Coursera – Foundation Principles

Apuntes:

Week 1 – Lesson 2

Making Meaning Clear

Krashen:

to get from I to i+1 is only possible if the language used to transmit the message is “a little beyond”
students abilities,-> helpful: context, knowledge of the world, extra-linguistic information -> used to
understand (the message, not the form)

Input hypothesis says: acquisition of structure as a result of the acquisition of meaning, not
“acquisition of structures and fluency through practicing them”

Input must contain “i+1” but not only “i+1” (don’t focus only on a grammar structure when speaking),
give input that ALSO includes the structure and if the conversation is successful and in all the input
there is enough of the targeted structure, then i+1 is provided

Production abilities emerge, they are not taught

OPTIMAL INPUT IS COMPREHENSIBLE

- Slower rate
- Clearer articulation -> to identify word boundaries more easily, more processing time
- High frequency vocabulary, less slang, fewer idioms
- Syntactic simplification, shorter sentences

= caretaker speech, foreign and teacher talk

Extra-linguistic support like pictures is supporting comprehension

Teacher Talk

- Speak in a modified or simplified way to accommodate to students level

- Includes: repetition, reduced grammatical forms, simplified vocabulary, signpost expressions,
common cultural references, elaboration, clarification questions,

 Repetition : signal phrases like “let me say that again”, “let me say that in other words” to
catch attention
 Reduced grammatical forms: eliminate unnecessary, complex or confusing phrases; use
common tenses
 Simplified vocabulary: Which word will your student understand?
 Signpost expressions: help guide learners attention to form or structure of an utterance,
make timeline clear: such as, first, also
 Common cultural references: watch out, when students are from other cultural
backgrounds
  Elaboration: repetition, but in an extended way including examples and definitions
 Clarification questions: to find out what learners have understood -> correct or clarify
information; for questions, give time to respond -> let silence be a technique

Scaffolding

 Provide guides and structures to help learners understand

 Creating help to get to more complex things step by step
 1st step: model behaviour (linguistically) to guide them through different parts of a
behaviour, then let them practice on their own (guided practice + independent practice)
 It is not unidirectional, you can go back and forth between all the steps
 Include repetition

Week 1 -Lesson 3

Essential Question:

Anyone who speaks a language can teach the language.

Hello everyone,

I will start by answering the question bluntly – yes, anyone who speaks a language can teach the
language – somehow. Knowing a language gives you the possibility to transmit the knowledge to
other people who want to learn (something about) this language. But it doesn´t automatically turn
you into a good teacher, because of two problems.

The first issue is that native speakers who have not studied there own language are often not aware
of what it all includes. I have had many conversations with friends or family when they ask me about
my day and I say: You know, I have started X grammar subject with a class today and it is really hard
for them. I usually get surprised faces because my friends and family are not aware of X or that they
use it daily. Same goes for the frequency of vocabulary – no “normal” native speaker thinks about
how frequent the words are they use. It goes without saying for me that a teacher must know their
grammar and vocabulary in order to be able to choose presentation order and make decisions about
class content.

The second problem I encounter is that many (not all) native speakers think: “I am native, who can
teach my language better than me?” and because of this reasoning do not care to learn about
teaching techniques. In this module, we have looked at some awesome teaching techniques like
“Teacher Talk” or “Scaffolding”. Certainly there may be out there prodigious teachers that use these
techniques without having to learn them, but they will be a minority. So, most of us wanting to teach
will have to be aware of how we act in class and learn how to best present our content.

Finally, I want to say, that I would answer the question with a “yes” again, because I think that
everyone who is interested in other people and cares about their progress can become a good
teacher as these people will inherently look for formation.
Week 2 – Lesson 1

Acquisition vs Learning

Learning = ability to comprehend and recall information

Acquisition = learn and apply those principles in the real world

Douglas Brown: metaphor of camera – zoom (specialising on vocabulary or grammar forms) and wide
angle lens (trying to understand generally without paying too much attention to specific forms)

Barbara Oakley: focused mode (not more than 25 min) and diffuse mode of learning (let mind wander
and make connections)

Lesson 2

Acquisition = ability tu put into practice – interact with others in a real language environment

Encourage students to have opportunities to practice the rules and language in original
environments!

