Third Space in Pedagogy

I enjoyed reading Dialogical Imagination of (Inter)cultural Spaces: Rethinking the Semiotic Ecology of Second Language and Literacy Learning by Kostogriz, in Hall’s book. I am very impressed by unique concept of third space in pedagogy, which I found rather interesting and applicable to conduct culturally responsive practices in my future teaching.

Nowadays the classroom is more like a mosaic, where students’ cultural and linguistic background, strengths, needs, and interests tend to be highly diverse. Hence, to meet this diversity, it is of great importance for educators to construct such a third space for learners’ meaning-and identity- making process with democratic features and social transformation. In this third space, everybody get involved and everybody learns. I think this idea is quite innovative, because it changes the ways in which literacy learning is organized in multicultural classrooms. The author emphasizes the material-semiotic sphere of the third space pedagogy and the cultural-semiotic diversity requires a semantically rich learning environment by using all the social, cultural, and linguistic resources of its participants. In this way, the learners can bring their cultures to the classroom and the classroom is a place where embraces diverse cultures, which provide students multiple means to learn and know the world from multiple perspectives.

I am thinking about an example about how to construct a third space in an ESL classroom. Probably, we can conduct an activity to ask each student to share and introduce an idiom from their own country. As we know, idioms usually have their own cultural and historical origins, which reflect particular cultures in terms of their values, beliefs, traditions, customs, etc. They can give example of when, where, how, and why they use them with certain situational contexts. In this way, students may reflect their own cultures first and bring them to the classrooms. They can learn from other cultures within this co-constructed third space in the classroom, where they can find the similarity and disparity among cultures as well. Hence, their knowledge is social-culturally constructed and this process of knowing is dialogical.

Cultural Deversity ＆ Intercultural Dialogism

Communication in a Pluralistic Society and Dialogism as a Way of Life in Shields’ book are pretty straightforward, which help me to understand the key terminologies in Bakhtinian conceptual scheme, like heteroglosia, pluralism, dialogue, and relationship.  

Under the trend of globalization, cultural diversity has become a prevalent issue, which exists in the world, a society, or an institution. The heteroglosia among cultures via intercultural dialogue, is essential to promote the coexistence and harmony among various cultural groups. It is of great importance to give voices to them, thus making it possible for other people to know, to respect, and to understand other cultures, which is a way to maintain the diversity among cultures. However, once coin has two sides. Intercultural dialogue may also lead to cultural assimilation. Through acculturation, people from various cultural groups are very likely to adapt to the mainstream culture and hence lose their unique cultural heritages and original cultural practices to certain extent.

The relationship and dialogues interrelate and interact each other. For example, good dialogues promote positive relationship and the relationship between the interlocutors influences their dialogues as well, vice versa. In addition, I like the concept of inner dialogue. For individuals, it is significant to open their ears and eyes to listen and see the world, enabling them to open their minds. The inner dialogue helps them to examine their positions through multiple perspectives and angles, which is like a reaction, generating new thoughts in a dynamic way.

Heteroglossia and Novel

It is interesting to examine the relationship between the nature of language in novel from Bakhtinian heteroglossia perspective and its applied values.

In John Holcombe (2012)’s Discourse in the Novel, the author explained heteroglossia as the multi-layered nature of language and he also pointed out that a novel consists of a variety of voices with their different community of discourse. The speeches in a dialogue can not only shape a vivid image about the contexts, but also build avenues for readers to know the inner world of the characters involved and the connections among them. I am thinking about my personal learning experience as an English major student when I was in the college. We read Oxford Bookworms Series when we were freshmen. I think it was fun and helpful, because the exposure to the authentic input and the engaging plots makes language learning meaningful.

