including ESL educators—who teach elementary and secondary students. We are hopeful that new and experienced teachers alike who are looking for ways to give their students courage to use the target language will find the principles and activity ideas helpful. Using the activities in our book, these teachers can offer their students important opportunities to explore the target language in interconnected ways within rich, intriguing contexts that range from the arts and humanities to the social and natural sciences. As they allow for extensive practice of the interpersonal, interpretive and presentational modes which are foundational to the success of any language learner, these activities add refreshing breadth and depth to students' learning experiences.

The other primary audience of Doing Foreign Language is preservice education students who aspire to work in elementary or secondary language education. Questions in It's Your Turn! sections and end-of-chapter suggested readings can be integrated seamlessly into college and graduate school discussions, as these provide initial sites for exploring connections to learning theories and methodologies currently prominent in the fields of second language acquisition and foreign language pedagogy. For example, readers can view task-based learning, form-focused instruction, and content-based language instruction in action, as they read through the book's practical on-the-ground illustrations. Within the teaching methods classroom, the extended activities themselves can be used to inform teacher preparation assignments, such as lesson planning, creating thematic units, and in-class teaching demonstrations. Teachers in practicum and student teaching situations may also find them helpful in the production and presentation of detailed lesson plans.

BACKGROUND

Concordia Language Villages (http:/www.concordialanguagevillages.org)
Since its founding in 1961 with one Village and seventy-five participants, Concordia Language Villages in northern Minnesota has blossomed into the oldest and most extensive live-in summer language camp program for elementary and secondary students in the United States. Each year 9,500 young people, ages 7-18, from all 50 of the United States plus 25 other countries, participate in internationally acclaimed 1-week, 2-week, and 4-week language and cultural immersion programs that surround learners with the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of the target language and culture. Over its 44 years of existence, more than 130,000 language learners have participated in Village experiences in the following thirteen languages: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, and English as a Second Language.

These camp programs take place within actual Villages where participants live everyday life in the target language, typically engaging in a range of culturally authentic activities, including sports, arts and crafts, cooking, nature programs, singing, dancing, theater, banking, and shopping. Several times each day, villagers meet with a small group of peers at their language level to focus specifically on language forms and functions that are subsequently practiced in ongoing daily activities. For some participants, the Village experience supplements or complements their academic-year language instruction. It provides others with the opportunity to learn a language not taught in school, or to pursue the language of their heritage. And, although villagers may not become fluent users of the target language after one, two, or four weeks in the program, the goal of Concordia Language Villages is that each villager will leave the experience wanting to learn more of the language and more about other cultures for years to come. And most of them do, as evidenced by the fact that more than half of the villagers return for additional opportunities to live life in the language—many for 5 to 10 more years!

The programs of Concordia Language Villages have attracted financial support from a variety of national and international sources, ranging from corporations such as IBM and General Mills to foundations such as Kresge and Freeman to the German federal government. Some of these grants have supported facilities; others have funded tuition scholarships. Still others have supported curriculum development and research.

INCEPTION OF DOING FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Doing Foreign Language is the product of such outside funding, being sparked by collaboration between Concordia Language Villages and two Title VI Language Resource Centers funded by the United States Department of Education: the National Capital Language Resource Center (NCLRC) of Georgetown University, The George Washington University, and the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC, and the National Language Resource Center housed at the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. As part of the 1999-2002 funding cycle, the NCLRC supported a project entitled "Best Practices: Adapting Concordia Language Villages Practices to Formal Educational Settings" that led directly to this book. CARLA funded a complementary study during the same time period entitled "Language Learning in a Non-School Environment" which, although published elsewhere, provided important insights to contextualize the work reported here. The challenge put to us by both collaborations was straightforward: to figure out what made the Villages in the woods of northern Minnesota "tick" and to capture this in such a way that it could be used within more traditional foreign language classrooms in elementary and secondary schools across the country.

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