Please cite as: LeLoup, J. W., & Ponterio, R. (2000). Creating standards-based activities integrating authentic materials from the WWW”, in Wm. Heller, Ed., ABC to PhD: Foreign Language Proficiency for ALL, Annual Meeting Series No. 17, 13-20; Schenectady, NY: New York State Association of Foreign Language Teachers.
Foreign language teachers share the goals of developing their students’ communication and cultural skills as evidenced in the national Standards for Foreign Language Learning, the New York State Learning Standards for Languages Other Than English (LOTE), and the New York State Syllabus. Teaching methods that emphasize language in context and meaningful communication naturally lead to the extensive use of authentic language and culturally appropriate materials that play a major role in developing student abilities. The vast range of WWW sites on the Internet, where native speakers use the technology on a daily basis for real communication, represents a wide array of authentic materials at the virtual fingertips of the technically savvy language teacher. Two major hurdles need to be faced to arrive at a pedagogically sound integration of such materials in the FL classroom. First, materials should be selected on the basis of their appropriateness to the goals of the FL curriculum. This means that teachers require techniques for locating and selecting the right materials among the seemingly infinite sea of WWW pages available. Second, pedagogically sound activities are required to allow students to benefit from exposure to these materials. Bringing Web pages into the classroom for students to read simply because we find them on the net is not enough. By addressing the curricular goals of the class and paying attention to the standards, we can help students get the most from access to the Internet. In this article we will examine the role of the standards in designing activities using authentic materials, explore the range of materials available online, introduce the use of search engines to identify curriculum related content, suggest the use of Shrum and Glisan’s interactive model for reading/listening texts as a basis for developing activities, and finally examine a number of sample activities that implement these suggestions. A WWW page specifically designed to support and illustrate the concepts and to provide links to examples presented in this article may be found online:
The Standards for Foreign Language Learning are the unifying factor for the FL profession. The eleven standards (see Appendix A) included in the five goal areas of Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities are a set of guiding principles for FL educators. The standards are meant to be a framework for curricular development that teachers can use when planning their lessons, both short-term and long-range. The standards provide teachers with a compelling rationale for FL education that has been heretofore absent:
Standards preparation is forcing attention to the broader view of second
language study and competence: what should students know and be able to
do—and how well?
(Standards, 1999; p. 15)
Many states have reoriented their own standards in consonance with these national guidelines. New York State has two standards for LOTE: Communication and Culture. These are identical to the first two goal areas of the national standards. Several other states (e.g., Nebraska, Ohio) have chosen to rewrite their state standards to parallel exactly the five national goal areas. As a consequence, local districts realigned their curricula to coincide with this national impetus. The result has been a sweeping reconstruction across all levels of FL education, which can only bode well for the state of FL instruction.
Most teachers find it easy to address the first two goal areas and their standards on a daily basis in the FL classroom. Clearly, communication and culture are two thrusts that permeate most teaching objectives in a FL classroom. The challenge—and the objective—becomes including the other three goal areas as topics of emphases on a regular basis. With a focus on Connections, more FL teachers are seeking out collaborative projects with colleagues from other subject areas. A model example of addressing the Connections goal area is a joint project between the French teacher and the Art teacher in a suburban school district of a large metropolitan Midwest city (Jorgen, 1992). With the guidance of their teacher, students in French IV studied several French painters, their biographies, their artistic styles, their influence. This information might be found in libraries and on the Internet. The Art teacher then provided instruction in painting and assisted the students in imitating the studied artists’ styles. The students created either a copy of a well-known painting by their chosen artist or an original work in the style of that artist. The work was presented along with the information researched by the student in an oral presentation in the TL. PowerPoint could be used as an adjunct to the presentation, thus incorporating technology in another way.
