Mrs. U.'s Blog

App$ 2020 I was immediately enthralled when I read the subtitle, "Learn a New Language No Matter Your Style with These 10 Apps." Just imagine these 10 apps in an ELD classroom with different learning styles, diverse background knowledge, and varying levels of English proficiency. A win-win, right?! Unfortunately, no. Although Shelly Brown supplies us with "The Best Language Learning Apps of 2020," these apps come at a cost: a cost. Duolingo, a very popular second language learning app, is game-oriented and overall fun, allowing users to partake in conversation and vocabulary drills and to earn streaks toward usage goals. There are even short stories that users can read and check their comprehension. However, if users want to download valuable lessons and fresh practice sessions without being bombarded with ads or the threat of losing lives and streaks, then the Premium membership will cost users each $10 a month. Another vocabulary-building app is Busuu. This ...

Is there an app for that? My initial entire focus of this blog adventure was to discover valuable apps that would truly benefit my middle school ELs' second language learning. This year my ELs were provided iPads to use throughout their day. However, they were given neither instruction nor recommendations, and the devices have become mere tools of translation. An alert this week produced "Using Mobile Apps for Teaching ESL in Higher Education Settings" by Sangeeta Johri, and I was stopped in my tracks and forced to reflect upon reading. Although Johri focuses on MALL (rather than CALL) and ELs at the post-secondary level (rather than the secondary level), Johri penned several points that readjusted my position regarding the use of technology and second language acquisition. I realized that I was focusing too much on the app itself as being the silver bullet for second language learning. Johri discusses how apps can limit human contact. In addition, many second languag...

Second Language Learning: Pronunciation vs. Accent  In reflecting upon the results of my Google alerts this week, I have discovered that second language does NOT necessarily mean English, Spanish, or French. In fact, I received more information regarding second language in terms of coding language.  While I initially thought that maintaining a blog might be a challenge, perhaps figuring out the science required to pen a functional Google alert might be my ultimate goal! Despite this speed bump, one particular delivered article spun my ELD wheels. “Foreign Language Learnings have a Paradox in Pronunciation” discusses the difficulty in achieving “the correct pronunciation” while learning a second language. Stemming from a study of 24 subjects using various recordings, the finding is that speakers of a second language can easily detect mistakes in pronunciation in others but cannot detect mistakes in their own speaking, even after many years of speakin...