REFLECTION ON READINGS
JOHN MULLENS

1. Textbooks are not just written for one group of people, but rather for various audiences.

2. Professional writers face the difficult task of attempting to join theory with practice, activities, text, content, formats, etc...into some product that will be be beneficial to students and teachers alike.

1. "We must consider our students' cultural histories, their purposes for studying English, and the context in which English is to be used"

I like this quotation because it illustrates how we, as ESL teachers, face different challenges when teaching writing than we would with native speakers.

1. As English has become more of a worldwide language, there has been a great increase in the need for language teachers, courses, and materials, though the views on language teaching are more complex now than ever before.

2. Writers need to have a knowledge of their craft so that they accurately try to portray the voice of the learners in which the book focuses. Craft knowledge encourages us to seek various solutions to the situations that may arise.

1. "Since it is not always possible or feasible to carry out widespread testing of materials, even within a pilot format, it is necessary for the writer to develop a "sixth sense" of what works in a real classroom setting, as opposed to what is possible to simply put down on paper."

It takes careful preparation and planning before one can create materials. A writer must always bear in mind the audience that s/he is targeting.

1. A person cannot expect for a computer to know his/her exact intentions. Certain procedures must be followed explicitly in order to create different materials.

2. Careful preparation is necessary before attempting to create exercises on the internet. Activities need to be designed in a very user friendly way so that they can focus on the task at hand and not experience frustration from any technical difficulties.

1. "This Web-based presentation has attempted to demonstrate some of the strengths and limitations of interactive exercises delivered through the World Wide Web."

This quote summarizes the purpose of this website, which is to illustrate the various things that can be done to interactively teach different concepts using the internet. It seems as if the strengths far outweigh the limitations.

1. He develops software for Windows that relates to teaching and Web materials production.

2. He has created many Websites using Hot Potatoes.

1. "I'm now developing software programs at the University HCMC, as well as doing a little online teaching."

I like this quotation because it illustrates that he is currently doing some of the same things that we are attempting in this class.

1. We, as teachers, will face different contexts for our own teaching, meaning that some of us will have the freedom to create many of our own materials that are different from the textbook, while others of us may have to depend heavily on a prescribed coursebook.

2. In order to be able to evaluate others' materials, it is necessary for teachers to attempt to create their own materials. Writing your own material will decrease the dependency on publisher materials, and also will enhance a teacher's own development within the profession.

1. "In short, a need arises, materials are written, materials are used in the classroom to attempt to meet the need and subsequently they are evaluated."

Any teacher that is writing material for his/her classroom must always use each individual class as a reference point. All materials then must be evaluated for effectiveness.

1. Personalization is a way to teach students grammar and vocabulary in a way that is relevant to them. It is useful throughout all the language skills.

2. Learners may have certain preconceptions that will hinder learning if what is being taught contradicts their expectations, which may provide for a negative affect on motivation.

1. "What a multi-syllabus does is to build on a range of communicative criteria at the same time as acknowledging the need to provide systematic practice in the formal properties of language."

A syllabus does not have to be one thing or the other, focusing on formal properties of linguistics, such as grammar, pronunciation, and vocablulary or just on communicative activities. A multi-syllabus merges both.

2ND SET OF REFLECTIONS: DUE SEPTEMBER 10, 2002

1. The interrelationship between form, meaning, and context as reviewed by Larson-Freeman should be utilized while focusing on a particular aspect with each exercise. Teachers need to emphasize to students that the three are interrelated.

2. Explanations should be given by textbook writers in a concise manner that is not overly technical for teachers because many teachers will only have a limited knowledge of English grammar, learning certain grammatical aspects along with their students.

1. "A textbook is written for two audiences: teachers and students. The materials that make up the text should provide a teacher with a range of resources to meet the needs of her/his students."

I think that it is important to note that textbooks need to be designed so that teachers can best teach their students.

1. The use of corpus-based research has shown that global generalizations about grammar can be very misleading and often impossible because of the differences in English grammar across varieties of English as well as varieties determined by their purposes and/or situations of use.