The Comparisons goal area frequently ties in well with topics that address the Cultures goal. Sometimes teachers find teaching culture difficult due to resistance on the part of the students to anything that is “not like we do it.” By making comparisons between practices and perspectives of the TL culture and our own, we can help our students focus on similarities rather than differences. This, in turn, may assist the students in taking that initial step past their own cultural biases and blinders and into the broad sunlight of a multicultural world. The use of Venn diagrams is often helpful in activities that address the Comparisons goal of 4.2, Culture Comparison. An example is a comparison of the practices, perspectives and rituals involved in the celebration of the quinceañera and the “sweet sixteen” party. What at first might appear strange and “weird” to our students gradually takes on normalcy when compared to a similar rite of their own culture. Many times our students do not even think in terms of rites, perspectives, and/or practices. They think everyone does things the same way they do . . . or should. A good starting point might be having them begin with an examination of their own culture (Galloway, 1992). Getting them to realize they do have culturally-based biases and perspectives is a huge first step.
The Communities goal area is generally the one that gets short shrift. Somehow the idea of using the TL outside of the classroom seems “foreign” to many people. One idea we do want to get across to our students is that the TL they are studying is something that millions of other people live every day: they speak, eat, work, argue, sleep, dream, etc. in the TL! In addition, we want to instill in our students a love for the language so that their TL study does not end when our class does but rather continues throughout their lives. An example of an activity that addresses this goal area is a local field trip to an ethnic neighborhood in the city where you teach. A middle school teacher in a suburb of another large metropolitan Midwest city arranged a field trip to a Spanish neighborhood of the city wherein her students got to visit, interview, and know native speakers (NSs) who were store owners, residents, and citizens of the larger community. The students “visited” a Spanish-speaking place without ever leaving the boundaries of their city, and they witnessed first-hand how the TL they studied was a viable means of communication for an entire community of people (Rule, 1993).
You may be addressing many of the national standards regularly in your
classroom without making a conscious effort to do so. In order to
see how well you are addressing all of the standards in your lessons, we
suggest the following exercise:
By engaging in the above exercise periodically, you can work through
your curriculum systematically checking for compliance with the standards
in a manageable way. The aim is not to include extraneous material
and activities merely to address as many standards as possible in each
lesson. Rather, we should strive to give “equal time” and representation
to each goal area over the entire school year. By examining our curriculum
in this systematic way, we can see where we are falling short, and we can
make a conscientious effort to target those standards that are poorly represented
in our lessons. [See the Web page for this article for additional
examples and links to further information about the standards.]
What authentic Internet materials might be of use in the FL classroom?
The range of authentic materials that may be found on the Internet is extensive, but just because something is on the Internet does not make it accurate and is no guarantee of quality. We need to be selective about what we use, but we also can be more successful in finding quality materials if we explore a broad range of sites. To the teacher who is new to the Internet, the expanse of the Web can be daunting. What’s out there? How do I find it?
The many Web sites that we find most often represent authentic language and culture because they were developed by native speakers for native speakers. For students, this can be a bit like eavesdropping on a conversation in the target language (TL) country. Though it started out as an academic tool, the Web has become a medium through which a broad range of communication takes place. Official sites from TL countries include government pages that are used by ministries to disseminate information to its citizens, such as a site from the ministry of health. One can also find official promotional sites that seek to provide accurate information about the country to foreign tourists or journalists as well as to inhabitants of the country such as school children. Many sites for tourism or local economic information are supported by local governments or chambers of commerce. Non governmental organizations such as Doctors without Borders also promote themselves and provide information and services online. Professional and political organizations of all types, including unions, lobbyists, and political parties, seek to give their audience easy access to current, professionally useful information or to influence public opinion about their concerns. Such official sites tend to be relatively stable because their address is not likely to change and there is generally an individual or a company that is responsible for maintaining the site. Information on such sites is usually carefully prepared by professionals.
Educational institutions are a major source of materials on all sorts of topics because so many specialists in various disciplines are willing to share their expertise as a service to colleagues and the general public. These materials range from personal pages by individual teachers of all subjects in the TL country to extensive sites developed by teams of researchers with outside funding. Like schools, museums often set up sites developed by their own specialists seeking to provide information about their collection as well as to promote the museum to potential visitors. In many cases they show examples of items in their collections in addition to information about the collection.