Reading novels has been regarded as one of the best ways for language learners to improve their literacy. I think Bakhtinian heteroglossia canmaximum the outcomes of reading novels in foreign language learning and teaching. First, it helps learners to improve their speech skills. The characters demonstrated various speech genres under certain social-cultural contexts, and what they say reflects their experiences, motivations, thoughts, and demeanor. Hence, language learners may have a chance to learn how they people talk in the novel and they can gradually express their intention more effectively by using the appropriate manners. Second, it helps learners to improve communication skills. The discourse input in novels expose readers to an authentic language environment, where they activate their brains to conversation mode. They may learn how to understand the interlocutor accurately, how to deliver their messages appropriately, and keep the conversation flow back and forth. Last but not least, it helps readers to develop logic thinking skills. Reading a novel, readers may find the connections and conflicts among the characters. Also, they may question and reason why so-and-so decided to say something in certain way, which requires deeper thinking by considering the contexts and relationships between the interlocutors. In sum I think Bakhtinianheteroglossia perspectives have lots of practical values in foreign language teaching classrooms, which can guide our future curriculum designing.

Friends, if you are a language teacher, how will you use Bakhtinianheteroglossia approach to teach reading?

About Authenticity

From Bakhtin’s perspective, communication is a dynamic and dialogic meaning-making process. It is situated in certain social-historical contexts, where languages act as cultural means to mediate thoughts among individuals. Hence, the feature of real language I think is authenticity.

On one hand, authentic language is context-dependent, which is influenced by the specific social and historical factors of the circumstance where people are situated. For example, Chinese people say 恭喜发财（Gong Xi Fa Cai, which means wish you to be prosperous in the coming year.）to each other during the Lunar New Year, which is one of the most common New Year wishes 2014 is the year of the horse in Chinese animal zodiac and lots of people will use some idioms with “horse”, 马(Mǎ), to send family members and friends good wishes, such as一马当先，马到成功 (yi ma dang xian, ma dao cheng gong). Taking the lead and achieving success, horses 马，Mǎ is a perfect combination of power and beauty, which represents speed and strength in Chinese culture. Even Chinese people regards horses as the dragon on the earth. In sum, the utterance of “恭喜发财, 一马当先，马到成功!” is unique due to the cultural-historical context: the lunar new year and the year of the horse, so people use these idioms to express good wishes to the interlocutor.

On the other hand, the individuals make the languages they use authentic. You mean hear "Gong Xi Fa Cai" (pronunced like "gong she fa tsigh" in English) in Mandarin and "Gong Hey Fat Choy" in Cantonese during the lunar new year in China. Even though the pronunciations are a little different, both are written the same way: 恭喜发财. Mandarin Chinese is the official language in China, which is regarded as the standard and prestigious means of communication. However, there are eight major dialects as well. Hence, don’t be surprised if you hear Chinese people from different parts of China talk differently. Probably, people from one side of the mountain might speak a totally different dialect than the people from the other side of the mountain. Dialects represent the local culture and shapes the locals’ identity. When people meet each other, they might use the mandarin with their own accents to greet each other and then they might discuss the topics they are both interested in, which is shaped by each individual’s perspective. Since people all have different life experiences, their perspectives are valuable because of the uniqueness of their personal understandings towards life.

All in all, the authenticity of language relies on both the cultural-historical context and the perspectives of individuals within in it.

Literature, History, and Ideology

        I find it interesting to investigate the relations among literature, history, and ideology.

        It is meaningful to understand historical context in the time a piece of literature was created when pursuing the deeper understanding of the literature. Historical context is the political, social, cultural, and economic setting in a given period of time. The cultural historical contexts influence the language, content, and style of the writing. Literature comes from life, and it is like a mirror, which reflect the world and the life of people in certain historical situations.
         When we read the work of Shakespeare, our teacher introduced the historical background of time of Queen Elizabeth and its leading naval and commercial power of the Western world. London was the cultural and economic center, whose dramatists and poets were among the best of the day. Shakespeare lived in that time and his works represent the world around him at that time. Elizabethan Age reminds me about Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD), which was the most prosperous periods in Chinese history. It was also the heyday of classical Chinese poetry. I love reading poems and Du Fu was my favorite poet in that time. His poetry covered politics, social problems, and even his own personal family life.
        We are influenced by the ideologies from the literature we read and the information we perceived. Sometimes the government control the media through censorship, and the news and the books we read are biased to a certain degree. When we heard the perspectives from other ideologies, we feel the propaganda might be like brain-washing to a certain degree. I think the best way to learn about the world is to read from various views with their authentic understandings and then we can make a judgement and construct our own ideologies maybe..

