NJ & beyond
My chat presentation was given again, this time at the NJ Higher Ed ESL Conference in Montclair NJ. I barely changed my script, but did, and pointed out Edmodo and other new things. People however were quite interested in the blogs themselves, and all changes that have come out of them. Between this New Jersey conference, and Miranda's presentation (see below), and with other perspective, I've noticed a few changes in the landscape.
Some people are quite focused on how chatting and informal language improves more formal writing. There is a connection, as Miranda pointed out, having to do with fluency and confidence; I should keep Peter Elbow references closer at hand, as he is who I draw my inspiration from. The fluency-first movement, as applied to reading, writing, speaking, and all language skills, basically was right when it said that you have to be comfortable in your own informal writing self, before you can really crank out the structured stuff; thus it makes little sense to demand essays out of intermediate students who really don't write much of anything else. Under questioning I also said this in New Jersey: increase the amount of writing your students do. Let them compare relentlessly what they said, and what would have worked better (Community Language Learning). Informalize the setting; concentrate on the communication. Make them write so much that they never have trouble getting started.
I had a discussion with Miranda Ma, following her presentation on using weblogs, which was given at SIUC and well-attended. We came around to my favorite topic, which was chatting and how the world is tending toward a lot of code-switching these days. She told me a little bit about life in Macau, and Hong Kong, where she grew up, and I was determined to save it, though a couple of days have passed already.
It's an agreed-upon fact that young people are code-switching more, and particularly in online environments, and mixing languages in ways that older people would not generally allow. We flung examples around, and at one point she said that Hong Kong people were notorious for it; later, a youtube that she shared gave some details on who did it, how, and possibly why. I haven't yet watched the youtube so I'll put it here and peruse it later, but, the upshot is that it means different things to different people, and some (most notably, the mainland Chinese) didn't care for it at all. Also, she said that clearly people don't tend to code-switch within words (at least not as a general pattern), but were more likely to code-switch within sentences or larger environments.
She herself grew up in a household where Taishanese was spoken, but her grandparents spoke Burmese, so she knew several languages from the start. Taishanese, she said, is much like Cantonese, but not quite. Yes, people who knew them both went back and forth quite a bit.
Then came my own idea, that came out of the blue, more or less. In my generation, I said, language was more closely bound by culture, so your use of language was by nature identification with culture. It seems to me that if you truly separate it from culture, then you're free to simply use the best language for the best purpose, as you would pick tools from a large assortment, picking the best one for the best job. but if you are aware of language as a kind of identification, you are more likely to reject code-switching as a pattern and show a clear preference for one language. But language isn't necessarily cultural by nature. If people are truly bi-cultural, they are more likely to simply be free to use what they wish with others who are similar. Why not?
twitter stories
This blog, sleepy for a while, may yet become the home of a new course of action; I am doing research on Twitter. There are some things i haven't found homes for. This weblog is as good a place as any. Here are starters:
A story about Lance Armstrong and his bicycle; apparently the bicycle was stolen, but twitterers organized and found it rather quickly.
A story about a kidnapping somewhere in the Middle East; because of a successful tweet, the kidnappers were found out and the person was freed relatively quickly. How would one track down this story? It's a challenge.
One I might be taking up, I guess!
TESOL 2009, Denver, CO
Uncharted but breathtaking: Integrating chat into the writing class is almost ready: I've written five or six mini-articles and a script; I've almost finished the handout, and I'm contemplating what the presentation itself will look like.
I do want to say: I've learned a lot about chat; I have a lot more to learn. I've come to call it "conversational writing". I've come to see it in a different light. More on this later. I'm hoping to use this weblog for comments that come directly from the presentation. Stay tuned.
more & more, chat in the new paradigm
some short things to ramble about as I get ready for my TESOL presentation, Denver, in about a month:
-just finished another writing class with chat in it; some people again handled it well and easily, while others were amazed that it was possible, that they could do it, that it happened in a writing class, etc. In general it was a class of people who had excellent grammar, excellent finding & searching skills, etc.; they'd been around.
-the class chat was marred somewhat by a difficult situation in which Firefox, on an e-mac, made it impossible to copy/paste anything into the TappedIn chat window. Tapped In in general was also difficult, with people occasionally in the CCR (comfy conf. room) and not knowing it, or seeming to be there yet not. But the inability to copy/paste url's was the most frustrating. No way out of it, either, except getting out and doing the whole thing (including log-in, and finding the URL's) in Safari.
-I've become interested in truly bilingual chats. It was pointed out to me that chats use emoticons and pictures often; and therefore, are not totally sound-based anyway; they clearly involve just seeing, reading & typing. Now here's the question though. Assuming everyone in a chat room knows two languages perfectly well. So, they begin using both frequently, mixing freely, carrying on in two languages simultaneously. Presumably they just use whatever is easier, whatever comes to their minds. Presumably they speak in confidence that either language will be understood at either end. Now: does their language fall into a kind of pattern (always using one lang. for one thing, the other for the other)? At what do you say, this is actually its own language, since it has consistent patterns?
