Advantages and disadvantages of the ELP

First of all, I would like to describe what the ELP is:

The European Language Portfolio is a tool developed by the Council of Europe to provide a way of teaching and assessing all languages in Europe.

Each school can adapt the ELP, but it must have three compulsory parts:

1. Language Passport: summarizes the linguistic identity saying how many languages you speak, what your level in each skill is (listening, speaking, reading and writing), what kind of certification you have and which your intercultural experiences with the language are.
2. Language Biography: is used to record how languages are acquired and learned and monitoring the progress in language learning (doing a tick in each descriptor we have achieved to do).
3. Language Dossier: contains a selection of work that shows the evidence of the language learning.

I have to say that I have never listened to talk about the ELP since two weeks ago, when the teacher explain us all above the ELP. Last year I did a master in Teaching Education (Economics specialty) and although I’m not working yet, if I had to teach my subject in English I would like to use the ELP because I believe that is a very interesting tool which has a lot of advantages. 

One of the most obvious advantage, in my opinion, is that make language learners to be more aware of the learning process, and this helps to be more objective whit the self-assessment and also develops a planning skill of their own learning.

I will teach in High School, so I think that is an important advantage use a tool that encourage learners to be more autonomous, because students are in age when they have to start to be seriously responsible of their learning and practice active learning.

According to that, when teachers use descriptor during the course when the students are doing activities, they know what is the objective, what is expected of them, and they can organize their learning process, know how to work and plan what could they need to achieve the aim. Set objectives also helps to motivate the students, who can see that they are improving their knowledge of the language progressively.

Another advantage is that using the ELP foster the continuous assessment and also the self-assessment, so students are more aware about what they can and cannot do and because of this they understand better the teacher assessment (they compare it with the progress they have record in their language biography).

Related to my subject, I find very interesting use the language dossier with a professional purpose, they can compile evidence of their abilities that help them to find a job in the future (covering letters, CVs, economic news comments…)

But, to my mind, teaching with the ELP has disadvantages too. The biggest disadvantage that I see is that it takes a lot of time prepare the activities in order to work with the ELP, it would be interesting to have some supporting resources to make easier this work, that requires a big effort from the teacher. I guess that another disadvantage is that you need the support of the school to work with the ELP in a whole way, because to my mind it has no sense work only during a year or in a lonely subject with the ELP.

In my opinion there are more advantages than disadvantages, so it’s a good idea extend the use of the ELP in order to improve the assessment of a language and the awareness of the own learning process.

Scaffolding

"Teaching is not transferring knowledge, is to create the possibilities for its construction."

Scaffolding in Education is related with H.O.T which it means teach in order to build the basis of a perdurable Knowledge.

To achieve that, we have to take into account:

• Context: be natural, be relevant, be active, make sense, allow discovering...
• Connections: connect the knowledge with another areas, knowledges, child's culture...
• Coherence: link everthing they've learnt with a real context.
• Challenge: appropiate balance between linguistic and conginitve challenge. Remember that a new content should be a step more, but not too difficult.
• Curiosity: make them move and learn by their own. We have to create the expectation and curiosity.
• Care: take care for children and treat them individually.
• Community: Children need to feel part of a community (they feel valued and secure).

How can we create a scaffolding lesson? I strongly recommend you to read the article "Scaffolding Strategies to use with your students" where explains that we have to follow this steps to build an unforgettable knowledge:

1. Show and Tell.
2. Tap into prior Knowledge.
3. Give time to talk.
4. Pre-teach vocabulary.
5. Use visual aids.
6. Pause, ask questions, pause, review.

Multiple Intelligences

All of our students are good at something and we have to help them to realize in which intelligence are they good, because the better you feel, the more you improve in anything.

The theory of multiple intelligences by Howard Gardner is a theory of intelligence that differentiates it into specific modalities, rather than seeing intelligence as dominated by a single general ability. Each person has a combination of this activities.

Gardner choose 8 abilities:

• Linguistic: facility with words and languages. They are typically good at reading, writing, telling stories and memorizing words along with dates.
• Logical/Mathematical: good at logic, abstractions, reasoning, numbers and critical thinking.
•  Spatial: deals with spatial judgment and the ability to visualize with the mind's eye.
• Bodily/Kinesthetic: People who have high bodily-kinesthetic intelligence should be generally good at physical activities such as sports, dance, acting, and making things.
• Musical: sensitivity to sounds, rhythms, tones, and music.
• Interpersonal: People who have high interpersonal intelligence are characterized by their sensitivity to others' moods, feelings, temperaments and motivations, and their ability to cooperate in order to work as part of a group. Good interacting with the others.
• Intrapersonal: This refers to having a deep understanding of the self; what one's strengths/ weaknesses are, what makes one unique, being able to predict one's own reactions/emotions.
• Naturalistic: ecological receptiveness and "sensitive, ethical, and holistic understanding" of the world and its complexities.