2. The best way for corpus-based research to reach the right audiences could be a new generation of ESL teachers who have been introduced to corpus- based research in their training programs. These teachers will have had practice using corpus research and experience designing materials through that research.

1."In the past, teachers have rarely had the means to analyze the factors associated with grammatical intuition, but now corpus linguistics makes it possible to describe the factors associated with the appropriate use of alternative structures when more than one structure is grammatically acceptable."

1. Corpus linguistics will help teachers offer better explanations to their students because they will at their disposal alternative structures that are more focused on conditions of use.

Jones, S., Byrd, P., Allomong, S., and Tanaka, Y. Heinle & Heinle grammar activity inventory. Grammar Activity Inventory

1. Working with illustrations can be a good activity which can test a student's knowledge using their schema. Various activities can be done using illustrations, which to me enhances their appeal.

2. There has been a movement within ESL to use more language in context in accordance to integrated language teaching. Those activities were represented in the "Language in Context" section of the website.

1. "This inventory of grammar exercises from Heinle and Heinle textbooks is designed for use by material writers and teachers who are interested in looking at what is currently in use in grammar textbooks."

1. The abstract gives a brief synopsis of the purposes for having the website, which is to aid teachers in their quest for the latest grammar strategies.

1.Grammar is definitely more than giving students a list of rules to memorize. Larsen-Freeman (2001) uses a three-dimensional approach for grammar utilizing form, meaning, and use in order to better teach grammar to students. All three approaches are interrelated.

2. Providing feedback to learners is very crucial to language teaching in that it allows learners to see how they are progressing and what can be done in order to further progress in language acquisition. Recasts, highlighting mistakes, indirect feedback, and peer feedback are a few ways of giving feedback.

1. "We are not interested in filling our students' heads with grammatical paradigms and syntactic rules. If they knew all the rules that had ever been written about English but were not able to apply them, we would not be doing our jobs as teachers."

1. For many years, language teaching has been about learning grammar rules and still to this day the Grammar Translation Method is utilized, but as teachers our goal should be that our learners learn to use the language and not just have a knowledge of the language.

1. The AWL allows for teachers and students to set reasonable short-term goals for vocabulary study by focusing on certain parts of the AWL and not the entire corpus.

2. Many (82%) of the words in the AWL are of Greek or Latin origin; therefore, it would be very wise to study affixes in order study the vocabulary in the corpus.

1. ..."the AWL might be used to set vocabulary goals for EAP courses, construct relevant teaching materials and help students focus on useful vocabulary items."

1. It is important to always have materials that supplement other materials used in class. Decontextualized methods, such as the AWL, may be useful for this very purpose.

1. Only until the last 20-30 years has vocabulary research methods been of prominent importance. Leading the way for the resurgence of interest was computer-aided research, which analyzed vocabulary in a way that had never been done before. Some of these different ways were how words were used in actual language, the differences between spoken and written communication, and larger units functioning as single lexical items.

2. Implicit and explicit learning are both important for L2 learners because with explicit instruction learners can begin learning the most frequent two to three thousand words. Many low-frequency words will be learned implicitly through reading and listening.

1. "Another very important consideration is that we can maximize vocabulary considerably by teaching word families instead of individual word forms. A word family is a set of words that includes a base word plus its inflections and/or derivations."

1. Presenting words as having a family is important because it allows for learners to see the associations between words of the same family. Teaching vocabulary in these language sets will expediate the process of vocabulary learning.

!. It may not be very feasible to teach new vocabulary using authentic language material in that those materials are created to convey information and not to illustrate meaning and usage of words. Authentic materials are good to use for practice on already learned vocabulary, so they must be carefully picked out.

2. An eclectic approach utilizing the CAVOCA program and bilingual word lists seem to be the most beneficial methods for teaching vocabulary to L2 learners.

1. "The CAVOCA computer programme is ...an instrument which enables us to empirically verify the theory on word acquisition in general and its validity for L2 word acquisition in particular. If it yields data incompatible with what the theory predicts, either the theory is partially incorrect or there is something wrong with the way it has been operationalized in the CAVOCA programme."

