NUESTROS ALUMNOS

Constructing intercultural bonds through the learning of a foreign language

2010-09-25T17:08:00.000-07:00

Last year our students Santiago Sandoval and Rosana Fernández worked with Interculturality in their classes, this is part of what they did:

“The teaching of a foreign language should not be the imposition of a dominant culture but the bridge between cultures”

“Bringing culture into the class when teaching language is as important as watering a plant to watch its colourful and lively growth, for culture is embeded in language as much as language is enbeded in culture” Santiago Sandoval

Our aim is to analyze the importance of interculturality and the effects of its incorporation or avoidance in the teaching of a foreign language. We are going to describe and present evidence in four different dimensions connected with interculturality. For this purpose, we carried out a research based on an experience with tobas students from school number 41 in La Granja, La Plata. These students belong to one of the thirty four communities called “No oxaxanaq” that came from Chaco and Formosa. They came in 1991 in search of prosperity and economical stability and cultural integration. One of the members of this community that was interviewed reflected upon the experience they had when they arrived and started to face a new reality full of obstacles embodied in discrimination, social restrictions as regards work and citizens rights, her name is Ximena and this is what she told us: “que dificil es ser hoy joven y ser toba, porque cuando nosotros que somos el primer grupo que llegamos no nos fue tan dificil adaptarnos porque nos acompañabamos unos a otros y compartiamos la misma cultura y no extrañabamos y hablabamos la misma lengua, sin embargo lo veo en mis hijos Nicolas de 12 y Fernando de 14. Ellos no se sienten parte de nuestra comunidad ni tampoco de las de los chicos de su edad porque no se pueden integrar a ninguna de las dos.” This testimony reflects that any speech community rebuilds several varieties of language, all of which are functionally distinguished from
each other. As Ximena’s sons are immersed in a broader speech community where Spanish is the official language, the functionality of their mother tongue is useless for them. Since speech is social behaviour, this toba kids find learning and using Spanish a means of integration; whereas English serves no purpose for them in this terms. This resembles the sensation and perception that most of ordinary students have in relation to the learning of English language. This is why it is important to teach language within a defined social context where students can make sense of their learning. Furthermore, it is fairly arguable that speech has a social function, both as a means of communication and also as a way of identifying social groups; and to study speech without reference to the society which uses it, is to exclude the possibility of finding social explanations for the structures that are used.

Analysis of our experience: the importance of cultural knowledge that students bring into the class serves the purpose of establishing the point of departure in cross-cultural relationships.

The experience was based on students from EPB 41. As teachers, we recognize that at school we work with children from different social contexts and countries and each of them has its unique distinguishing features. We worked with thirty eight students, out of which four are tobas, who are in fifth form.

Our aim was to motivate students from different countries (especially tobas children) to talk about their cultural activities as freely as possible. In order to share ways of life with their partners, children participated in dynamic conversations. To our surprise, we discovered that in the classroom there were many children from Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay that wanted to share their experiences with their partners. All the kids seemed to enjoy themselves and felt comfortable when building connections on how they faced each activity within their culture, while the rest of students listened with great interest to what their partners said. We all were engaged in significant cultural experiences, gained appreciation for other countries and their people by knowing about customs, food, history, music, language, celebrations, etc.

In order to bring lessons to life and pay attention to diversity students were given the opportunity to participate with exciting projects that engaged them in different creative activities, and then they shared their production with other students from other courses. Our students made learning fun and rewarding by performing creative tasks such as a human body’s poster, Halloween masks and jack o’ lanterns. The first activity that was making a body poster allowed students to meet and learn related vocabulary in Spanish, Guarani and Toba, they discovered that all the words of the part of the body were written differently and also sounded different. Nicolas, one of the toba students, was in charge of presenting the toba language for this project. First of all, students had to mention the parts of the body orally in the three languages and then they wrote down the words in the poster. After singing a song and learning vocabulary on the parts of the body students finally compared and contrasted the three languages: Spanish, English and toba to name the parts of the body. Tobas children greatly enjoyed matching and saying the parts of the body to the rest of the students, who stuck the words in different languages in the correct part of the body. This was a meaningful experience for tobas students because they were able to integrate the knowledge of their mother tongue in the learning of a different language (for tobas is very important to know how to name the parts of the body in case they suffer any illness or pain).

The second project was “Halloween Celebration”. In order to introduce the theme, we worked with a story called “Winnie the witch”, students were engaged listening the story and interacting with the teacher. In the next class, the teacher asked students from different countries to talk about celebrations in their countries, and then she asked what they knew about Halloween. Is there any similarity between Halloween and Dead’s day celebration in your country? Foreign children talk enthusiastically about celebrations in their country. Nicolas told us that they celebrate the dead’s day in a different way. In that they have to wear special amulets called “Chacas”. At the beginning it seemed meaningless for them to learn about Halloween, however when they were asked to decorate their own masks, they used little stones which reflected their own culture and they were engaged showing interest in the task. Then we divided the course in two groups, one group made masks with balloons, paper, flour and water, then we painted them; the other group made jack o’ lanterns with tins, paper, hammers and candles. We enjoyed working together!