The phenomenon of true & willing bilingualism seems to be more common and used more and more...in other words, people who know two, and just willingly use both together, at most opportunities. Some Taiwanese students were explaining to me that since all of them knew both (Taiwanese & Mandarin), they mixed freely; it wasn't like this in their parents' generation, but it was now. One admitted that he preferred one, simply because he knew it better, but participated along with the rest, using both frequently. Similarly, I ran across a Spanish-English chat online, that was based physically along Texas border towns, and this was happening; unfortunately I have lost it now, or I would study it more carefully, as I know both, in this case, and might get some insight into my own research question. I have two points here: one is that the online environment, consistently providing bilingual space which is known for that and sought out for that, becomes in itself a site for a dialect to develop & flourish, and have its own patterns. Second, the willingness to use elements of one's environment and integrate it, albeit impulsively, to the grief of one's parents, a hallmark of pioneers in the young generation who seem to be taking on this bilingualism/worldly integration as a badge that their parents of course didn't share. I'll keep my eye out for more evidence. A single article about the phenomenon, printed years ago, alone accounts for half a dozen references in a Google search for "bilingual chat;" this means both that very little has been written about it, and, that there is extreme interest in what has been written, as it has been copied and referenced far and wide. This particular article was about Chinese-English and the use of bilingual spaces to familiarize with a new culture, and interact.
-I'm determined to research SL chat a little more, since it has occurred to me that chat in conjunction with 3d movement of avatars through town space or down a street, is different by nature than chat w/out pictures or setting. So is chat in online learning environments, where often things are happening on the board, or people are listening to speaking, and carrying on a running chat simultaneously. These chats often mix media, such that the chat carries its own information independent of the other media, but occasionally crosses over or is influenced by the other media. Another thought occurs to me, which is that this kind of picture or video/chat combination could be very useful to the process of language learning, though it probably hasn't been up to now.
another term- 086
Did it again- I have two writing classes, 9 & 15 students. The one with 9 is a day ahead, so they started chat first. The advantage for them, is that there are about 9functioning computers in a lab that is supposed to have 15. So, those who really had no clue what was going on, could just walk over and watch someone who did. I explained how to copy a URL onto a chat window, but the words weren't enough. Perhaps their listening isn't as good as I thought. When they saw me do it, they felt better about it. Some still didn't get it, really.
There were three assignments: 1) bring me a url from your hometown. a travel site will do. Anything from your hometown. Mine was the homepage of Cleveland OH. 2) bring me the URL from your Practice S/R essay. This was on your weblog; it should be, anyway. 3) Bring me whatever you contributed to the EAP2 weblog; that was part of today's assignment.
As we were talking some of them were quite exuberant, using chat abbreviation left and right, calling each other names, etc. They were obviously already good friends, familiar with the medium & with each other. Others were a little tentative; they tried to do the assignment, but had some trouble. More on Mon....it's wild.
changing world
Three things happened to me recently that were all worth noting, and though only one was unambiguously related to this weblog, all were worth noting in their own way, and the one involving chat had perhaps the most far-reaching consequences.
First, I noticed that a student had the entire Azar book in pdf on a thumb drive. This student was waiting for the opportunity to print as much of it as he/she could, in order to be prepared for class. The book sells for what? $90, about four times what it's worth. The copies were free; the pin drive was part of the scenery.
Second, students managed to score a huge and unwarranted score on the TOEFL without apparently turning their necks, either through a listening device, a hidden cell-phone, or a trip to the bathroom; in any case it happened more or less under my nose, and was a sophisticated and technologically innovative piece of work.
Finally, a student was posting things on blogger, and this was part of a class exercise being run by a writing assistant; the window was open where one publishes work. Up in the corner of the computer as part of the toolbar, a steady flow of 3/5 chat appeared. It was mixed with chat in Arabic. When a teacher walked by, the student minimized the window; when I was gone, he reopened Meebo and told his partners, on the other end, what was happening in the class.
In this last episode it wasn't a case of cheating; he was just engaging in a lively conversation in two different languages at once. 3/5 chat, for clarification, is Arabic written in English letters and using an occasional number or symbol that looks like an Arabic letter. It is its own chat language, very common among my students; I plan to learn more about it if possible.
By not cheating I mean that there was nothing he could possibly gain, in this instance, from being in constant communication from friends in an unknown area. But he was clearly telling them whatever was happening in the class. I could see that, because of his reference to the people whose names had no Arabic equivalent. And he was clearly able to hide what he was doing effectively, except that the conversation was so lively that I couldn't help but spot it flashing up there in the corner.
More about this later. I just wanted to recount it, while it was alive in my head. There's more going on here than meets the eye.