1. This computer program attempts to merge theory with practice. It attempts to use methods that correlate L1 learning with L2 learning.

1. It seems that the common practice of learning vocabulary in lexical sets is not advantageous at all for L2 learners because many words will be confused because of interference. It would be more beneficial for teachers to teach the most important words in a lexical set first, then later after that word has been learned, the other less frequent words can be mentioned.

2. Course designers seem to favor using related items in lessons, but these associational links are the very ones that cause interference for learners. They need to draw on research that shows how interference makes learning difficult and find alternate methods for designing courses.

1. "The principle behind interference is something like this. If two or more items share some strongly related common features and they are learned together at the same time, the similar features make them become strongly associated with each other, and the differences interfere with each other."

1. Teachers need to search for techniques for teaching vocabulary that provide for the least amount of interference as possible. The teaching of lexical sets is not the answer.

1. There is no apparent connection between vocabulary usage and meaning, so exercises that ask for students to answer questions based on a passage having new vocabulary items may not actually carry out its intended purpose of vocabulary learning.

2. Teachers need to help learners become independent learners. Three ways of doing this are: 1) teaching learners that word families are made of words with a few stems, prefixes and suffixes; 2) showing students when to use contextual clues and how to use them to figure out the meaning of words; 3) explicitly explaining proper dictionary usage techniques.

1. "...the development of a large vocabulary appears to be inextricably linked to the development of reading skills."

1. Teachers need to encourage learners to read as much as possible in and out of class. We need to explicitly tell the advantages of reading to promote vocabulary building.

1. Few ESL/EFL teachers have the opportunity to select textbooks on their own according to their students interests and needs. Most will have required texts that they must use.

2. A teacher needs to familiarize himself/herself with the entire textbook that will be used so that the proper activities can be implemented according to the students' needs and interests.

1."In the evaluation-for-selection process, those with the responsibility for choosing textbooks need to consider not just the fit between the curriculum and the textbook but also the practical issues of usability by teachers and by students."

1. Teachers and students are two key audiences that need to be considered in the textbook selection process. Certain activities work better with some learners than others, as well as some activities are better taught by some teachers than others because of experience, personality, interests, etc....

1. Using computer-assisted language learning materials can be very beneficial to both students and teachers in that many students may be in fields that are heavily dependent on technology which will increase intrinsic motivation for students because the learning process is accentuated in a way that is familiar to them. Teachers can use the computer to aid in their teaching and research.

2. Usability testing is a very important step in producing materials because it shows materials designers what difficulties may arise for learners in the material. The problems are then analyzed for their difficulty and at least 2 solutions are pondered so that the text can be modified in any way needed. Consultation with other developers is utilized before making any long-lasting decisions.

1."By including students in the development process, course designers can reliably determine the terms, phrases, and vocabulary that learners will find accessible."

1. If we are to be learner-centered in our teaching, then we need books that are tailored to our learners and by having learners involved in the materials development process we can best reach this goal.

1. It is very important when writing a review to take your time and look over the text several times, making notes along the way.

2. When receiving feedback, a person should start with the positives first and not reflect on the negatives until all the positives have been fully evaluated for their usefulness.

1."I don't look at a review until I feel pretty good about my life, usually in a morning when I'm freshest (and it's the longest time until night, when I tend to take things more personally)--you know, sunshine, I've just played with the cat, etc."

1. A person's attitude during the day can definitely affect how they will critique something or how they will interpret something.

1. As teachers we need to be careful how we encourage learners to take ownership of their learning because this may affect other aspects of their lives so that they become very independent. Parents may not appreciate this change in their children.

2. It may not be wise to allow for much choice for beginners because they may not have the linguistic ability to find things on their own. Intermediate and advanced learners are better able to deal with choices.

1. "Learners who are uncertain about why they are studying the target language are the hardest to help."

