Mark Dressman
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Synchronous (Onsite) Teaching English in the Digital Age 101: Learner-Driven Strategies from IDLE Research more
Sun, Apr 30, 12:00-12:50 Asia/Seoul
This workshop will engage participants in demonstrating and discussing the pedagogical applications of recent research globally about Informal Digital Learning of English (IDLE). Across the world, multiple recent studies have shown that youth acquire much of their English though social media and digital entertainment, with powerful results: More IDLE > higher tested levels of proficiency. How, then, can teachers take advantage of IDLE as a resource? We will present scenario-based strategies in which teachers discover and adapt their students’ use of IDLE for classroom learning. These strategies are theoretically sound and help to solve three basic challenges of classroom language teaching: finding access to authentic and compelling materials; opportunities for practice with more proficient speakers; and access to content and practice 24/7. To extend the workshop we will create a website and forum for sharing ideas with a community of teachers interested in bringing learner-driven strategies to their classrooms.
Synchronous (Onsite) Across Three Languages: The Translingual Practices of Trilingual Basic Writers more
Sat, Apr 29, 16:30-16:55 Asia/Seoul
We report findings from the analysis of essays written by 113 first-year university students that have implications for teaching beginning L2 writing in Korean contexts. The essays were written in three languages: Standard Arabic, French, and English at two major public universities. Three equivalent prompts in each language were developed in which students were asked to make and defend a choice between two alternatives, one per essay. The essays were scored by teachers literate in all three languages and each essay was coded by two graduate students for evidence of translingual practices across the three essays. Five categories of translingual practices were identified, serving different communicative and rhetorical purposes. A significant positive correlation was also found between the amount of translingual practice identified in the writers’ essays and their holistic scores, sentence complexity measured by t-units, and word count. After presenting our findings, we hope to extend our discussion to translingualism in Korea and invite discussion from the audience.