Acquired skills fade over time.

80/20 principle = 80% practice, 20% instruction

How to learn:

Examples: learning from a vocabulary list, practicing a particular tense, working on the pronunciation
of a group of similar sounding words

Good for vocabulary learning: spaced repetition: do not learn the list at once, learn it for a certain
amount of time and then come back later -> increase interval between studying sessions -> learning
sticks and becomes automatic

Leitner System (spaced repetition): Vokabelkasten

If you instruct words in class, use those words in next weeks classes

How to acquire:

For example: order at a restaurant, buy some shoes, talk about their best friend

Advanced students: ask questions that challenge critical thinking and serious reflection -> students
focus on content and forget form
Essential questions: makes us consider the truth of an assumption based on the information we have
just discussed

“What is taught is what is learned”

Hello everyone,

I would like to say that I partially agree and partially disagree with the statement “what is taught is
what is learned” and will now continue to explain why.

First of all, when we think about what we have just learned about the concept of “learning” as
“recalling information”, then yes, we can not recall information we have never been taught –
understanding “teaching” as “showing”. If I don´t show a student that the past simple ending is “ed”
for regular verbs (focused mode), I cannot expect them to know or recall this information.

On the other hand, understanding “learning” in the broader, general sense it is used for in colloquial
contexts as “knowing and being able to use something” (which would actually be “acquisition”), my
answer would be “no, we do not learn (“acquire”) everything that is taught”. Teaching is still
understood as “showing” and acquisition needs practice, which showing something does not offer.
So, if I limit my teaching to showing, I will not get my students to acquire, the same way as if I don´t
repeat, I will not get my students to learn, even though I have taught.

So, we have seen in this module that both, learning and acquiring, is more difficult that the average
person might expect and that it needs certain circumstances to flourish. In this sense, it is not as easy
as to “teach” (show) something to be learned/acquired, but this “teaching” needs to happen in a
certain way.

Stephen Krashen: The acquisition – learning distinction

Acquisition: similar to the way children develop ability in their first language; subconscious process ->
language acquirers are only aware of using the language for communication -> its result: acquired
competence = also subconscious; implicit learning, informal learning, natural learning

Learning: conscious knowledge of a second language, its rules, being aware of those rules, being able
to talk about those rules -> learning = knowing about, explicit learning

Week 3 – Lesson 1

Self- awareness: See yourself in a mirror, evolves over time -> too much selfawareness can cause
anxiety and be paralizing

Self-awareness when learning a new language: aware of: accent, grammar mistakes, how well
communication works out ->

Stephen Krashen: The affective filter: complex emotions students experience when they try to
progress all the new information and produce language
Variables affecting acquisition:

1. Motivation
2. Self-confidence
3. anxiety

a high affective filter impedes language input to get to the brain

 Teacher needs to lower affective filter when too high in class

How?

1. Relate to your learners from the very beginning -> share your own failures when learning
something
2. Describe mistakes as normal
3. Encourage success as continuous effort
4. Praise process and do not think about the finished product
5. Use formative evalution: diffuse mode helps learners see that when the act, they wont be
always judged (feedback to help students along the way = formative feedback/evaluation)
6. Be willing to look ridiculous -> encourages students to take risks and get outside their comfort
zone

Week 3 – lesson 2

Language learner strategies

1. Prediction : guess or be invited to guess what the topic will be about -> need to be able to
pick up on social and contextual clues
2. Selective attention: pay attention to only on aspect of the lesson -> ignore distracting
information in advance
3. Prepare: in advance,
4. Look ridiculous:
5. Practice:
6. Monitor: correction of your own speech and pronunciation, grammar vocabulary etc.,
7. Ask questions
8. Take notes
9. Imagery: relate new information to a visualization
10. Find an answer in multiple ways: from dictionaries, teachers, students..
11. Physical response: relate new information to a physical activity
12. Play with the language

Teachers = trail guides

Strategy Lessard Clouston:

1. study teaching context to determine which strategies should be taught (goals and
motivations of students, what strategies are already in use, look through available teaching
 material to see if a strategy training is already done, analyze teaching method to see which
strategies are being modelled)
2. focus on the strategies when teaching: incorporate most important strategies in lessons, by
giving clear examples, give opportunities to use and develop strategies,
3. reflect on the use of strategies: of the teacher and the students, the effectiveness of the
training and encourage students to reflect too

Week 4 – Lesson 1

Connecting Students to Resources

Language Learning Outside the Classroom

Encourage students to list their possible resources to talk in English: who do you know who speaks
English?

