TPCK+in+World+Languages

=**TPCK in World Languages**=

//Serge Danielson-Francois//

World Languages Education (WLE) has the potential to give voice to stronger and more interdependent global communities in our transnational political economy. As a former member of the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Language (TESOL), I would agree with van Olphen (2008) that the knowledge base for teachers in this field is contested and contentious. The language acquisition theories in vogue in both communities assume that while language is not dissociable from culture, grammar might be and tone and voice should be. It has been my contention ever since I was chair of foreign languages at Rutgers Preparatory School in the mid-nineties that WLE professionals tend to structure instruction and assessment in the context of formal academic discourse employed only in inauthentic classrooms or the transactional language of tourists and captains of industry who parachute into conversations using Pimsleur and Berlitz as weapons.

Our polyphonic, polyglot world no longer pivots along these axes of academic language, corporate connivance or mercantile expedience. The emerging literacies birthed by social media, on demand cable, relatively cheap travel and mashed-up global communities of affinity give more priority to the worth of things and the sense of words than the price of commodities and the static definitions of states of desire. When I learned French and Spanish in late seventies and early eighties, must-know verbs were "to be", "to have", "to want" and "to make". We conjugated our present will, our historic wants, our future needs and assumed that we were learning to be in dialogue. We repeated stock phrases that purported to assure our survival in tourist traps around the globe-- but we were speaking the language of a jet-set reference class whose company we would never keep while we remained ignorant of the registers of language that might have reconciled us to the strangers in our midst and the neighbors whose first language was something other than English. As chair, I protested the European trips that wagered thousands of dollars that Madrid and Paris would feel categorically different from New York and Los Angeles while we retreated from the near certainty that language shapes reality quite differently in South Beach than in Little Haiti. We were prejudiced in favor of the literacies that promised to tidy up the messiness of the languages of former colonizers and former colonists, of present injustices and future misunderstandings.

It is with this hypercritical sensitivity that I approached van Olphen's article on the TPCK of world languages. The authority of my experience has shaped my worldview in this regard: I have taught French, Latin and Spanish grades three through twelve, taught English on the US Mexico border in the shadow of the fence that scars the Sonoran Desert, taught English to immigrants from over 30 nations in the greater Houston area, and, most importantly, learned English as a second language from kindergarten through twelfth grade. I am the child of parents who learned to speak English with their toddlers through Sesame Street even though these proud Haitian academics had aced their English classes in Cap Haitien and Port-au-Prince. They reproached the WLE professionals who had taught them with rigid inflexibility all the fatuous phrases that litter language workbooks and mark you as a foreigner every time you open your mouth. Beyond "grammatical competence", "sociolinguistic competence", and "discourse competence" what my parents would have appreciated is strategic competence. They were the victims of countless simplifications in the Monitor model that impaired their affective filters by caricaturing English speakers in America and dissimulating regional differences in whitewashed comprehensible inputs. Neither my parents nor I benefited from computer assisted language learning (CALL), though I doubt the pedagogy in force at the time would have valued differentiated instruction. CALL would have never resembled call and response in the context in which I learned to communicate in three languages.

The complexities of language which according to some are best discerned through attentive listening for incongruous, dissonant and revelatory speech were not cultivated. The context within which I learned to speak and to teach foreign languages gave precedence to the homogeneous and adopted voice of well-rehearsed courtesies, affected moods and ominous meteorological conditions ("it was always a dark and stormy night or preternaturally sunny"). Our representations of the diversity of experiences categorized as French, Spanish or American failed to do justice to the dynamic relationships between native and non-native speakers. What should my teachers have known? Only that the symbolic worlds they manufactured were as far removed from reality as multivariable calculus is to arithmetic.

//Truman Hudson, Jr.//

Based on the diverse population that exist locally and the global goals as identified by the Michigan Department of Education, educators in general should identify ways by which to address the developmental concerns of their students. As it pertains to WLTE and ESL, by focusing on the target language, I believe that educators are better poised to build on the prior knowledge skills of their students in the area of language development.

In expanding our dialogue on WLTE, if you were a first year teacher in one of the aforementioned communities, what technologies and supports would you use in your classroom to address language barriers? As a first year teacher in one of the aforementioned communities, I would engage colleagues via a learning communities model and utilize technologies that present translate the English language to the target languages and identify ways in which to create global communities via blogs and live chats between the target community and our classroom.

As suggested in the readings, both synchronous network discussions and asynchronous environments aid in language development when they are intentionally developed to explore topic specific discussions. The network allows students from around the world to chime in on various issues related to culture (van Olphen, 2008). They offer an avenue for developing efficient modes of examining communications, e.g., email, chat, and other interactive modes, and providing positive feedback on language development.

Additionally, by requiring educators to be familiar with Latin and Greek, the WLTE would increase teachers’ capacity to provide evidence to students on the interactions of language and culture to the development of our global society. Having their foundation in Latin, many terms and phrases that are used in medicine, mathematics, and economics, can aid students in understanding not only history, but the evolution of social constructs and how societies of different origins adapted new technologies and practices to address their local concerns.

Moreover, while the standards require increased understanding of world cultures, it could be improved by requiring all students to be proficient in a second language. As the data suggests, countries that are out pacing the United States in work force development in the fields of communications, technology, and sciences, many of their successful students are fluent in multiple languages. Personally, I’ve witnessed the impacts of having a talented person on our team who was fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, French, English, and German. Our team bided on several contracts in 2010 and had it not been for our colleague who not only understood the culture, but also the language of the Latino community, we would not have secured contracts in two highly influential nonprofits that targeted services to this community. Hence, I support expanding Michigan standards to require that all students become proficient in a second language.

=World Languages Standards=

In connecting the [|American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Standards] to TPCK, the authors of the standards suggest that their work should not be mistaken for a curriculum guide. They insist that they make no limiting claims about course content or sequence of study and defer to state and local learning expectations. Still the five Cs of foreign language learning (Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities) do not explicitly shed light on technological pedagogical content concerns. The Connections and Comparisons standards offer bridges to our TPCK conversation to the extent that "additional bodies of knowledge" and "multiple ways of seeing the world" serve as invitations to embrace the lived experiences of world communities and the contexts within which language shapes these lived experiences.

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In light of the video, we should also consider how even the change in dialects and accents even within our own communities aid in advancing TPCK and language development. Consider the "schwa", "the glottal", and inescapable "accent" in this article from the American Spectator

=Resources for Instruction in Language Development=

There are a myriad of resources that can aid in instruction. The link below will connect you to the a content page which has some of the resources we have identified as valuable for educators who serve a diverse student body.

How to Provide Accessibility to Everyone (including students with "special needs"

//**Understanding Language**//

The following icon is to an annotated bibliography which sheds light on the various pedagogical approaches and challenges in language development



=Traveling the World Without Leaving Home=

Language development is enhanced by understanding and appreciating the richness of various cultures. Through the advent of the internet, and various tools, e.g., You Tube, and Vimeo, access to various cultures is more readily accessible.The following link provides an example of how technology aids in learning about various cultures via a mini tour of the Japan. Bon Voyage! VISIT JAPAN - See the photos !

Language Teaching. Cambridge:Apr 2002. Vol. 35, Iss. 2, p. 114-147 (34 pp.)

van Olphen, M. (2008). TPCK: An integrated framework for educating world language teachers. In American Association of Colleges for Teachers (Ed.), //Handbook of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) for educators// (pp. 107-128). New York, NY: Routledge.