Unofficial sites by individuals with a strong interest in a topic abound on the Internet. Someone may know a lot about and wish to share a fascination with a particular artist, singer, geographical location, game, sport, animal, automobile, historical incident, skill, etc. Although these sites can be as good or better than materials by more official experts, they sometimes represent inaccurate information and poor or even vulgar language use. Unlike a textbook that has been written by a well trained expert and proofread by editors, Web pages offer no implied guarantee of quality, so the teacher must be vigilant in verifying the content found there. The same may be said of online discussion archives in the TL. Because almost anyone may join these discussions, there is often little or no control over the content that one may find there. Discussion archives and Web sites do complement each other in certain ways. Whereas most Web sites are presentations that allow students to practice their interpretive communication skills, discussion archives are a great source of interpersonal communication among natives in which different skills may be observed or even practiced if students choose to join in.
Commercial sites from companies selling every imaginable sort of goods and services represent culturally authentic communication designed to connect with potential customers in the TL country. Interesting differences may be observed in the point of view or attitudes that appear in these pages and in the students’ home country. As companies expand their horizons to address a world market, many show an awareness of their world audience and illustrate an understanding of intercultural communication while others maintain strong elements of their local culture. While some commercial sites are essentially ads for their products, others are actually an online point of sales and so illustrate the complete transaction from start to final sale and delivery of merchandise. Others attract customers by offering useful online services such as online driving test preparation, maps, automobile travel planning, air or train schedules, etc., that students can use for project planning or classroom information gap activities.
Online media including newspapers, magazines, radio, and television stations present online versions with current news as well as articles and documentaries on a range of topics. Live radio has become immensely popular, and that is about as authentic as it gets, even more authentic in some ways than bringing into the classroom a native speaker who will tend to slow down and simplify language to help the students understand. Although radio will show students speech by communications professionals who are attentive to language and responsible for the accuracy of their content, it will also, through interviews, illustrate speech by natives from various geographic locations and a wide range of social classes. Virtual magazines dedicated to specific interests can provide extended readings on topics of particular interest to individual students. Online newspapers present information on current events and problems of concern to their target audience and can often be paired with English language articles on the same topics to give students background information that will help them decode the TL articles.
Sites by other teachers of the TL may not be authentic, with the possible exception of some by native speakers who are also teachers, but they are certainly a potentially rich resource and a helpful stepping stone to working with authentic materials. They often contain ideas that the teacher can apply to his or her own classroom, and they can save time by making it possible for a teacher to find and use a new activity without necessarily having to completely start from scratch.
All in all, the Internet gives us access to everything imaginable and then some, including objectionable materials that we would rather not see. The responsible teacher will always keep a close watch over what the students are viewing online in order to prevent wasting time on inappropriate viewing, to ascertain that materials are of good quality both in language and content, and to properly integrate authentic materials with the curricular goals.
How can we find materials appropriate to our curricular goals?
The Internet is so extensive that locating good materials can be a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Many media sites are a source of renewable material because the content of the site changes on a regular basis. This has the advantage of facilitating the task of locating new items on a variety of current topics. However, it also presents us with the challenge of either saving older pieces for which we have developed pedagogically sound activities, or developing new activities on the spot to take advantage of current media offerings. Most Web pages deal with a single topic, so finding pages that fit into our FL curriculum does entail searching for that unique page that meets our requirements among the millions that do not. The best piece of advice to teachers beginning to use the Internet in the FL classroom is that, as always, it is essential that the curricular goals should drive the selection of materials; the materials found on the Internet should not determine the content or goals of the course.
Modern Languages for Communication: New York State Syllabus (NYSS) gives teachers the range of topics that can help them define the goals that will prepare students for FL success. These basic topics include:
1. Personal Identification
2. House and Home
3. Services
4. Family Life
5. Community/Neighborhood
6. Physical Environment
7. Meal Taking/Food/Drink
8. Health and Welfare
9. Education
10. Earning a Living
11. Leisure
12. Public and Private Services
13. Shopping
14. Travel
15. Current Events (pp. 13-17)
Organizing one’s WWW bookmarks by these topics or collecting appropriate URLs in folders along with other materials used in support of these topics can be helpful ways of keeping track of pages. There is so much out there that pages can look interesting when we come across them but potentially be hard to find later on when we need them.
