Strategy Instruction
A Young Learners' Guide to Language Learning, September 30, 2014
Over the years I have observed that while materials abound for how to teach young learners a second language in the schools, there really is not very much available for the learners themselves in terms of how to improve their language leaning act. The assumption is that they will somehow figure out what they need to do, whether in an immersion program, a dual language program, or a heritage program. The somewhat mixed results over the years would suggest that more can be done to support the language learning efforts of young learners.
With this goal in mind, I have written two pamphlets: a Young Learners’ Guide to Language Learning and a companion Teachers’ Guide to Language Learning in Young Learners. The guides are intended for use in immersion, dual language, and heritage programs, and are intended to be accessible to 4th-grade pupils and older. The student's guide was completely revised to make the wording as accessible as possible. The instruments are intended to be clear for young learners.
Currently, these two pamphlets are in a pilot stage. There are accessible below. I would welcome teachers to try them out and to share their results with me. I don’t have a specific way the material is to get to students. One 5th-grade Spanish immersion teacher who piloted the material at a school north of Minneapolis last year presented the material in class, as well as giving each student a printed copy of the pamphlet. I was in contact with her class through Skype. I am happy to Skype with your class as well.
Cohen, A. D. (2014). A Young Learners' Guide to Language Learning. Pilot version. Oakland, CA. Word version of Learners' Guide.
This is the learners' guide. I've made every effort to simplify the language so that an upper elementary school student should understand it.
Cohen, A. D. (2014). A Teachers' Guide to Language Learning by Young Learners. Pilot version. Oakland, CA. Word version of Teachers' Guide.
This is the companion guide for teachers.
Note: I would be happy to Zoom with any class of students who are using the guide. Just contact me as adcohen@umn.edu.
Grammar Strategies Website for Learners of Spanish
The Spanish Grammar Strategies Website was a special initiative devoted to creating a website that would support students of Spanish in learning how strategies could help them master tricky grammar forms by showing them how the more successful learners do it. In search of grammar strategies that work, along with a talented graduate student in Hispanic Linguistics at the U of Minnesota, Angela Pinilla-Herrera, I spent the better part of two years developing this website. It involved conducting video-taped interviews with a number of students and nonnative teachers as well, and then many months developing the website. The lively video and audio clips used in the website are accompanied by graphics, drawings, “mind maps,” and other examples that showcase the tools that students use to support their learning and use of Spanish grammar. After a year, usability testing was conducted with the website itself and numerous revisions were made. Then the second year research was conducted with 15 undergraduate users of the website to determine its impact on the development of their grammar skills. Results were largely favorable. A paper on the website will be published in the CALICO Journal in September of 2011:
Cohen, A. D., Pinilla-Herrera, A., Thompson, J. R., & Witzig, L. E. (2011). Communicating grammatically: Evaluating a learner strategies website for Spanish grammar. CALICO Journal (Journal of the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium), 29(1), 145-172.
The website address is: www.carla.umn.edu/strategies/sp_grammar/.