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?