Two great resources that help teachers develop an online bag of tricks
are collections of links by other teachers that help us avoid reinventing
the wheel and search engines that assist us in tracking down sites on specific
topics. There are plenty of people on the Internet who have collected
lists of their favorite links. These come in all shapes and sizes, so it
is likely that most of us can find some that meet our particular needs.
Those listings made by other teachers can be most useful when they describe
the pages and their potential suitability and when they propose only pages
that these teachers have found to be particularly useful. One part of the
FLTEACH Web site includes references to a number of such resource collections
by FL teachers, lab directors, and others:
Finding just the right resource to support a curricular goal is more likely to require specific searching for keywords related to that topic. All of the NYS Syllabus topics and their subtopics may be illustrated by pages found on the Internet, but locating these involves more than just searching for the topic name. WWW search engines are designed to help us locate pages on specific topics by keyword. We will examine some basics of how search engines work, explore the differences among a few of them, and look at some examples of specific searches.
Although the details of how individual search engines work may vary, the basic idea is essentially the same for all, and an understanding of these concepts will help make our searches more successful. A program, often with the aid of input from people who submit pages, classify sites, or maintain the site database, will search the Internet for WWW pages that are not in its database, extract and index all words from the page, and identify all links on the page so that any linked pages may later be analyzed in the same way. The result is an index of all words in Web pages around the world, allowing us to search the Internet for all pages that contain combinations of any keywords that we chose.
There are many dozens of WWW search engines, but we will look a bit more closely at a few well known ones that demonstrate a variety special functions in order to get an idea of how they may differ and to help us choose those that give us better results. Altavista, Google, Yahoo, and Dogpile all stake claim to a particular feature that sets them apart. In reality, the differences among these often hinge upon on how similar features are implemented. Altavista.com claims to be very fast and comprehensive. Like other sites it includes special searches for images and audio as well as directory listings and algorithms that bring more relevant sites to the top of its listing. Google.com doesn’t propose a directory listing, but it does focus its efforts on doing an excellent job of ranking hits that should correspond to what the user is trying to find. Google also makes a claim of integrity because it does not allow sites to pay to improve their visibility in the display of search results. Yahoo.com’s claim to fame is the quality of its directory listings. Yahoo also has directory listings for geographical locations such as France: fr.yahoo.com, Mexico: mx.yahoo.com, Chinese: chinese.yahoo.com, in the TL. Dogpile.com is a multi-engine search interface that pulls together results of searching multiple engines at once. It sends the request to three engines, and if it does not find enough hits, it continues sending the request to other engines. There are enough differences among these tools to make personal preference an important factor in selecting the ones that we use.
Using a search engine to locate authentic Web materials should be viewed as an interactive process, narrowing or expanding the search until you find what you want. Using topics from your syllabus as the keywords in a search will not usually be very successful. For example, a great page illustrating “personal identification” in Spain probably will not mention the topic by name. The trick is to come up with keywords that you think are likely to appear in context on the pages that you hope to find. Thus keywords like “hermano”, “hermana”, “padre”, “abuela”, “años” might be more useful for finding pages that give information about an individual’s family group. The more of your keywords a page contains, the more likely it is to be the sort of thing you are looking for, and you can expect these more likely pages to appear towards the top of your listing. There are a few important tricks to help narrow the field of hits, making it easier to locate the right pages more quickly. By using one search as the staring point of another search, we can refine the results as we add or remove keywords making the search broader if we are not finding what we seek or narrower if we are finding too many irrelevant pages.
Parentheses and + or - signs work in many search engines to make a request
more specific. Suppose we are looking for information about Martin Luther.
