Learning English

Chapter 4 of Learning a New Land (see my last post) is "The Challenge of Learning English." It offers a lot to think about. Here are some quotations:

[I]t takes longer than most would imagine to develop the English-language skills necessary to be competitive academically. By most, we mean those who have not gone through the process of intensively learning another language—the average voter, teacher, or politician—who make naive assumptions about language learning and impose unrealistic expectations based on a lack of first-hand experience. Researchers in the field of language learning have long known that acquiring an academically competitive level of language acquisition takes a significant period—from seven to ten years of strong academic environments and frequent second-language exposure.


* * * *

A general assumption is that the younger people are when they arrive in a new country, the better they will learn the new language. The evidence on this issue is complex and debated. Older learners, who have developed literacy in their native language and have greater cognitive maturity, seem to learn the rules of language more efficiently than do younger learners. Indeed, perhaps counterintuitively, assuming an identical quality of instruction, older learners learn a second language more quickly (though younger learners catch up over time). Younger learners generally acquire better pronunciation, however, which makes them seem more fluent and competent in the second language. Further, adults must master a larger vocabulary in the second language to appear "fluent."

The information about age surprised me: I had always heard that younger the better for learning languages. But, having studied a couple of languages as an adult, I do know that I was able to apply to the task knowledge and study skills that I just didn't have the first time I studied a language (7th grade). I'm always totally impressed by anyone who develops fluency in a second language, because I know how weak I am in the foreign languages I've studied. Sure, I can say "What time is it?" or "Where is the library?"—but I know I am far from being able to work or go to college in any language but English.

I think the point about younger language learners having good accents and yet lacking fluency in academic English is really important.

I think about the students I've known in my eight years as a volunteer tutor, and I wonder how many seemed to have mastered English but had the accent and day-to-day vocabulary without having a good understanding of academic English. The student who functions every day in English—talking to friends, playing basketball, going to the store, watching TV, texting, etc.—doesn't know that he or she doesn't know enough English to do well in high school and college. It seems to me that some of the following school issues might have to do with English rather than the subject the students are complaining about:

• I'm not good at Science. (Is the student's ability to read and understand complex material getting in the way?)
• I don't know what the teacher expects us to do for this assignment. (Was the student paying attention in class but not able to understand the complicated instructions about a social studies project?)
• Everything we have to read in English class is boring. (Does the student lack the vocabulary and sophistication to make reading Dickens or Steinbeck anything but a chore?)
• I don't know how to answer the questions in my history book. (Does the student lack the language skill to read the material, integrate it with what the student has already learned, think about relationships, and reason about the questions?)
• I hate story problems! (Does the student get confused by the English that's describing quantitative, special, or causal relationships?)

What can we do to help?

I'm not talking about totally reforming the way English-language learners are taught in schools. That would be nice, but it's a big project. Let's think about how our tutoring program can help. I am not trained in language acquisition, so these are just my thoughts.

• I think it's important for the staff and volunteers to engage the students in conversations. Give them practice talking and practice listening.
• We can encourage them to read, read, read—including a wide variety of material that will give them practice with academic English (not just fiction, but also news stories, science, business, history, and more).
• We can also encourage them to take in academic English aurally—watch Ted talks, watch National Science Foundation videos, listen to NPR, listen to podcasts about science or current events, and so on.
• And we can help them work through all of those homework challenges that might have a language component.

Vocabulary.com for SAT prep

A  former English teacher who now tutors juniors preparing for the SAT tells how helpful she and her students find Vocabulary.com:
"My Students Make Time for Vocabulary.com", Vocabulary.com blog, September 17, 2012.

Vocabulary, Digital Content, Snowballs, and the State of the Union

Interesting comment about the importance of consciously working to develop childrens's vocabularies, all through school. Vocabulary, Digital Content, Snowballs, and the State of the Union, Teach, Learn, Grow: The Education Blog" Feb. 27, 2013. The author says, "students must be exposed to important words they can leverage across subjects (academic vocabulary) and they must be exposed to words repeatedly and in a context that allows them to add words to existing schema or frameworks of background knowledge."

