Kuma 9 and 10 Brown 17

Kuma's chapters were on contextualizing linguistic input with four realities of context, linguistic, extralinguistic, situational, and extrasituational.  The first reality of linguistic context refers to the multiple meanings within one word.  The example Kuma gives is "table,"  which depending on the context like math, literature, science or politics can have very different meanings.  This reminds me of the website that Dr. Seloni showed us last week with the "dictionary" that finds examples of words being used in journals and newspapers so that students may be able to better understand the entire meaning of the word.  Another component to the linguistic context is the cohesion of sentences and being able to understand a group of sentences (conversation).  Extralinguistic context is more about the different stresses that typically coincide with different languages.  This is crucial to accent and understanding.  One of my Chinese students at the ELI is very difficult to understand sometimes and it is because of their lack of stress on any particular word, like the book addresses. In situational context there is an interesting dialogue in Reflective task 9.3 that says A: Not now, darling./B:Then when?  It would be very interesting to see CLD students' thoughts about the context this occurs.  These four realities are important to language understanding and really organize and compartmentalize linguistic input.  Is there one reality that is more important than the other?  Or which one do you think is the most important to teach CLD students.
Integrating Language skills is about how all skills should not be compartmentalized like text books and testing companies try to foster.  In this chapter Kuma points out that one benefit to integrating skill is the various learning styles that various learners bring to the classroom.  Even though teachers naturally integrate skills despite what administration or text books may suggest, this integration for different learners is very important.  I think that even more should be done to integrate different skills that wouldn't typically be used with a language classroom, like spelling the alphabet with your bodies, or drawing a mural in response to listening.  My question is, should learners not be challenged to complete skills outside of their comfort zone?  Especially with younger learners who have not mastered certain skills?

Brown 22 and Kuma 7 and 8

Brown's chapter on assessment coincides with the article that we read last week about writing.  There are many components to assessment, the major one is the variety of assessments that a teacher can use.  They can be assessed as an ongoing assignment, interaction, portfolio (like in the article) or formative way.  They can also be assessed on a "storehouse of skills and knowledge, usually within a relatively short time limit" (402 second edition).  The chapter presents the validity of the different testing/assessing.  For the midterm that I used for my ELI students I would say was a more interactive language test.  Based on what the students have practiced in class, debate, disscussion, vocabulary, or other various activities, they had to complete various communicative tasks for the midterm.  Midterm multiple choice tests would be invalid to the content of the class.  We have just completed an analysis of a standardized test of our choice in our ENG 346 class.  In this class I have realized that standardized tests, although undesirable to many teachers, are unavoidable to any teacher of a second language learner.  What are some ways that we can use this testing backwash to our advantage in our classroom?  A testing strategy that I thought was interesting was the cooperative test construction, I do not think any of my language teachers have used this on me, but this past week in a Chicago ESL classroom that I observed, the teacher had the students creating "wh" questions and told them that some of the questions would appear on a test they would take later on. 
Kuma's Lanuguage Awarness in the US or Whole Language movement, claims that "It does not exclude some languages, some dialects, or some registers because their speakers lack status in a particular society" (158).  This is also emphasized later in the book as a component of Critical Language Awareness (CLA).  Language in a critical awareness allows students to have power over their language interpreting it in specific sociopolitical contexts.  Then Kuma presents a difference in the view of the teachers role in this critical awareness.  Does the teacher help the learners "understand how language is used by some as a tool for social, economic, and political control" or "can [they] cooperatein their own marginalization by seeing themselves as 'language teachers
' with no connection to such social and political issues" (165)?  I think that the second option that Gee presents is a misrepresentation of language, like Paulo Frieres view of teaching as a transformative intelectual, there are deeply embedded social, economic, and political powers within the education system. 
Intuitive Heuristics is basically the self discovery of language of a student.  Kuma describes heuristics in a grammar context, since the rules are definite in a grammar class.  I compare this idea to the teaching written grammar in the article last week, that self-correction is the essential skill to teach since writing is such a complex process, and in heuristics was of teaching it is all about leading your students to reason and not to memorize rules.  However, previously, Kuma talks about the complexity of the English language spelling system alone, and how a students reasoning could lead them to spelling "fish" "ghoti."  Also in beginning language learners I have always thought that explicit instruction of the grammatical rules are more effective.  Can a heuristic type of teaching be used in every context (beginning-advanced) (spelling, syntax, subject-verb agreement, ect.)? Also, in the dialogue examples one of the teachers uses a book and the other uses a cartoon.  The one with the cartoon seems to be more heuristic and more effective.  Are there heuristic grammar text books and would they be effective and useful to teachers?

Not Speaking the Language

The article called "How do I support a student's first language when I don't speak the language?" answers a lot of my questions on a diverse non-dual language classroom which I have been concentrating on in my bilingual education courses.  One thing that I really liked was the teachers involvement with the parents in order to educate them on how important it is to actually teach their kids how to read and write in their native language or language that is spoken at home.  This is often a misconception that immigrant families have when they want their children to have English speaking skills.  The article also talks about the political activity that has happened with Proposition 227 which promoted English only education, and required waivers for non-English speakers.  This makes these challenges for teachers with very diverse classrooms very hard.  I am not sure if the Spanish speakers would be better in a dual language classroom, or if they would get more out of learning with speakers of different languages. 
The teacher must learn much more about each culture so that the students can be properly represented in the classroom.  However, it forces speakers to speak in the target language which would be English in this case.  The negotiation of meaning must happen in the target language, with some aid from the volunteers.  I like Kuma's example, episode 5.3, where the teacher carefully selects the questions so that the students collectively come up with a definition.  I try to do this in my ELI courses, asking what a definition is usually results in some students knowing, and some not knowing.  Instead of me giving the answer, the students should be forced to try to figure out the meaning without me so that vocabulary term is memorable.  I try to have my students provide multiple definitions and examples so that one of the examples is comprehensible input.  This is a skill that I do not think comes naturally to teachers of mainstream classrooms.