Joanne Kathleen Rowling

Through this term we have a lot of novels, and I was so fortunately that it included my favorite author; Joanne Kathleen Rowling. J.K Rowling’s has created a world of her own around the character Harry Potter and his imaginary world. Harry Potter is a magical boy whose life we can read about through seven books. The first thing I ever read in English was the second Harry Potter book, and after that I was mesmerized by the amazing story.
This term Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone were on the curriculum. I had already read this book, but I quickly read through the book during the Christmas Holliday. I have to say that this book was not my favorite book in the Harry Potter’s world, but as I have read this book three times I have changed my mind. This is the start of an amazing series in Harry Potter’s life, and is absolutely vital to know to be able to understand and relate to how his life as a magician started.

Joanne Kathleen Rowling’s was born and raised in Britain. She created Harry Potter’s world and is now the twelfth richest women in Britain. Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone were published in 1997 and it was the beginning of an amazing world. She has published seven book’s about Harry Potter but also three other book’s where there are some magic in it, but isn’t an sequel to it. This novel was made into a movie in 2001, and also won The British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year, and the Smarties Prize. Before she was published she worked as a teacher but after she had published Harry Potter and the philosopher stone she had enough money to an early retirement and to just continue on writing. She did that full time and published the sequel within a year. After this she has written books and/or done some commercial work due to the books. She is my favorite author and her use of language in her books is amazing.

Joanne Kathleen Rowling writes fiction, and fiction is now becoming more popular to readers al over the world. It has opened a new world to the readers, and for some people they are afraid of what this could bring to the world. There has been incidents where people has lived themselves fully into the books, and can’t divide what is real and what isn’t.
I love these stories but I still can divide what is real and what isn’t. I have to say that I am a bit sad that the Harry Potter books are finished, because I already miss them.

L2 development complex cognitive skill

This theory is based on some concepts:

1. The use of language is a complex cognitive skill involving a hierarchy of goals and sub skills. The way that you rank what is necessary to learn first and how you should precede afterwards.

2. There are two basic types of processes involved in language use; controlled processes and automatic processes. A controlled process is when the use of language is controlled by somebody else, where somebody has just learn to do it in own way and has to do this. It can also be to read a text when the language you read is controlled by the writer. An automatic process is when you don’t really think about the language you use; it has been automatic in your brain so everything floats naturally. This is something that everybody wants to obtain when it comes to language.

3. There is only a limited capacity for information processing in the man’s short term memory. Therefore it is necessary to draw on “ready-made-plans” from long term memory is such a complex cognitive task as language use.

Barry McLaughlin:

He is an American psycholinguist that has specified speaking as a complex cognitive task involving a hierarchy of goals. From the lower goals to the first order goal:

First order goal: Is to express a particular intention. (Purpose of speaking)

Second order goal: to decide a topic. (What to speak about)

Third order goal: to formulate a series of phrases. (To use correct words to form a meaning)

Lower order goals: To retrieve the lexicon needed (To use correct words)

To activate articulator patterns. (To say it in the correct way)

To utilize appropriate syntactic rules. (To know the rules and to be able to use them)

To meet pragmatic conventions. (To form sentences)

The way to succeed is to practice and practice. “A skill must be practiced again and again and again, until no attention is required for its performance” You have to practice enough so that it becomes automatic in mind.

This is a way that most people think and if you think about this and also about the hierarchy system; you will se that if you start at the bottom and practice your way up and you will succeed.

Practice when it comes to learning a second language is very important. You have to work your way up the hierarchy to become a fluently speaker in the language.

The same goes for me. To be able to know all of this theory about English didactics; I have to practice and work with it so that it becomes natural to me. So for all of you out there of there that has something that you need to learn; you have to do practice and practice.

CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning)

Stephen Krashen has developed a theory that if you but away all focus on language and more on the content in what they are learning about.

