Creating Experiential Learning Opportunities for Language Learners

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raichle Farrelly ◽  
Iuliia Fakhrutdinova

This chapter builds on the pedagogical knowledge base of educators who work with refugee-background adult language learners. The chapter introduces refugee-background adults who have experienced interruptions in their formal education. The authors present a framework for pedagogical scaffolding that emerges from a sociocultural perspective on learning. An overview of research underscores the benefits of recognizing and building upon learners' strengths, lived experiences, and oral traditions. Classroom-based approaches that integrate pedagogical scaffolding into meaningful learning opportunities to enhance the language and literacy practices of adult learners are highlighted. The chapter sustains innovation and conversation among educators working with refugee-background adults, ideally in collaboration with the learners themselves, to cultivate pedagogical practices that foster learner success in the classroom and beyond.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7570
Author(s):  
Meilan Liu ◽  
Yongyan Zheng ◽  
Xiuli Ma ◽  
Yuxin Wei

This paper reports on a mixed method study exploring demotivation among Uzbekistani students while they are learning Chinese in a Chinese university. In the study, we conducted a survey among 67 Uzbekistani students, and interviewed 30 of them about their experiences of learning Chinese. The analysis of the data revealed that a lack of self-confidence, insufficient learning opportunities, a lack of learning support, and teacher qualities were the most salient factors affecting Uzbekistani students’ demotivation while learning Chinese. In light of the findings, we put forward suggestions for language educators and educational administrators in order to enable them to enhance language learners’ interest in and enthusiasm for learning Chinese, so that they will sustain their learning efforts and Chinese universities can achieve sustainable multilingualism.


2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 5.1-5.18
Author(s):  
Naomi Kurata

This paper examines the patterns of language choice and the construction of L2 learning opportunities in foreign language learners’ social networks by focusing on how these patterns and opportunities are socially structured in a Japanese language learner’s natural interactions. It is based on a range of data, including a script of on-line chat occurring in natural environments as well interview data. Drawing on Cummins’ (1996) concept of interpersonal space, the findings indicate that there were a number of social and contextual factors that seemed to affect the learner’s language choice and L2 learning opportunities in complex ways. Most of these factors appeared to be related to the learner’s and/or his network interactants’ identity as an adequate L2 user and their perception of each other’s L2 proficiency and/or role. This paper provides insights into how to create environments that promote the learners’ opportunities for L2 use and learning.


Curationis ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
S.C.D. Wright ◽  
I. Benninghoff

Teaching research to undergraduates has its own challenges and involving undergraduates in research practical experience is just one of those challenges. As nursing students are in the process of becoming professional nurses, knowledge and skills in research are specific outcomes of the curriculum. One of the outcomes of the B Tech Nursing Science programme offered by the Tshwane University of Technology states that for the baccalaurcate nursing programme include analysis, interpretation and utilisation of a range of research findings in scientific nursing and midwifery care as well as the development of a research protocol in a given context. In an effort to ensure that students would experience research as an essential part of their daily activities, an integrated approach is suggested whereby the nursing experiential learning opportunities are also research experiential learning opportunities. Using the integration strategy, research theory come ‘alive’ for the students. The integration approach is uncomplicated and transferable to any other discipline. The case study presented is the second year nursing students using school nursing experiential learning as a research project. The second year nursing students have a community focus during their second year and one of the experiential learning opportunities is school health nursing in a primary school in Tshwane. The results of the school health survey are presented. The students developed a health education intervention based on the research results.


2010 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 2-3
Author(s):  
Kiran Cunningham ◽  
Jayne Howell ◽  
Ronald Loewe

Conversations about how to create meaningful and significant experiential learning opportunities for students in international and intercultural contexts are increasingly commonplace in academic institutions. With over a century dedicated to the development and refinement of a powerful set of methodological, attitudinal, conceptual, and theoretical tools for cross-cultural understanding and engagement, anthropology has much to offer these conversations. Contributors to this issue of Practicing Anthropology draw on their experiences directing international offices, directing offices and study abroad programs, leading internationalization initiatives, establishing service learning programs, running international and intercultural field schools, and developing intercultural learning assessment instruments. They all interrogate teaching and learning outcomes, exploring the ways that the theories and methods of anthropology have been effective in enhancing intercultural learning and offering models and methodologies that others can use in their own work. The first four articles in the issue were individually submitted, and were ideal complements to the six articles Kiran Cunningham compiled.


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