The More You Know the More You Learn

Vocabulary.com's blog has a post about a study that show that students with larger vocabularies learn new words faster. I suspect the same is true of all areas. The more math you know, the more quickly you can learn math, the more history you know, the more quickly you can learn history. One implication of this is that kids who fall behind in the early grades will have a harder and harder time as they progress through school. Ninth-grade history, for instance, will be much easier for the students who learned a lot of history in elementary school and middle school—both in class and through leisure reading, talking with parents, watching documentaries, and so on. Just as knowing more makes it easier to learn, knowing more also makes a subject more interesting and fun to learn more. I don't think it's a coincidence. It's just challenging to persuade a student who finds everything "boring" that it will probably get interesting if she puts in enough work to learn something.

60-Second Science

 

Scientific American offers 60-Second Science -- short (60-second!) podcasts on science topics. I think this could be good for students in middle school or high school:

1. The stories are interesting.
2. Students can build general knowledge.
3. The stories would expose students to good vocabulary words and crisp writing.
4. Students can read the stories at the same time they listen, to help with pronunciation, vocabulary, and comprehension.
5. They're short! Teens who say they don't have time to read books can hardly say they don't have time to listen to a one-minute story once in a while.

The podcasts are about many different science subjects, for example:

• The human body (Better Bitter Tasters Bust Bacteria)
• Environmental engineering (Low-Tech Wastewater Treatment Recipe Features Onions)
• Wildlife (Bird Nest Ciggy Butts Lower Parasite Load), (Scats Reveal Gorilla Diet Stats)
• Psychology (Deeper-Voiced Women Have Election Advantage)
• Archaeology (Humans Said Cheese 7,500 Years Ago), (Cave Artists Had Leg Up on Moderns)
• The water cycle (Mercury Dumped in Ocean Returns in Fog)
• Mechanical engineering (Shock Absorber Dampens Baseball Bat Stings)
• Paleontology (Sauropod Neck Bones Were Really Tendons)

If you can't talk your students into reading books at home, try challenging them to listen to and read some of these. (Even if they do read books, you can suggest the podcasts as a garnish.) Later, you can have a conversation about what they listened to and learned.

How 10th Grader Uses Vocabulary.com

Here's an interview with a student who talks about how he's using Vocabulary.com to learn new words: A High School Sophomore Plays With Friends, Vocabulary.com blog, Dec. 3, 2012. A 30-second video shows how to play Vocabulary.com with Facebook friends.

Washington State Kids Going to College

The Seattle Times reports that Washington State is near the bottom in the rate of students going to college (two-year or four-year) after high school. There's a companion story about an elementary school in Kent that's trying to get kids thinking about college from the very beginning.

• Why Washington's kids aren't going to college, Seattle Times, Sept. 22, 2012
• In Kent, the path to college begins in elementary school, Seattle Times, Sept. 22, 2012

Washington has a higher percentage of adults who have gone to college than average and yet a low percentage of young people who go. Why? Because a lot of well-educated people move here. See Trends: Washington state's higher-education paradox, Seattle Times, Sept. 22, 2012. Wouldn't it be great if our own students could get the educations they need to work at Microsoft, Nintendo, Boeing, Amgen, Genentech, and so on?

We need to remember vocational programs in community colleges and technical schools, too. I know a young man who is finishing a two-year welding program at a community college, and he should be able to get a job and make a good living. We need good mechanics, carpenters, chefs, electricians, nurses, medical technicians, dental hygienists, and more. To get training for these fields, students still need to get through high school and enroll in a program. Study skills, reading, math, and language arts will be important to them, even if they don't choose to go to a four-year college.

I have sometimes tutored a teenager who didn't have enough homework for the hour and yet did not want to read a book. If your student is like that, you try reading these articles together and talking about them, for a little reading practice and an opening to talk about what comes after high school. There are some math skills to practice, too—reading charts, talking about percentages.

If your or your student like Vocabulary.com, try this list based on these news stories.