If we give the search engine the keywords Martin Luther, we will
likely find some pages about the reformation leader, but we would also
find a wide range of pages containing either the word “martin” (Martin
Short, Mary Martin, purple martin) or the word “luther” (Lex Luther, Luther
College, Luther’s Beef Jerky, Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson). Because
we are really looking for the complete name “Martin Luther” and
not the separate words, we can narrow the search by putting the name within
quotation marks. Then only pages containing the complete phrase “Martin
Luther” together will be found. Of course, these will also include
many pages about Martin Luther King Jr. To narrow the search farther, we
can use a minus sign to tell the search engine to exclude all pages containing
the word “King”. Our search now becomes “Martin Luther” -King.
This helps a lot but still gives over 70,000 hits in Altavista. To
narrow the search even more we might add keywords that refer to things
about Martin Luther that we hope to find. To limit our results only to
pages that contain all of our keywords, many search engines use plus signs.
If we want information about Martin Luther’s 95 theses and the notion of
personal freedom, we might use the following search:
The plus signs mean that only pages containing those terms will
be displayed. This is called a logical “and”. Most, but not all, search
engines work this way. Google, for example, always automatically does a
logical “and”, excluding pages that do not contain all of the keywords.
The best way to be sure how any particular search engine works is to check
its HELP page for search tips or advanced search features. [See the Web
page for this article for links to these search engines.]
FL teachers will usually be searching for pages in the TL. Although many search engines allow us to specify the language we are looking for, this feature does not always work as well as simply using keywords in the TL. Teachers might also wish to use search engines from the TL country that might have an advantage in a TL search, but that is not always the case because search engines generally are not language specific. The best way to chose a search engine is to open a few of them, look at their search tips, then try the same search to see which one gives the results that you prefer. In doing this we should always keep in mind that the goal is to quickly find the best authentic TL pages that address topics included in our syllabus in a way that we can use to support our curricular goals.
What is the pedagogical basis for working with these materials?
As we said earlier, we do not want to use the authentic materials we find on the Internet just because they are there. We need to have a sound pedagogical basis for the activities we develop around these materials. It makes good sense to give our students exposure to authentic texts in the TL, both written and oral. But how we involve the students in working with those texts can make a major difference in the students’ attitudes toward working with authentic materials as well as how much comprehension they will have of the materials they are exploring. We need to prepare students to work with authentic materials, and we need to structure the task to fit the language level of the student. If we present a beginning level language learner with an entire page of text or a rapid-fire conversation between two NSs, they will be overwhelmed, frustrated, and may develop an irreversible negative attitude toward working with authentic materials. On the other hand, if we carefully structure the task to the abilities of the learners, they will derive great satisfaction from being able to comprehend a text intended for NSs. The self-confidence that this will engender will motivate them to try again the next time you present them with a task involving authentic materials.
Texts can frequently be used by students at many different stages of
language acquisition. The challenge is to devise activities that
suit the particular level of the learner. Some activities that learners
can do with relatively little language acquisition are:
A text may be recycled during a later stage of language development.
The advantages to this are several. First, the students are already
familiar with the text and will recognize it. This will allay some
initial fears, particularly if the text is somewhat complex. Second,
the students know they have already dealt successfully with this text on
one level, and they will be more apt to tackle a task of increased difficulty.
Third, it takes considerable time to find appropriate materials on the
Internet, and it would be a great time-saver to be able to recycle them
several times, depending on the language level and the activity.
Fourth, the NY State Syllabus advocates recycling of vocabulary, and the
topics tested on the Proficiency exam are the same as those that appear
on the Regents exam. What better reason for reusing great materials
that you spent much time culling from online sources?
Shrum and Glisan (1999) have devised an Interactive model for reading and listening texts. We frequently use this model as a basis for our online activities. The original model from the first edition of the Teacher’s handbook used the following six steps:
1. Pre-listening/Pre-reading
2. Identify main elements
3. Identify details
4. Organize/revise main ideas/details
5. Recreate text
6. React to text/explore intertextuality (Shrum & Glisan, 135).
The revised model in the second edition was adapted to address more directly the standards, particularly the three modes of the Communication standards: interpretive, interpersonal, presentational. The new model contains the following steps:
1. Preparation phase
2. Comprehension phase
3. Interpretation phase
4. Application phase
5. Extension phase (Shrum & Glisan, 1999, p. 137).
Our online sample activities for this article are, at times, a combination
of the two models, depending on the task and the text involved. Briefly,
the phases entail the following concepts:
Although we illustrate all of these phases in our samples, covering
all phases is certainly not a requirement in all cases. Students can work
with authentic materials successfully, and these materials can increase
motivation and effort in language study. Teachers must, however,
use sound models such as those above in the creation of activities that
employ these materials so their use is optimal and provides for maximum
language input and comprehension.