Humor and Satire – The Art of Language

Humor is the art of language. It plays a positive role in education, which can create a healthy relationship and relaxing atmosphere in the classroom. It can lower the stress and affective filter in learning and hence promote learning outcomes. As a learner, I appreciate the professors’ witty remarks in their feedbacks, which is a tacit skill necessary in successful instruction I think. Unlike robots, teachers are real people, who have emotions and creativity. Their responses to students is so dynamic and context-dependent that they cannot be pre-programed and normalized with a mundane pattern. With a sense of humor, teachers can present the art of teaching.

I think it is a great idea to add the carnival element in our instruction. Maybe it sounds crazy to educational professionals who believe that teaching and learning is a serious matter. Education is a critical issue but educators can also educate in a delightful way. According to Bakhtin, “a carnival sense of the world possesses a mighty life-creating and transforming power, an indestructible vitality” (Shields, p. 98). Successful teaching should conduct an enjoyable learning experience to students, where they can play a part in and develop with passion and creativity.

Humor is an attitude and an approach to life, which can be discovered and experienced everywhere. Like humor, satire is another powerful language genre. We learned Chekhov’s The Man in a Case in middle school, which helped us to understand irony in literature. I appreciate the parodic way the author portray the characters in the story and his sardonic humor and pungent satire stirred me profoundly. I was also impressed by the end of the story in O'Henry's The Cop and the Anthem, which gave me a sharp contrast to what I expected.

Mastering Academic English

As an international graduate student, one of the challenges I am facing is to meet the writing demands. I read Braxley’s article about mastering academic English. I feel lots of the issues addressed in this article are same as I have experienced.

For example, I have tense problem in my English writing and I talked with my American friends about it. One of them said, “I've read Chinese and people of other cultures have trouble processing things related to timing and sequences because of the way tenses are used in their languages.” It is true that in Chinese we do not have inflection –ed to change the verb to show past tense. Hence, in order to use the correct tenses, we have to pay attention to it and double check the forms of the verbs we use after we write our papers. Another American friend said, “I don't really think about tenses too much unless I'm switching between tenses and have to keep things straight.” I think the language we use shapes our mind. I find that Americans tend to think and express themselves in a logical manner and a clear structure. They are usally direct to the point and give reasons or details to support their points. However, we, Chinese like to make lots of foreshadowing before giving our positions. Chinese readers can get the messages between the lines. However, English readers often found the purpose of our writing unclear. Hence, when we write in English, I should shake my "Chinese speaker" habits and think more like an English speaker.When we write scholarly articles in English, we should definitely write grammatically correct English. However it is not enough. In order to sound scholarly, we should pay attention to three other main things I think: writing style, structure, and format. The style and register of our language is very important. For example, I wrote “The mom usually talked with the kid in Chinese at home.” The editor changed my sentence into “The mother usually talked with the child in Chinese at home.” “Mother and child” are more formal than “mom and kid. We should be aware of the word we choose. In addition, we also should follow the structure for academic writing - topic sentence and supporting details are tied up in a coherent and cohesive manner - making meaning flow in a logical way. Also, I just realize good writing is not to show large amounts of vocabulary and advanced grammar. It is how we can help the audience understand our ideas in an effective and efficient manner with less confusion and uncomfortableness. Personally, I would appreciate something easy to follow, something succinct and straightforward, and something practical and constructive to the field.  We should also use the right citation format, like APA, which is the norm in academic field.

Last but not least, we should also write with a good reader awareness, since writing is a form of communication. Hence, reader awareness is fundamental in any type of writing. Sometimes we are too hesitate in expressing ourselves, but we did not ask ourselves who the audience are - whether they are professors, doctoral students, administrators, teachers, parents, clinicians, or other professionals - or whom we are writing for. We should think about these questions before, during and after our writing.