Biomedical Research Story

Maybe a teen is more interested in medicine than rocket science. Try reading  this recent article about research at the UW: UW researchers see work as step toward regenerating human heart, Seattle Times, Aug. 7, 2012.

Want to work on some of the hard words? Try this vocabulary list on Vocabulary.com.

Rocket Science Story

Here's another fairly short story that might interest some older students who are thinking about careers and college—or loud, exciting rockets that go fast: Student-built rocket with experimental motor blasts to 1st-place finish, UW Today, Aug. 10, 2011.

There's a cool video showing the rocket taking off. It went over 5 miles high!

The team of students worked on the project for a year and a half. That's a lot of work—but designing a new rocket motor is a big deal!

Of course to talk about rocket science, you need some vocabulary, like "propulsion" and "design." A vocabulary list based on the article is here. As with other lists on Vocabulary.com, it gives you practice with new words (along with points and "badges" when you get them right).

President Obama's Speech to Students

During President Obama's first year in office, he gave a speech to students at a high school that was televised to schools around the country. You can read the speech and watch a video of it here. (Some students might find it helpful to be able to listen to Pres. Obama speaking as they read the trasncript.) Are some words hard? Check out the vocabulary list at Vocabulary.com.

[T]oday I'm calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education—and do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending some time each day reading a book. Maybe you'll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you'll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all young people deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you'll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. . . .

But whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes you get that sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work—that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star. Chances are you're not going to be any of those things.

The truth is, being successful is hard. You won't love every subject that you study. You won't click with every teacher that you have. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right at this minute. And you won't necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

Most students like President Obama: maybe that would help make this a good, short reading exercise—and, of course, an opportunity to talk about starting the new school year with a commitment to engaging with the work.

Hangman from Oxford

Oxford Dictionaries Online includes a free Hangman game. Most of the words are too hard for young students, but it should be a good challenge for teens. Some words should be within any teen's vocabulary ("consumer," for instance). With other words, a student might say that he or she has never heard of it—but even the harder words ("aqueous" or "gorgon," for instance) should be within reach (and are the sort of words that might be on the SAT). If a student is curious, there's a link to the definition.

Vocabulary.com

Vocabulary.com is a terrific site. It has a very fast dictionary and lots of tools for helping you learn words. AND it has NO ADS!

 To use the vocabulary lists (and create your own), you need to register (free). You have to be at least 13 years old to register. Once you register, you can keep track of the words you're learning. And the system keeps track of what you've already done so it can help you practice and improve.

There are lots of lists of words that are already put together, at different levels of difficulty. For example, if you like The Hunger Games but you stumble over some of the words, you might decide that it would be helpful to use "The Hunger Games" Vocabulary from Chapter 1.


You can look over the list of words ("canvas," "cocoon," "insist," "scrawny," etc.). Or you can look at a list with definitions. Or a list with definitions and notes, including the sentences from the book where the words are used. Want more? Click and you can read notes about any word. For example, for "venture":

As either a noun or verb, venture implies risk. Your family won't like it if you leave school to go on an artistic venture. Those who chose to venture off school grounds were never seen again.

You've probably noticed that venture is a shortened form of adventure. This happened sometime between 1100 AD and 1400 AD during the time that Middle English was spoken. While the two words are similar in meaning, when you subtract the "ad," you lose a teaspoon or two of fun, and add a heaping tablespoon of risk.

The same page offers more detailed definitions. On the right side, you can click to see the word used in different sentences from the news, sports, business, science, and so on.

You can try out your vocabulary by clicking on "Learn this List."  You get a series of multiple-choice questions about the words in the list. If you guess right, you get a cheery message ("Nice work!"). If you don't, you get another chance, and another. You can also ask for hints—either having the program eliminate two wrong answers or give you a sample sentence. When you don't get a word on the first try, the system remembers it, so you'll get a review later.

After 10 questions, you get a score. You see your best streak (e.g., 6 in a row), and you get a bonus if you got all 10 right.  Then you can keep going to the next round. Getting the scores so often makes it into a game. It's fun to try to get a long streak going or to get a bonus for a perfect round.