Putting it all together: sample activities
The following sample activities for the FL classroom present pages available on the Internet and use the pedagogical models discussed above to help students get the most from these authentic resources. All of these activities appear on the WWW page for this article and include links to the original Web pages that they support. Sample activities are for French and Spanish, but instructions for most are in English for easier comprehension by teachers of all languages. As noted earlier in the article, the Web address for these activities is: http://web.cortland.edu/flteach/wksp/nysaflt2000.html
This dentist visit activity, under the NYSS topic of Health and Welfare, integrates a variety of authentic materials including photos of a real visit to a French dentist, recorded audio of native speakers, a Web page that teaches French children about dental hygiene, a health questionnaire from a French insurance company, and a photo montage by an artist from Quebec representing an imaginary visit to a dentist by a hippopotamus. The various resources expose students to the topic from several distinct points of view. The two Preparation Phase activities set up the context for the student by eliciting information about what happens when one goes to the dentist. This can be done as a class (presentational mode, Standard 1.3) or in pairs (interpersonal mode, 1.1). The Comprehension Phase activity asks the student to listen to the conversation and learn how the dentist visit progresses in France (interpretive mode; 1.2). In the Interpretation Phase, students identify and report the differences observed between the French and American dentist visit (interpretive mode, 1.2; presentational mode, 1.3; 2.1; 2.2). The “Conseils pour les enfants” Comprehension Phase activity has students scan the text for information (interpretive mode, 1.2). In the “Questionnaire de Santé” Application Phase activity students fill out a questionnaire (interpretive mode, 1.2; presentational, 1.3). And in the Extension Phases activity students analyze features of new materials and compare them to those already studied (interpretive mode, 1.2; presentational mode 1.3; 2.1; 2.2).
This activity fits under the NYSS topic of Leisure. In this activity, students engage in a task they probably do often—going to the movies. The Preparation Phase gets them in the mindset of the activity and orients them to the kinds of questions and information they would typically ask and seek if they were, indeed, going to see a film. Students could brainstorm the responses to these questions as a class (presentational mode, Standard 1.3) or in pairs (interpersonal mode, 1.1). Next, in the Interpretation and Comprehension Phases, comes individual work on the Internet, with students interpreting authentic texts at the cinema site in Spain (interpretive mode, 1.2). They then work in pairs (interpersonal mode, 1.1) to come to an agreement on the movie they will see. The Application Phase has students working together (interpersonal mode, 1.1) to recycle the information they have found and understood (interpretive mode, 1.2) in order to make a convincing presentation to their peers (presentational mode, 1.3). The Extension Phase allows students to pull it all together in a presentation aimed at persuading their peers to join them in seeing their preferred movie (presentational mode, 1.3).
The recreation activity also falls under the NYSS Leisure topic. This page is composed of activities that are designed to work with any TL page that presents sports available in a vacation spot in the mountains. To illustrate this flexibility, two primary resource pages are linked, one in French and one in Spanish. In the Preparation Phase students identify elements that suggest the source and purpose of the page. Then they imagine what they would do in such a place as a way of predicting what will appear on the page (interpretive mode, 1.2; presentational mode, 1.3). They scan the page to generate a listing of sports as a Comprehension Phase activity (interpretive mode, 1.2). In the Interpretation Phase students pay more attention to details by looking more closely at the available activities and compare them to those available at home. They also discuss these details in a group by trying to decide where to go (interpersonal mode, 1.1; 2.1). An Application Phase assignment allows the student to rework the content of the page into a different format (presentational mode, 1.3). In the Extension Phase, the student searches the Internet to find a different vacation location and then compares the two pages (interpretive mode, 1.2; presentational mode, 1.3).