Conclusion

Interculturality plays a major role in teaching and learning a foreign language and it is crucial that learners understand its importance as a means of building identity and integration. This is a process that takes its time but it is worth in the long run. In our research we have found out that children must experience the outside world from their own place in order to learn English meaningfully. There must be a chance for each of them to integrate their knowledge, potentials and socio-cultural background to their process of learning since it is the means by which they can make sense of it and this, in turn, derives in the building of identity. However, it is also necessary to recognize that interculturality may bring about some sort of tension or crisis within different ethnic groups because people do not always respect and value diversity and tend to think that learning about a different culture is forgetting about their own culture. Nevertheless, it is crisis what brings about significant changes in society since there is an existential need to overcome a problem that is tormenting the members of a society. Therefore, intolerance, discrimination, bulling and any other problems that may arise should be treated in class as real problems to be solved. To turn a blind eye on such problems is to foster violence among students and every teaching aim or goal is significantly blackened.

Learning by doing

Cuando los chicos cuentan

2010-09-25T16:53:00.000-07:00

Roxana D'Auro,alumna del ISFD 97,prof de inglés de 3º año nos cuenta su experiencia con niños que todavía no leen en su lengua materna.

¿Se puede hacer una historia con una sola palabra?
¿Es esa palabra sólo ESA palabra?
Si digo MAR, ¿ acaso no se te agolpa en la cabeza el rugido de las olas , sentís el salitre en los labios y la volatilidad de la espuma en los pies ?
¿Se puede hacer un libro sólo con palabras sueltas? Ellas lo hicieron y espontáneamente se transformaron en mediadoras.

Juegan a que son niñas exploradoras en un safari o guias en un zoológico. Y cuando dicen owl chistan : uh uh ...uh uh... como el habitante de las noches en los bosques o saltan y se quitan los piojitos sólo con leer monkey.Este libro irá creciendo con ellas.

Mañana tal vez digan : "The zebra is running in the jungle" o "The donkey is tired , it works too much".

Lo interesante es que cada vez que abran sus hojas, las historias que brotarán serán diferentes e irán mostrando lo que van
aprehendiendo. Probablemente en su siguiente producción las palabras sueltas caminen de la mano y juntas plasmen sus ideas.
Estos son sus primeros pasitos.

Les presento a Guadalupe, Sofía y Luciana.
Les presento su: "The Alphabet Animal"

Y aprovecho este espacio para agradecerles los buenos momentos que pasamos juntas!

Publicado por Roxana D'Auro

La idea del libro sin texto surge para un trabajo con la oralidad. Remitiéndome a como los niños más pequeños cuando no saben leer cuentan "sus" historias hojeando las ilustraciones de un libro . Proyecté eso a mis alumnas que recién este año aprendieron a leer y escribir en español y todavía no tiene inglés en la escuela . Es lo que yo diría más que un libro con un final abierto es un libro abierto a que los niños inventen cualquier historia con el .

Roxana es "cuentacuentos".

el blog de Roxana: la mágica ceremonia de contar

New class

2009-11-05T09:57:00.000-08:00

Santiago Sandoval is a very creative student-teacher and a musician. So he applies his two skills and makes wonderful classes. Here and here (click to download the plans) is a new one for his practicum in ESB...

Here is the song "I work to live".Great work, Santiago! I´m sure your students are highly motivated with this and add a positive value to your work.

2009-07-15T16:13:00.000-07:00

Claudia Girod and Diana Martínez prepared this project on "18th Century Architecture" for Language and Culture III. They´ve made two different power point presentations on the subject and found videos on the topic.Great work that they want to share with all of you!!!

These are the links for the presentations:

History_of_Architecture_

Architecture_Timeline_18th_century._

and for the videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5HFNvi3ZwU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oB4tQVUI8U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbzo6Q08xl4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXNdkZ4yu4k

Thanks Claudia and Diana, and congrats on a job well done!!!

Do Not Panic: Classics!!!

2009-04-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

Yuya Viglione, one of our most "well known" and beloved graduates produced for her final practicum a lesson on a classic: "Beowulf".Here´s her account:

Do not panic classics!!