After you feel pretty good about the vocabulary from chapter 1, then you can move on to the list for chapter 2, and then chapter 3.

There are lists for famous speeches (e.g., Franklin Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech, a speech by Nelson Mandela) and lists for literature (e.g., Walden, The Great Gatsby).

And there are lists designed to help students prepare for standardized tests, like the SAT.
Vocabulary.com is produced by Thinkmap. Thinkmap has other products that require a subscription, but Vocabulary.com is free. Here is Thinkmap's press release from when it launched Vocabulary.com  (April 2011).  


In 2012, Vocabulary.com was an Official Honoree in the Education category of the Webby Awards. 
The more I use this site, the more I like it.

Anagram Fun

An anagram is a word or phrase that's formed by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase. For example, the letters that make up "A decimal point" can be turned into the anagram "I’m a dot in place."

Definition from vocabulary.com.

(Compare vocabulary.com with dictionary.com. Which one has lots of ads? Which one is easier to read?)

More from vocabulary.com:

People mainly make anagrams just for fun, but sometimes they’re used as pseudonyms or codes. For example, the French writer Francois Rabelais published his controversial first book under Alcofribas Nasier, an anagram of his name. The most entertaining anagrams are the ones where the rearranged letters make some sort of comment on the original. "Dormitory" turns into the anagram "dirty room," and "snooze alarms" can be rearranged into "Alas! No more Zs."

People who are good at seeing anagrams are often terrific Scrabble players, because they can look at a tray of seven letters and see new words that those letters can make.

I just came across a site where a programmer made a mock instant messaging app. You exchange comments with Sternest Meanings, who turns everything you say into an anagram.

Here's an example:

sternest: Ahoy mate!
webuser: Hi there, Sternest Meaning!
sternest: I'm the sneering threatens.
webuser: Hey, I'm going to the tutoring center tonight.
sternest: Unremote eighty-eight contorting. To thing.
webuser: Are you coming?
sternest: Gooey cranium.
webuser: What are you reading?
sternest: Graduate on haywire.
webuser: See ya later!
sternest: Steely area.

Give it a try. Can you see how the program makes new words from the ones you wrote?

By the way, "Sternest Meaning" is an anagram of a two-word phrase. Can you figure it out?

Freerice.com: Educational and Addictive (in a Good Way!)

Freerice.com is a game site that does good. When you play and get right answers, advertisers give to the United Nations World Food Programme (the world's largest humanitarian organization fighting hunger). You get the fun of doing well at the game, and people who need food get food.

The game is simple: you're asked a question and given four possible answers. If you guess the right one, you earn 10 grains of rice. If you guess wrong, you don't. Either way, you keep going.

The game is always challenging (but not too hard), because if you get a lot of questions right, it gives you harder questions, and if you get a lot of questions wrong, it gives you easier questions. So you always end up being at a level where you get some questions right and some questions wrong. It makes you want to try one more . . . and one more . . . and one more.

You can set up an account to keep track of how much rice you've won—and to challenge your friends!

You can choose from different subjects:

HUMANITIES

• Famous Paintings
• Literature (This is literature from all around the world.)

ENGLISH

• English Vocabulary
• English Grammar

MATH

• Multiplication Table (This doesn't get harder than 12 x 12.)
• Basic Math (Pre-Algebra)

CHEMISTRY

• Chemical Symbols (Full List)
• Chemical Symbols (Basic)

LANGUAGE LEARNING

• German
• Spanish
• French
• Italian

GEOGRAPHY

• World Landmarks
• Identify Countries on the Map
• World Capitals
• Flags of the world

SCIENCES

• Human Anatomy

TEST PREPARATION

• SAT®

For younger students, I recommend English Vocabulary, English Grammar, and Multiplication Table.

For older students, I recommend English Vocabulary, English Grammar, Spanish (if they're taking Spanish!), and SAT.  The SAT practice questions cover both language arts and math. Great practice!


Here's a video made by some high school students who really like Free Rice!