1. It is important to offer the rationale for every activity that is done so that learners can know the pedagogical implications. Teachers need to find ways to try to illustrate the importance of learning another language.

Prowse, Philip. (1998). How writers write: testimony from authors. In Brian Tomlinson (Ed.), Materials development in language teaching (pp. 130-115). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1. In order to write a collaborative effort there has to be plenty of communication, cooperation, and working as a team. Pre-writing and planning are very important because it helps all to know what to expect from other members in the group. It will save time in the long run if all are focused in the same way.

2. Materials writers should expect several drafts before arriving at a final product. Feedback is very important and is used to revise each draft.

1. "The major decisions about the content of the book, the topics to be covered, the balance of skills, the treatment of vocabulary and grammar, and the culture and civilisation input are taken from the whole team."

1. Although, the U.S.A. is typically known as an individualist nation, the writing of texts is often a collective effort. It takes the input of everyone involved to create a well-done product.

1. Students may prefer learning from other student models rather than professional NES writing. They may feel more comfortable learning from someone who may have gone through the same things that s/he is going through.

2. It would be wise for any materials writer to class test their materials because after working on a manuscript for a certain amount of time, it may be hard to analyze an activity for its validity. Other teachers and students can give insightful feedback which may prove invaluable to the manuscript.

1."When I consider a job, whether teaching, volunteering, or writing materials, I look for the four S's: satisfaction, security, salary, and status, probably in that order."

1. It is hard to overlook the excitement of being offered a job, but we must try to look at the long-run consequences and not just what looks appealing at the moment.

1. Learners need help processing linguistic input because it may contain linguistic forms that the learner does not know.

2. The CALL system allows learners to notice their errors, correct their own linguistic output, and interact with the computer.

1. "This paper attempted to identify some specific implications of research findings for CALL design and evaluation that can provide a starting point for development of a complementary relationship between SLA research and CALL practice."

1. The paper's focus was to find ways to teach non-native speakers by way of SLA theories by using the computer.

1. The fact that learners are placed into work groups does not mean that they will interact in the target language or that language learning will take place. The teacher needs to guide students in learning. This takes place through careful planning on the part of the teacher.

2. Videoconferencing can be a way for learners to improve their speaking skills via use of the internet. Through videoconferencing, learners are able to speak to, listen to, and watch someone from an entirely different location by using a computer.

1. "Building a computer-based lab, classroom, or learning center usually involves at a minimum making educated decisions about hardware, software, furniture, and the configuration of all this equipment in the physical space available."

1. It takes much preparation before trying to hold a computer-based class. The teacher must prepare in advance about the appropriate location, what software to use, and so forth. Teachers must make sure that the software is appropriate for his/her learners and that all technology is compatible and working.

1. Computer technology has lead to the influx of digital reading. Computers have become so common that reading texts or books from screens is not unusual at all for professionals or students.

2. Students that were able to scan or skim using a paper text were not necessarily able to do the same with a computer screen text. Screen skimming is different from paper skimming in that it utilizes a hyper link outline in order to access a specific section of the text. They were to quickly read and highlight those sections in order to get the main ideas. Skimming from paper involves quickly looking over the entire text and not an outline of the text.

1. "...we cannot assume that students can in fact effectively read from the computer screen, and educators need to focus on the issues created by the emerging technologies."

1. One of the most tragic mistakes a teacher can make is to assume too much of his/her students. Experience can not be overlooked in our expecations.

1. Using computers to teach may bring about issues unforeseen by a teacher. Students who are not as technologically savvy may become frustrated and annoyed by some of the quirks of the computer program.

2. Scenarios can be a key component for clarifying design issues and visualizing requirements for a software program that has yet to be implemented.

1."...for inexperienced learners a more teacher-centered mode is clearly preferable in order to provide a stronger overall orientation to the learning experience and to ensure that pedagogical concerns are properly addressed."

1. Although the goal of much teaching is to give students learner autonomy, learners must first know what they are doing in order to gain that autonomy. As they begin to gain more experience, more control can be relinquished to them.