I had never thought about working with classics. Actually, I’ve always tried to skip them and focused on modern and updated topics with my secondary students.
But this time I must admit that Beowulf- the epic poem from XI century - gave me a nice surprise.
The story began when doing teaching practice: we were given a lesson about Beowulf from a book called Opportunities and the classical issue: past tense. (old fashioned, uh?)
There we were, me and my partner, trying to convince ourselves that we could do it for good, that we could motivate a group of lazy, noisy and disinterested guys that knew almost nothing about English, and that probably would not do anything to help practitioners to succeed.

The key was motivation.
And where would we step to get it?
Firstly, we jumped into the net to get ideas about films, photos, Vikings, wars, heroes, legends and myths. After getting data galore, we decided to start working with photos, -a big one from the original book, and a good one from Viking boats.
How to make students speak?
Just by making them invent, make up words or try to find transparencies. (According to the book we had to get to “castle, armor, soldier, hero, sword, dragon and some more ones and to use the story to apply past tense).

Secondly, how to make them involved?
We started asking about myths and legends they knew. The answer was fast and rich; many legends from La Plata came up, and many heroes from movies and TV too. By the moment they told us the legends, we tried to translate them shortly into English to show them everything is possible in other language.

The key was in their stories: horror, suspense, war, fighters, so we hurried into the story in the book to analyze the pictures, highlighting cruelty and barbarism (let me remind you, we were working with teens) and guess together how the plot could be. After getting names, characters and places from the first part in the book, we asked them to imagine the following part. We repeated it in English and let the mystery for the next class.
By that time we had spent only an hour from a two-hour-class and thanks to Mr. Robert Zemeckis, director of Beowulf the film, we had the ribbon to wrap the first day; a film that would certainly give them the complete involvement we, teachers to be, needed. Therefore, we played the first part of it and stopped at its highest climax to be able to develop some oral exercises based on yes/No questions, re-ordering scenes from the movie with pictures and with short statements that make them think and realize the grammar point we were supposed to teach. Have I heard that this is old, haven’t I? First class was done.
OK. First part was complete. Second one developed as expected, recycling previous events, moments from the film, and some tiny issues about the past of the hero.
We obviously read the last part of the short Beowulf story in the book, and we were ready to watch the last part of the film.
Unexpectedly, we asked them to find the uncommon or weird values in the characters, such as: Who was a liar, who was dishonest, who cheated a friend, etc. The class was absolutely hooked on the plot and we gave them another view that made them think positively. Maybe You can imagine the rest: the whole group criticizing liars, blaming dishonest characters and censuring wrong values.
We introduced some new and guessing games five minutes before finishing the film to intrigue them all. After some minutes working and complaining, they finished the movie and when we ended up we realized we did it!! A challenging group had been paying attention to everything, had been taking part – the simple way they could- and even the most difficult students had been hooked to the end.
Maybe you got lost with all these words, please give me the chance to re read it, because today, I can tell you there’s nothing to rule out when teaching is needed. Who would have told that Beowulf turned out to be one of my heroes? Got a poster to share?

Thanks,Yuya Viglione, a great way to motivate students!!!

The Bus that Stops for Everyone

2009-04-20T07:09:00.000-07:00

In the light of the new curriculum that forsters integration as one of its main points to deal with our students. Santiago Sandoval, a student of 4th year at ISFD 97, has developed a plan to work with his students that has into consideration helping students to become better citizens and people.
He developed this plan last year while he was pratising in EPB.
This is what Santiago tells us about his experience...

"The song "The bus that stops for everyone" was created by me during my "practicas" last year(3rd in the course of studies curriculum) in which I noticed student's lack of interest or enthusiasm in the activities from the coursebook they were working with at the moment. In addition to this factor I also realized students' lack of unity and sense of solidarity between them. This pespective triggered the idea of making something different in the classroom so as to learn but also to enjoy the learning of english at the same time. As I was teaching means of transport and I introduced the invention of the bus as an Argentinian invention I thought that a song would perfectly involve students in the learning of vocabulary and necessary language to participate actively during the lesson.
I took my acoustic guitar and played the song and the fist time I made my students listen to it just for pleasure but the second time I gave them the lyrics in disorder in a leaflet so as for them to find the right order of the stansas and chorus as well.
They were very enthusiastic about it and they wanted to listen to it once and again. In a second class I explained to them the importance of understanding the message of the songs they listen to, and I let them discover which was the message that I wanted to put across with my song which finally turned out to be theirs as they started to sing the song along with me
The great thing of this experience is that they were able to take what I wanted to give them, that is something which does not always occour. In the end they were able to reflect upon their behaviour and re construct the message of the song with their own words and that gave me a great sense of achievement I must say.

Hope this helps and I am always glad to hear from teaching experiences I thoroughly believe that if we exchange ideas and share experiences we can enrich our teaching practices and feel at the same time we are a team and we are not alone in this hard task which is education."

Listen to the song ,downloading it here....fantastic song!!!

Thanks to Santiago Sandoval