Language, Culture, and Self

I enjoyed reading Marchenkova’s chapter on language, culture, and self, which helped me to rethink the relationship among them and how they influence each other and the applied meaning in foreign language instruction.

Language, culture, and self are inter-related as a whole and dialogues are socially constructed, dynamic, and situated in specific contexts. For example, holidays are an essential part of a culture. When teaching preschoolers about Valentine’s Day, we discussed whom we love during the circle time. Then, children can write notes and cards to friends and parents. Even English language learners can get a chance to express themselves by using the target language in such a meaningful context. In this way, they can form positive relationships with peers and get involved in the classroom community.

Here is another story about language and culture, which I want to share. When I first came here, I heard an American mother called her son over the phone. After the call, she said “I love you!” I was kind of shocked, because it is not very common in Asian culture.  I watched the video clip on youtube called Asian Parents and the Awkward "I Love You"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUPxlBeugjU. I think it is true that in most cases Asian parents do not say “I love you” as much as American parents, which does not mean that they do not like their children. It is actually influenced by the high-context Asian communication style. They cook for the family and pay the tuition for the children. They do lots of things for the children. They just do not say these tree words. They might think we have already know they love us so they do not need to say it explicitly. When American parents send children to school, they give their children hugs and kisses and say, “Love you and have fun!” On the contrary, Asian parents might help children put on the bagpack and say, “Behave well and study hard!” The same context, they dialogues are very different. I am sure the parents from both cultures both love their children. However, just the ways they express themselves are different.

I like her statement on page. 174, “the purpose of teaching second and foreign language us to make communication among people and cultures possible.” As language teachers, we should think about this goal in our lesson planning. To be specific, we should not only introduce the language items in the language, but also to introduce the culture of it. In addition, we should always try our best to give students authentic input and give them opportunities to communicate with people from the target culture.

Using Digital Games in L2 Classroom

Gamification is to use game elements and constructs to accomplish certain objectives in the non-entertaining settings, like business, education, etc., which has become a trend in languages learning and teaching.  Implementing digital games  L2 classrooms enjoys considerable merits in reaching the instructional goals. 

First of all, playing digital games could be an engaging and relaxing experience, which can lower learners' anxiety in learning. In Tom Chatfield's video, 7 ways games reward the brain, he points out playing games can compel, motive and transfix individuals. Games can generate emotional, individual and collective rewards, which increase individual emotional, psychological and neurological engagement. 

Moreover, during the process of game playing, learners must be motivated to try their best to move and excel with continuous efforts. The more familiar with the games they become, and the more they points they earn, and the more they want to play. The process of wanting and liking of the game increase learners’  ambition and delight in engaging in subjects. They are more likely to become motivated in the learning process.

Furthermore, I think games truly can help people develop themselves and make them smart by thinking and solving problems while playing. Players might also get excited to challenge themselves to the uncertain obstacles in the new game situation after they pass one.  In order to win, they need to reason and put consistent efforts to pass another task through errors and trials. Hence, this is like a circle, which makes them hardly to stop. 

Let's take teaching vocabulary for example. I like using Vocabulary Games, because there are many types of games (like Memory Match / Cross Word/ Word Search/ Which one/ Unscramble, etc.) arranged by themes and levels. Personally, I seldom play games, but when I clicked START button..I found myself getting hooked, because it is so easy to click the mouse and match the words. The animation makes the activity very interesting and interactive. There are always hints to make a guess and opportunities to learn when I gave a wrong answer. For example, if I teach Halloween vocabulary. I will make a word search grid to let students to play with it. The teaching objective is to aid students in learning new words and their spellings by intensively searching for them in the puzzle, letter by letter. Also, I can use the cross word to let students write the words based on the definition I provide. Hence, they need to read the English explanation and retrieve the word from the memory by spelling them correctly in the boxes. Students will find these games more engaging than read and copy the words. Teachers need to provide students assistance if possible to make sure students are on the right track. Also, walkthrough can be provided if the task is challenging, which can guide and facilitate students' thinking and output. Relevant pictures and musics can be provided as long as they can facilitate students' learning outcomes.

