Unit 2: NOT supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

I learned a completely new term that I had never heard of as an L1 English speaker. Suprasegmentals. These are often referred to as the musical aspects of speech and include pitch, duration and loudness(Nordquist, 2020)  We vary our speech dependent on who we are talking to at the time. We don't talk to a baby or a puppy with the same pitch, volume or sounding of words that we would use when speaking during a presentation to colleagues. We use this variance of speech,especially pitch and loudness to convey our emotions in speech, the passion we feel for the person or the topic. In terms of the pitch of our voice it helps to signal to the listener whether there is more to come when we have a rise to our voice. I think it is important that our language classes provide an opportunity for students to practice the sound of their words. Some lightness can be added to a class by practicing the same phrase but stressing different words each time to change the meaning. Engaging the class by having them guess the emotion behind the sentence can be a fun way to practice an important part of acquiring the language and improving the speaker's 'natural' sound.

Nordquist, Richard. "Suprasegmental Definition and Examples." ThoughtCo, Jan. 29, 2020, thoughtco.com/suprasegmental-speech-1692008.

Nordquist, Richard. "Phonetic Prosody." ThoughtCo, Jan. 29, 2020, thoughtco.com/prosody-phonetics-1691693.

Unit 1: How am I doing?

Sometimes I feel like a broken record, but as always, the first step, for all teaching and learning is to create a supportive, encouraging learning environment. One of the keys to successful L2 learning lies in the feedback that a learner receives from others (Brown and Lee, p. 380). So by creating a classroom where error treatment is seen as a part of learning, our students will be receptive to give and receive feedback to further their growth as L2 speakers.The time and place of the treatment is important and varies according to the situation. How I would correct a student, or have peers correct a student would be dependent on the format e.g. pair work, a formal presentation, formative or summative assessments. I like to take into consideration what James Hendrickson (1980) refers to as, global and local errors. Local errors do not need to be corrected immediately because they don't interfere with the message.  A global error means that the meaning is impeded and those should be corrected early on so that they don't occur on a consistent basis.

P. 383 in Brown and Lee has a great chart (included in my resources section) that shows a model for treatment of classroom speech errors. One of my more preferred methods of correction is recasting, in which you use the correct form back to the speaker, "So you went to the store." (In this case the student said, "I goed to the store").
I think all learners want corrective feedback, we just have to find the right opportunity to provide it.

Brown, D. and Lee, H. (2015). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy (4th ed. revised).

Hendrickson, J. (1980). Error correction in foreign language teaching: Recent theory, research, and practice. In K. Croft (Ed.)l, Readings on English as a second language (2^nd ed., pp. 153-173). Cambridge, MA: Winthrop

TESL 0120: Speaking and Listening

I am excited to embark on this new course on speaking and listening and I look forward to incorporating my new learning into my teaching. Prior to starting the course I reflected on the times when I have taken language courses. I know that I spent a lot of my time anxiously waiting for my turn. I would rehearse in my head what I should say, hoping that I wouldn't pick up on the grammar or pronunciation errors of the student before me. In the classes where I had multiple opportunities to use the language, with practical rather than derisive correction, involving engaging activities that I was a more successful and confident learner. This excerpt from the book Teaching English language learners across the content areas, reminds us of always taking the first step to create a positive and engaging learning environment.

Creating a friendly learning environment

Haynes, J. and Zacarian, D. (2010). Teaching English language learners across the content areas. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.