Krashen and Second Language Acqusition

Krashens article “Second Language Aqusition” inspired by work in bilingual education, presents a different view, one in which the first language can accelerate second language acquisition. This happens in two ways: First, and most relevant for this discussion, education in the first language supplies background knowledge, which can help make input in the second language more comprehensible. Second, as long as literacy in the first language is a short cut to second language literacy. Furthermore once one learns to read in any language, it is much easier to learn to read in another; developing reading ability in one language is a short-cut to developing reading ability in any other language, even when the writing systems are different. Some of the facts supporting these points come from evaluations of bilingual programs in which minority language children are provided with subject matter knowledge and literacy in the first language, along with plenty of comprehensible input in the second language. Students in these programs gain at least as much of the second language as those in non- bilingual programs in which all instruction is in the majority language, and regularly acquire more. This position also explains the success of children who arrive as immigrants in another country while of school age, and who do well in school, succeeding academically and acquiring the majority language well. These children, in every case, had a good education in their own country before emigrating.

Ebru "Water Marbling"

In 2010 I met two beautiful women in NY. They are teaching Water marbling. Next year in January I want to attain water marbling classes. Here are some information:

The word ebru (cloud, cloudy) or abru (water face) means in Turkish the technique of paper marbling. The term is derived from the word ebre which belongs to one of the older Central Asian languages and it means the "moiré, veined fabric, paper" used for covering some manuscripts and other holy books. Its origin might ultimately hark back to China, where a document from the T'ang dynasty (618-907) mentions a process of colouring paper on water with five hues. Through the Silk Road, this art came first to Iran and picked up the name Ebru. Subsequently it moved towards Anatolia. Specimens of marbled paper in Turkish museums and private collections date back as far as the 15th century, but unfortunately there is no evidence to show at what date the art of marbling paper first appeared in Anatolia.

Around the end of 16th century, tradesmen, diplomats and travellers coming to Anatolia brought this art to Europe and after the 1550s, booklovers in Europe prized ebru which came to be known as "Turkish Paper" or "Turkish marbled paper making". In the subsequent centuries of modern times, it was broadly used in Italy, Germany, France and England.

Many specimens in European collections and in the several album amicorum books are visible today in various museums. Early texts dealing with ebru, such as Discourse on decorating paper in the Turkish manner, published in Rome in 1664 by Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), helped to disseminate knowledge of this kind of marbling art. There is agreement amongst scholars that the so-called Turkish Papers has a colourful influence on the book arts of Europe.

In the early examples from the 16th century in the Ottoman-Turkish era, ebru appears in the battal (large) form, namely without any manipulation. Interestingly, several variations developed over time, giving us types such as gelgit, tarakli, hatip, bülbül yuvasi, cicekli.

Schumann's Theory about Second Language Acquisition

Another language acquisition theory is Schumann’s theory. According to him: “second language acquisition is just one aspect of acculturation and the degree to which a learner acculturates to the target-language group will control the degree to which he acquires the second language.’’ From the perspective of Schumann second language acquisition is truly affected by the degree of social and psychological distance between the learner and the target-language culture. Another important point is the social distance which depends to the learner as a member of a social group that is in contact with another social group whose members speak a different language. Psychological distance consequences from a number of diverse affective factors that concern the learner as an individual, such as language shock, culture shock, culture stress. If the social and psychological distance is great at that time acculturation is impeded and the learner does not progress beyond the early stages of language acquisition. The students target language will likely an interlanguage which is characterized by simplifications and reductions occurring in the learner’s interlanguage which lead to fossilization when the learner’s interlanguage system does not steps forward in the direction of the target language.

Jim Cummins "Empowering Minority Students: A Framework for Intervention"

Jim Cummins presents in his article “Empowering Minority Students: A Framework for Intervention” a theoretical framework for analyzing minority students’ school failure and the relative lack of success of previous attempts at educational reform, for example compensatory education and bilingual education. Cummins suggests that these attempts have been unsuccessful because they have not altered significantly the relationships between educators and minority students and between schools and minority communities. He shows ways in which educators can change these relationships, thereby promoting the empowerment of students, which can lead them to succeed in school. Minority children’s cognitive/academic growth and socio-psychological development are enhanced by maintaining and further developing their first language. Cummins’s “Developmental Interdependence Hypothesis” explains that the development and maintenance of minority students’ home language contribute extensively to the learning of a second language and academic success. A child’s second language competence is partly dependent on the level of competence already achieved in the first language. The more developed the first language, the earlier it will be to develop the second language. When the first language is at a low stage of development, the more difficulty the achievement of bilingualism will be.

The Early Catastrophe : The 3 Million Word Gap by Age 3!