The way we learn better is related with the multiple intelligences we have, so, teachers must use different styles of teaching to adapt the learning process to each kind of students we have. 

Teaching in H.O.T.

Higher Order Thinking

H.O.T is thinking on a level that is higher than memorize, it means that we have to think in order to learn something, and what is more, we have to use what we have learnt.

H.O.T involves learn something by understanding it (not memorizing, because you can memorize something without understanding it) and thinking for yourself about it.

According to that, we can say that H.O.T is a way of learning that has the following features:

• Does not include memorization.
• Require that we do something with what we learn.
• We must understand the information, connect them, categorize them, manipulate them, put them together in a new way and apply them.
• Is related with Metacognition: To think about your thinking (understand the processes involved in thinking).

It’s very important to teach in a H.O.T way because this helps to scaffold learning, and doing H.O.T questions to the scholars about the content that they study, we achieve to build the basis of a perdurable knowledge.

Higher Order Thinking is more difficult to learn or teach, but is also more valuable because such skills are more likely to be usable in novel situations.

For example, H.O.T is very important when we are teaching in CLIL because we have to teach the 4 skills of a language (listening, speaking, reading and writing) and that concern to promote an active way of learning, because students have to be able to speak and write by themselves, creating new knowledge adapting structures they have learnt before (by reading and listening) to new situations. In English students learn by manipulating information and applying it, memorizing is not effective. 

Classroom Atmosphere

Recently, I read an article about how important is that your classroom tells a story and attract students’ attention and curiosity.

Always is necessary create a good atmosphere at class, but in my opinion is more important when in addition you are going to teach in a foreign language. Learn in another language cause some stress in students, so a relaxed and comfortable environment it’s needed to achieve that students speak and ask questions without fear.

What makes a safe environment it’s a combination between good behaviors (teacher-student, student-student) and classroom decoration.  

You could thing that decoration is important only for pre-scholar, but a good decoration in class always increase visual stimulation, and as a result, they learn without notice it.

For example, you could make posters in your class with the commons polite forms to ask questions, maps abut countries you are talking about, objects related with the topics of the subject (like bills of different countries if you are talking about international trade), curiosities, news, pictures about famous films… And you can also put the names of the objects right next to learn new vocabulary.

All decoration should be done it with a purpose, which is provoke natural conversations around it.

I recommend you to read that article that could give you some ideas about how to decorate your classroom and why:

Click at the picture to go to the article.

Be creative, your students will thank you!

Plurilingualism Teaching

Which is the best linguistic program in Valencia?

At the past post we talked about the society’s change and plurilingualism's importance growth. According to this change, the educational model to teach languages needs to change too in order to build a plurilingual competence, based on the metacognitive skills that different languages learning share and made easy to learn a new one, because they are connected to each other in our mind.

In my opinion, the best model to teach languages, and more here in Valencia where we have two official languages, is the one which try to give the same importance to every language and which aim is that all languages should be:

1. Studied as a Subject.
2. Used as working language to teach the others subjects, that is the basis of the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).

Next presentation show the different Programs that we can apply in our schools and its features:

Linguistic Normalization Plan from garfam

From my point of view, the Linguistic Immersion Program is the best one to apply at schools because its target is that students achieve mastery on both official languages, and could introduce English and other languages as working languages too to teach in a CLIL way.

...What do you think about?

Language and Culture Integration

How to work it at school

There’s no doubt about that we live in a globalized world where the movement of people is increasing every day, and as a result, we can find at our classes students from different nationalities and cultures which requires an extra effort to communicate.

Due to this cultural change and the increasing social demand it’s necessary to promote, from school, the learning of foreign languages to build a solid basis of multilingualism.

In this context, we have to remember that we should also teach about the ethnic equality and the importance of cultural diversity, because cultural pluralism give the students the opportunity to grow as person and be open-minded in their future if they learn to have a wider view of the world.

Next video (Minute 32:55) is related with we are talking about, and shows how a program at a school’s library achieves to improve the language and cultural integration at the same time. This program is based on student volunteers that help the foreign students, and their families too, to do their homework, and, in the other hand, foreign families teach about their language and cultural habits.

I think that’s a good way to work through the respect and interest to other languages and cultures. 

The dreamed teacher

First thing everyone who want to become a teacher have to do is think about what kind of teacher want to be.

I guess that it help come back to our past and think about which teachers we will always remember and why…

Most of the teachers who have influenced me in a good way share a main characteristic, they are empathic people who can understand your point of view, what you are interested in, your worries… and try to help you with your personal growth, not only with your intellectual growth. About their lessons, I remember that were dynamic and related with present and real live.

Moreover, I used to like teachers who talk about our future and give us lot of information about what can we study, in which university, which time we had to make applications…

I think all of them were teachers with a huge interpersonal intelligence, and that it doesn’t mean that they were soft… They were very patient, however, they were serious too with what they had to teach and knew how to maintain the order at class.