A Rationale for the Construction of the Summer Orientation Program
Week Four: Emergencies and Medical Terminology
How different is learning a language from learning the culture of that language? When language
learners arrive in a foreign country, they usually find that their textbook-acquired language skills
alone are not enough for them to be fully functional in the new setting. The ZSL summer
orientation program is a technology-aided teaching unit designed in a multimodal fashion which
acknowledges the effectiveness of cultural exposure in foreign language learning, boosts learner
curiosity and motivation by situating each entire unit in a unified and stimulating context,
enhances classroom interaction, and allows students to apply what they will learn in class into
real practices through both individual and collaborative efforts.
First, the content of the curriculum is closely related to the lives of the target students in
their new foreign-cultural context. As Lipstein and Renninger (2007) argued, a student’s
self-motivated interest in a topic almost always correlates with increased learning, and by relating
our materials with crucial elements of everyday life in a new culture that the students will be
experiencing every day, students have an automatic, needs-based motivation to learn. Composed
of twelve weeks (each focused on one theme/topic), the orientation program will provide the
target students with essential language skills and a cultural awareness of key dimensions of their
lives in America, such as housing, dining, shopping, study, insurance policies, legal information,
driving, dating, social customs, and etc. Since not all of the pertinent knowledge on these crucial
matters can be acquired from the textbooks available on the market, the curriculum of the
orientation program will be a solid resource and guide for the target students pertaining to their
future in America.
Second, it is our aim that a strong learner motivation and more effective cognitive learner
processing will be incited by the multimodal nature of the lessons coupled with its unified theme.
The role that technology plays in the curriculum is positive, as it allows for the integration of
different types of teaching materials to be used in a classroom, including visuals, audio, video,
glossed text and online resources, and at the same time students can use the available resources
more effectively for their individual learning goals. As Chapelle (2003) wrote in her The Potential
of Technology for Language Learning, “The concern for developing good CALL tasks is how to design
materials that can direct learners’ attention to particular linguistic forms within the input. The
suggestions that come from the research on instructed SLA are to mark the forms that learners
should attend to in some way or to provide for repetition of the forms of interest” (41), which is
precisely what we have done. Godwin-Jones (2010) made a similar argument, noting that
“principally one learns by seeing or hearing words repeatedly, used in different ways, and
gradually acquiring their meaning. Learning vocabulary in this way, through context, makes it
much more likely that more understanding of its correct usage will be gained than through
learning an item from a list, or from its appearance in a single (inauthentic) dialog” (4). In our
program, students will be learning through a wide variety of methods that will continually
reinforce vocabulary and expressions in a variety of contexts. For example, students can access
glossed passages to help them with the vocabulary if they need it, and listen repeatedly to the
audio portions to help fortify their understanding. The duty is upon the learner to decide where
his or her focus will lie. This definitely will give students a distinct advantage, compared with a
traditional classroom where the instructor leads the whole class and has everyone attentive to the
same points. The aid of technology therefore can to some extent enhance and motivate students’
learning. Besides, the five lessons in each week of the curriculum are based on the same theme
and together can constitute a unified story. This is effective pedagogy, because the fact that the
ending of one lesson is not the ending of a whole story creates a sense of suspension and can
trigger students’ curiosity about what they will learn in the following lesson. Also, what they will
learn on different days is built upon and reviewed as the lessons progress, which should facilitate
the retention of target language into long-term memory.
Third, the lessons are student-centered, a model in which students can immediately put what
they learn into practice, and teamwork and originality are encouraged. As mentioned previously,
the integration of technology in our curriculum allows more learner autonomy by permitting
freedom with regard to the focus of the lesson. Another feature of the curriculum that
encourages student interaction is the design of exercises for use inside and outside the class. As
Rosell-Aguilar (2007) noted in his seminal work on podcasting pedagogy, having ready access to
materials is useful for students so they can revisit trouble areas again and again and retain target
language, and his pedagogy applies just as much to our materials (which include downloadable
audio and worksheet materials). Furthermore students, when completing the exercises, are
provided a chance to apply what they will have learned in practice activities and receive
immediate feedback from the website through short quizzes. The presence of a teacher in the
classroom provides students with questions an additional resource in case of confusion. The
homework for each lesson requires team effort, and self-initiated language use is encouraged in a
live environment to prepare students for real-life situations. Lastly, creativity is also encouraged,
so that students have the opportunity to demonstrate how they will make use of the knowledge
learned in class in their real life context. As Kenneth Bruffee (1999) argued, we learn through
conversation because even our internal thoughts function as an internal conversation, and thus
external conversation reinforces and expands upon our own thinking, opening up new doors for
learning. By providing students with an opportunity to practice live conversations, they grow in
their ability to use new language forms and in their understanding of the process.
Additionally, all lessons are designed to follow a similar class schedule and plan so as to
maximize student learning. This is based on the belief that students benefit from consistent
routines, which alleviate anxiety about possible surprises from class in terms of setting and
activities, and contributes to a predictable and comfortable learning environment.
That being said, some elements in the lessons need to be carefully explained to students,
including the role of the metaphorical “zombie” and that of “Mandy Wang” from the schematic
video included in Week 7. While the scene is apparently detached from reality, where zombies do
not exist, students should be educated in a tactful way that hostile humans who may potentially
harm students do really exist. The students, therefore, should be encouraged to relate the
scenario in the video to their own personal lives and brainstorm a list of possible ways to go
about addressing emergency situations like those depicted in the story. Certainly, the students’
responses would be situated in their native backgrounds, which may differ from one student to
the next. These differences, however, should not go unmentioned by the instructor, but instead
should be highlighted as the teacher puts cultural issues into a global context so that the students
understand the role played by culture and language in the situation. The role of “Mandy Wang”
should be seen as a token of all the international freshman students enrolled at ISU.
To sum up, based on the features above, we believe that our web-based teaching unit is a
solid, reliable, unique and worthwhile curriculum that deserves consideration for an investment
in order to investigate further development.
Below is a diagram showing a cognitive explanation of the rationale behind the lesson structure:
Next lesson Oral teacher feedback Input: Introduction to general vocabulary and culture knowledge through video and/or podcast and glossed text Short-­‐term memory engaged through reinforcement exercises Conscious encoding Output from sharing performances on homework Hypothesis generation, testing, and long-­‐term memory retrieval through homework Long-­‐term memory activated through culminating exercise References
Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” The
New St. Martin’s Guide to Teaching Writing.
Ed. Robert Connors and Cheryl Glenn.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999. 482-500.
Chapelle, Carol. English Language Learning and Technology. John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2003.
Lipstein, Rebeca L., and K. Ann Renninger. “Interest for Writing: How Teachers Can Make a
Difference.” English Journal 96.4 (2007): 79-85.
Godwin-Jones, Robert. “Emerging Technologies from Memory Palaces to Spacing Algorithms:
Aproaches to Second-Language Vocabulary Learning.” Language Learning & Technology.
14.2 (2010): 4-11
Rosell-Aguilar, Fernando. “Top of the Pods—In Search of a Podcasting ‘Podagogy’ for
Language Learning.” Computer Assisted Language Learning 20.5 (2007): 471-492