After decades of collaborating to enhance child language vocabulary, Betty Hart and Todd Risley spent 2 1/2 years strongly observing the language of 42 families throughout Kansas City. Exclusively, they looked at household language use in three special settings: 1) professional families; 2) working class; 3) welfare families. Hart and Risley gathered an gigantic amount of data during the study and subsequent longitudinal follow-ups to come up with an often cited 30 million word gap between the vocabularies of welfare and professional families by age three. This number came from the data that showed welfare children heard, on average, 616 words per hour, while children from professional families. Essentially children with college educated parents heard 2153 words per hour. Betty Hart and Todd Risley’s 1995 study that demonstrated that by age 3, most middle-class children had much larger vocabularies than children from low-income families. Middle-class parents speak, on average, 300 more words per hour to their children. The longitudinal research in the following years confirmed a high correlation between vocabulary size at age three and language test scores at ages nine and ten in areas of vocabulary, listening, syntax, and reading comprehension. This study was afterward used to fuel the fire of arguments for early childhood programs such as Head Start.

When you want to read a book, which is very complicated and full of information about literature you can read Roland Barthes book S\Z. Here is a short summary:

S/Z, published in 1970, is Roland Barthes's structuralist analysis of Sarrasine, the short story by Honoré de Balzac. Barthes methodically moves through the text of the story, denoting where and how different codes of meaning function. Barthes's study has had a major impact on literary criticism, and is historically located at the crossroads of structuralism and post-structuralism. Barthes analysis is influenced by the structuralist linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure; both Barthes and de Saussure aim to explore and demystify the link between a sign and its meaning. Barthes seeks to establish the overall system out of which all individual narratives are created, using specific 'codes' that thematically, semiotically, and otherwise make a literary text 'work'. By pointing out how these codes function subconsciously in the mind of the reader, Barthes flags the way in which the reader is an active producer of the text, rather than a passive consumer.

Teaching Grammar

Summarizing of the article “Grammar in the foreign language classroom: Making principled choices” by Patricia Byrd.

Grammar is central to the teaching and learning of languages. It is also one of the more difficult aspects of language to teach well.

Many people, including language teachers, hear the word "grammar" and think of a fixed set of word forms and rules of usage. They associate "good" grammar with the prestige forms of the language, such as those used in writing and in formal oral presentations, and "bad" or "no" grammar with the language used in everyday conversation or used by speakers of nonprestige forms.

Language teachers who adopt this definition focus on grammar as a set of forms and rules. They teach grammar by explaining the forms and rules and then drilling students on them. This results in bored, disaffected students who can produce correct forms on exercises and tests, but consistently make errors when they try to use the language in context.

Other language teachers, influenced by recent theoretical work on the difference between language learning and language acquisition, tend not to teach grammar at all. Believing that children acquire their first language without overt grammar instruction, they expect students to learn their second language the same way. They assume that students will absorb grammar rules as they hear, read, and use the language in communication activities. This approach does not allow students to use one of the major tools they have as learners: their active understanding of what grammar is and how it works in the language they already know.

The communicative competence model balances these extremes. The model recognizes that overt grammar instruction helps students acquire the language more efficiently, but it incorporates grammar teaching and learning into the larger context of teaching students to use the language. Instructors using this model teach students the grammar they need to know to accomplish defined communication tasks.

Religion, education and the Turkish Constitution

This article is a critical assessment of the present Turkish Constitution regarding the ways in which it stipulates the relations between religion, education and the state. The article focuses on three major problem areas in Turkey. The first problem area concerns the institutional framework within which the relations between religion, education and the state have been established (the Diyanet). The second problem area pertains to the ways in which the constitutionally compulsory education in religion and ethics is implemented. Finally, the third problem regards the now famous issue of the ban on women students wearing the headscarf in higher education. Here you can find the whole article.

http://www.turkishreview.org/tr/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?sectionId=341&newsId=222997

One of my favorite Books

One of my favorite book is "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" written by Milan Kundera in 1984. It is a philosophical novel about two men, two women, a dog and their lives in the Prague Spring of the Czechoslovak Communist period in 1968. Although written in 1982, the novel was not published until two years later, in France.

Tereza and Tomas, Tomas and Sabina, Sabina and Franz, Franz and Marie-Claude--four people, four relationships. Milan Kundera's masterful novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), tells the interlocking stories of these four relationships, with a primary focus on Tomas, a man torn between his love for Tereza, his wife, and his incorrigible "erotic adventures," particularly his long-time affair with the internationally noted painter, Sabina. The world of Kundera's novel is one in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events. It is a world in which, because everything occurs only once and then disappears into the past, existence seems to lose its substance and weight. Coping with both the consequences of their own actions and desires and the intruding demands of society and the state, Kundera's characters struggle to construct lives of individual value and lasting meaning.