Create language goals

Creation of English clubs

Student exchange/pen pal

Lesson 2

Search for and look for language learning websites and apps

Content and Language Integrated Learning = CLIL -> when students want to learn something that
happens to be in English

Principal aim as teacher: learners gain autonomy

Lesson 3

“Language learners should only be exposed to the forms they are taught”

I think that I partially agree with the essential question of this week. I say partially because I think
that in the majority of situations in a classroom, this is not true, but in some situations, it can be
helpful to limit the exposure a learner has to the language learned.

I teach mainly adolescents and young adults. All of them are going through or have gone through the
public (or private) school system we have in the country I live in and this system created a horrible
plan for them to learn English which leaves them confused and overwhelmed and – oh, what a
surprise – without knowing English. (Not the teachers´ fault in most of the cases).

For those students it has shown to be incredibly useful to limit their exposure to English in their first
few weeks with me in order to let them learn on a “almost 100% correct answer”- basis that lets
them regain confidence in themselves and their language learning abilities. They come from a system
that focuses almost entirely on grammar structures and does so at a very high speed, so most of
them don´t retain correctly what they learn and end up mixing structures creating wrong forms like “I
´m danced” or “I dancing”. Working with these students with very little vocabulary and very reduced
grammatical forms and, inside this restrictive environment, offer them activities in a more diffused
mode helps their brains reset and prepare for the actual language learning. After some time, they are
ready to really learn the language.

So as my final goal with all my students is to have autonomous language users who confide in their
abilities to perform comfortably in any possible situations, limiting exposure to only the forms taught
in class would most definitely prevent them from reaching this autonomy. Language, in real life, can
expose them to all kinds of words, structures and situations that change in just a few seconds and
they have to get used to the fact that they will not always have had the chance to work on the words
or structures they have to react to beforehand. Opening up exposure in independent practice
moments in the classroom is the way to prepare them for those moments in real life they will
inevitably have and is, therefore, more than necessary.

Week 5 – Lesson 1

To avoid teacher burnout – form a network to ask for help, share material etc., also online in forums
and communities

Teacher organizations!

Lesson 2

To avoid burnout, focus on the things you can do, not on the things you cant, be creative and an
agent of change

Think about how you can change your environment

Find balance

Find your core, be sincere, be you

Teachers that work too hard are the ones that burn out

I agree with the statement that if a teacher works too hard, they will eventually burn out. That doesn
´t mean that if you work hard, you will burn out – on the contrary. I think everyone, in every job they
have should always try to work as hard as they can, but never too hard.

What characteristics does “working too hard” have that in my opinion will inevitably lead to a
burnout? First of all, I understand as that if someone is working too hard, this person doesn't care
about their personal needs, such as free time, relax and balance. Someone working too hard will put
work over themselves and eventually burn all their resources.

They won´t have time for friends or quality time with family and all their effort goes into their job.
But, as rewarding a job can be, it doesn't provide everything a person needs and the moment will
come that someone dedicated to only to business will have no strength left.

To this, you have to add that teaching is a very out-centered activity, meaning that teachers spend a
lot of time thinking about making other peoples lives better. This additionally wears out. So, in
summary, I would say that every teacher working “too hard” will eventually burn out.
Week 6

Summary

Students as actors,
language a passport -
> empowered in the
world

Language happens outdoors

-> give students autonomy

Language is a stage ->

identify learners fear

Language is basketball -> offer ample

opportunities to practice

Language as a camera, teacher the

photographer -> diffused and focus mode

Language is cake -> you have to use the right techniques

Language is fire, teacher a candle -> motivate your students