This activity is a NYSS topic. Here students are asked to deal with personal information that relates to themselves: their names. They will also investigate some cultural perspectives and practices regarding naming customs in the Spanish-speaking world. The activities involve both listening and reading tasks. In the Pre-listening phase, students brainstorm their responses to the questions asked about naming practices in the U.S. (presentational mode, Standard 1.3). The Comprehension Phase requires careful listening on the part of the students to be able to understand the gist of the text and answer the initial questions of this portion of the task (interpretive mode, 1.2). They then work with a partner to compare answers (interpersonal mode, 1.1). The Interpretation Phase requires students to tackle the listening text in more depth and find answers to more complicated questions (interpretive mode, 1.2). In the Application Phase, the students must apply what they have learned to their own circumstances and then explain their names to their partner (interpretive & presentational modes, 1.2 & 1.3). The teacher could then use a Venn Diagram to show the similarities and differences between naming customs in the Spanish-speaking world and the U.S. This nicely addresses both the Cultures (2.1) and Comparisons (4.2) Standards goal areas. In the Extension Phase, students can involve their families in the quest for understanding the meaning of their names, thus addressing the Communities Standard of 5.1.
Conclusion
The Internet can be a wonderful resource for authentic materials for
FL teachers. The standards goal areas serve as clear guides for teachers
in their search for useful materials on the Web. Once located, these
materials can be used to create marvelous activities that address the standards
and enhance FL instruction by following sound pedagogical models.
This triangulation of resources and effort can only improve our teaching
and, hence, our students’ learning.
References
Brown, C., & Phillips, J. K. (1997, April). “National standards familiarization workshop.” Presented at the annual meeting of the Northeast conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, New York.
Galloway, V. (1992). Toward a cultural reading of authentic texts. In H. Byrnes (Ed.), Languages for a Multicultural World in Transtition. Northeast Conference Reports (pp. 87-121). Lincolnwood, IL: NTC/Contemporary Publishing Group.
Jorgen, T. (1992). Personal communication.
Learning Standards for Languages Other Than English. (1996). Albany, NY: The State Education Department.
Modern Languages for Communication. New York State Syllabus. (n.d.) Albany, NY: The State Education Department.
LeLoup, J. W., & Ponterio, R. (1997). Meeting the National Standards: Now What Do I Do? In A. Vogely, Ed., Celebrating Languages: Opening All Minds! NYSAFLT Annual Meeting Series 14; 43-50.
LeLoup, J. W., & Ponterio, R. (1998). Meeting the National Standards: Now What Do I Do?. Washington D.C.: ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics.
Rule, G. (1993). Personal communication.
Shrum, J. L., & Glisan, E. W. (1999). Teacher’s handbook: Contextualized language instruction. Second edition. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
Standards for foreign language learning in the 21st century. (1999). Lawrence, KS: Allen Press, Inc.
Webber, Sheila. “Business Information Sources on the Internet: Reviews of search engines.”
Communicate in Languages Other Than English
Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions.
Standard 1.2: Students understand and interpret written and spoken language on a variety of topics.
Standard 1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.
CULTURES
Gain Knowledge and Understanding of Other Cultures
Standard 2.1: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied.
Standard 2.2: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the products and perspectives of the culture studied.
CONNECTIONS
Connect with Other Disciplines and Acquire Information
Standard 3.1: Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language.
Standard 3.2: Students acquire information and recognize the distinctive viewpoints that are only available through the foreign language and its cultures.
COMPARISONS
Develop Insight into the Nature of Language and Culture
Standard 4.1: Students demonstrate understanding of the nature of language through comparisons of the language studied and their own.
Standard 4.2: Students demonstrate understanding of the concept of culture through comparisons of the cultures studied and their own.
COMMUNITIES
Participate in Multilingual Communities at Home and Around the World
Standard 5.1: Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting.
Standard 5.2: Students show evidence of becoming life-long learners by using the language for personal enjoyment and enrichment.
Standards for Foreign Language Learning