A novel of ideas, a provocative look at the ways in which history impinges on individual lives, and a meditation on personal identity, The Unbearable Lightness of Being examines the imperfect possibilities of adult love and the ways in which free choice and necessity shape our lives. "What then shall we choose?" Kundera asks at the beginning of his novel. "Weight or lightness?" This international bestseller is his attempt to answer that question. And the answer is hinted at in the novel's final scene, in which Tomas and Tereza find themselves in a small country hotel after a rare evening of dancing. When Tomas turns on the light in their room, "a large nocturnal butterfly" rises from the bedside lamp and circles the room in which they are alone with their happiness and their sadness.

Thoughts About Jacques Derrida and "Giving"

Jaques Derrida is discussion the question about the base an excavation of the conditions of the possibility of giving.

Is there a way to give without putting into the tyranny of an economic circle which changes a gift into a debt that demands repayment? This basic question leads Derrida into an archeology of the paradox fundamental to a gift: in order for a gift to be bestowed or received as a gift. This must seem different than a gift, for its permeable appearance or identification as a gift immediately collapses it into the ceaselessly cycle of debt and reimbursement. Gift giving has no real place in business relationships or etiquette.

In the Turkish tradition gift giving is very important. There are a lot of reasons, why people have to or want to give a gift for somebody. Especially by weddings.

Weddings are huge celebrated in Turkey. As a wedding gift, it is a Turkish tradition to buy the bride golden coins, called “ceyrek altin”, worth a hundred or more dollars, to pin on her dress. Friends, relatives, everyone buys them.

The case is, if Turkish people get a present from somebody, they feel that they have to give the same kind or a little bit more expensive than the present back. My Grandmother says for gifts “odunc”. Odunc does not mean present. It does mean lent.

Derrida s problem with to give a gift and expecting a gift are in the Turkish culture too. Maybe this is a human being character. If you give something, you want something.

About "Writing"

Of all classes I took in college, the two that have helped me most in my life have been Composition and Grammar. In these classes I learned effective writing skills and language skills. The writing skill is the primary basis upon which your work, learning and intellect will be judged in college, workplace and in the community. Writing beautiful prose and poetry is a talent. Writing effectively is a skill that can be learned. When you have not basic writing skills then you do not feel comfortable to show your paper to others.

Writing is like art. Everything must be perfect. Your environment, mood, feelings and knowledge have to be ready. An artist needs not only the equipment, like colors, brushes and canvas, but also the perfect timing. Therefore, I can never push myself to start to write. When I am ready, I feel it and then sit somewhere where I am alone. I make sure that I have everything with me what I need, such as a pencil, pen, notebook, my articles, and blank paper.

The best writing environment is where I have all of my tools to hand; I am focused on my job and not distracted. Especially for me, it is hard to stay focused and motivated when there are so many outside influences bearing down on me. Therefore, I do not even drink tea or coffee. I have only a bottle of water on my desk. For me the rule is: The simpler your work environment is, the easier and faster you will get your work done.

Pauline Gibbons "Curriculum Cycle"

In the 19^th century writing was a rare gift. In Germany only in churches you could learn reading and writing in Latin. To write and read in German was not imported because these skills were only used for the reading and understanding of the Bible, which was in Latin written.

Nowadays, the relationship between illiteracy, social alienation, and poverty is too acute to ignore. Pauline Gibbons discusses in chapter 4 and 5 some difficulties that ESL students may have in learning to write in English. She suggests a teaching cycle that models and makes explicit some of the major forms of writing in school.

The Curriculum Cycle explain how ESL teachers can apply “Explicit teaching” in classroom.

In the first stage, the teacher has to build the field. This means that the teacher should give enough background knowledge about this topic. In this stage the students could read, listen or write about the topic. For example, when the topic is “A trip to Washington DC” the teacher has to explain that this is the Capitol of the
USA. The teacher can ask some questions and show pictures of the White House and Pentagon. After the ESL teacher wrote down the vocabulary, for example, government, president, capitol, politics first lady, the class can watch a short documentary about the president and his family.

In the next stage the teacher and students can write a letter to the President. They can write the needs of their school. For example, new tables and more teachers. In this stage the teacher can explain grammatical rules or sentence structure.

As homework the students can write a letter with their own wishes to the President. By the last stage the student have developed background knowledge about the topic and they also learned linguistic characteristics of the text type.

The teacher can get important information about the background of the student. The teacher should ask themselves what the text is telling her/him.