To assess whether students' learning outcomes match the teaching objectives or not, we need to make sure students fully participate in the activity at first hand. Hence, we can use peer work or group work to invite them to collaborate and get involved in the games. During the game process, we need to observe students' needs and give explanation if possible. After the game, we can recycle the words and  adapt them in another game genre that they are familiar with to see whether they can figure it out again. 

As for the supplement games for students to play outside classrooms, OGI Games is a good resource. If I teach a group students majoring in medical science, I will introduce Arm Surgery to them. There are a lot of vocabulary in the context of hospital. Also, students can learn a lot of verbs by following the instructions by immersing themselves in the virtual situation.  Moreover, they can learn the words about sequence by doing the operation. 

Hence, in this game, students can learn vocabularies in a meaningful context. Also, they can learn by doing, which benefits their understanding. Moreover, they will find it very relaxed. Digital games for L2 classrooms are like alliterative but powerful arrows for us to target the teaching objectives and students' needs. 

Twitter is A Double-edged Swords

                Twitter is a very inspiring platform for us to send and read the microblogs from people that we follow. Users can build their own social networks by following one another. As future teachers in such a digital age, how can we make the best use of it in our teaching?

                 I read Great Twitter Tools for Your Professional Development. I found a lot of interesting tools here, especially the twitTV. We can click the link and watch a lot of interesting videos in it. Also, Teachers Guide to the use of Twitter in Classroom is also a very practical one. Twitter is a good way for learners and educators to communicate, collaborate and to be connected, enabling learners to improve "global literacy, information literacy, network literacy, and digital citizenship." In the future I will create a twitter account for my class, offering my students an avenue to communicate and cooperate among each other. I can @ my students to invite them to participate. Plus, we can follow others to get more inspiring resources and help students to build a bridge to seek more learning opportunities. If the students find some interesting topics or ideas, they can post it on twitter and the other students will see it when they log in. Hence, information is selected and filtered. I think I need to promote students to post their original work on their twitters, instead of simply retweet each time. Creativity is a big matter. If they have any inspiration or feeling, they can write it down. They can also take some beautiful pictures or make some poems and share it with peers. Additionally, Twitter HOTS & Establishing a Twitter Routine in the Classroom gave us good insights of how to use twitter to promote higher order thinking skills and establish Twitter routines in the classroom.

          

             However, I watched the video from Professor David Crystal, one of the world's leading linguistic experts, who demonstrates some myths and realities about the texts and tweets. The myths he covers are: 1) Youth text messages are littered with mangled abbreviations; 2) the youth use abbreviations as a way to trick adults; 3) the youth don't know how to spell; 4) youth school essays are filled with inappropriate abbreviations; 5) we are rearing a generation of children who have no responsibility toward language.

            This is a very thought-provoking standpoint of view. To solve this problem, I think as educators, we need to teach students the digital etiquette and set up rules for the students when they post.

           

                           

Question: Does Social Media aid or harm Literacy Levels?

Further reading: 

http://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wc/does-texting-harm-or-help-literacy/

Social Networking

      Key words: community-based approach, educational technology project

   

"            "Ning's impact on education has been profound, showing the potential educational networking has to transform professional learning." Ning offers a platform for people who have the same professional interests to connect together to form a social network. A lot of cyber learning communities have been established. Within each community, participants share the same goal and vision. I experienced EFL classroom 2.0, where I found a great home for learning and teaching. We can log in via Facebook account. Peers with similar minds come together to share and exchange information and resources, making the benefits multiple. 

              Community-based approach requires individuals' participation and engagement. Within a learning community, learners, like a set of nodes connected by virtual ties, are immersed by the information and knowledge, being educated everyday. In this sense, knowledge has become more accessible in this platform, because students can approach the knowledge in an easier manner. 

        Within the community,  learning is more of a dynamic pattern, which offers learners more opportunities to exchange ideas, get inspiration and absorb new information, because technology makes it available beyond time and space. Conversation among learners facilitates problem-solving and information transmission. Through interaction with teachers or other students, more and more involvement is required. Hence, learners will be more motivated by participating in the activities in the learning community.