Say for instead that you get you’re students to focus on the content so much that they forget about the language. What happens then is that the language becomes natural to them, and if the content is something that interested the student then everything will go smooth. I have had an experienced with that where we were aloud to talk about anything we wanted as long as it was in English. Then everybody in my class talked from their hearts, and even students that had struggled earlier with speaking English talked. This is an experience that I will use myself when I am going to teach. To be able to get the students to just forget about the language, and just to let them self go and to speak without think about the language. The same goes for if you are going to write an essay you have to let the creativity float and after wards you check the language for grammar errors. Think if J.K Rowling’s did not let her imagination float what would have become of Harry Potter then?

Let your imagination float and you will succeed….

All of this tells me that if you but more focus on the other thing and if you do it in the right way then the other will eventually follow.

Krashen has five hypotheses and CLIL is apart of number five and after my opinion is a way that sums up how Krashen has been thinking and throw these other hypotheses we understand that he comes to this conclusion that sums it al up after my opinion.

The last week

I have to say that I was a bit stressed when I saw the message on fronter that we were going to blog about Didactics, and the reason was that I had a different plan for these weeks. I have tried to do as you said but I have also just continued on my original plan.

I have also commented on the discussions but just one time on the discussion around Krashen. I decided to work more with him, and mad a blog input on just him. I have to read more about him and to study him harder to be more able to discuss him.

Throw these weeks I have read a lot and made some good notes and tried to think outside the box. I like to blog, and think that I will continue on it later if the context fits to blog about.

I am really sorry that I haven’t done exactly as you would like, but I had a plan and I really wanted to continue it.

Stephen Krashen (1941)

Stephen Krashen is mostly famous for his strong opinions around how to teach. He has also published more then 350 papers and books that contribute to the fields of second language acquisitions and reading. His opinions have been highly discussed al over the world.
Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisition consists of five main hypotheses:

1. The Natural Order Hypothesis:
“We acquire the rules of language in a predictable order,” That means that the acquisition of grammatical structure proceeds in a predictable order. Things go on as expected and the old way of teaching.

2. Acquisition/ Learning Hypothesis:
This hypothesis claims that adults have to ways to gain competence in L2; acquisition and learning. Acquisition is very similar to the L1 development, where they use the language for real conversations. Learning means the way that L2 is learned like throw rules and practice.

3. The monitor hypothesis:
Where learning functions as a monitor or an editor of the output.

This shows how the monitor works. Where you have a goal or something that is acquired for you to learn and you see yourself on this line and that has been learned throw an input. There are many different ways of input. Just continue reading this text.


4. Input hypothesis:

Can be explained in four different ways;
- It relates to acquisition.
- Learners acquire new or more language only by being exposed to comprehensible input, which means that the learner exceeds what is expected of him/her. The learner first knows what the meaning is and then he learns a new language.
- When there is enough comprehensible input, the i+l will be acquired automatically.
- That fluency can’t be taught directly, but is comes over time. Where it can be influenced by a lot of things like social factor. If most of your friends and family speak an dialect it is most likely you would speak the same way as them.

5. Affective filter hypothesis:
Is a filter that prevents the input from reaching the language acquisition device. For this to work the learner has to not focus on the language and only on the content. Where teachers make assignments that lets the students speak without think about the language they are using and the language becomes natural to them throw these exercises.

I haven’t been quit able to write everything in my own words because I think that these facts take time to learn and that this is a way for me to start learning about Krashen. I have used our books and also some pages on the internet. Like this one; http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA/Krashen.htm
I hope that in some short time I will be able to tell this in my own words, and to be able to know this so much that I can learn somebody.

How I think that practices works in learning something

To learn something you have to practice a lot. If you think about John Dewey’s theory about “learning by doing,” he thinks that you learn something by doing it your self.
When you fore instead think about when you where studying math at school and you where going to learn about the multiplication table. You had to practices, practice and practice. The best way to learn something is to practices and to diversify different ways to learn. John Dewey’s theory is the way that I would think that you have to teach to gain the best result.

Do you remember the multiplication’s table?


Homework is one way to get children/students to practices. But homework is also after somebody’s opinion “a way to do nothing.” If you are going to be a teacher you have follow up on the student’s homework. That means a lot of work for you, and a way to ease the teacher’s job is that the parents also follow up on children doing their homework.
If children practices and practice it is most likely that they would learn something and my opinion is that you learn something by doing it. So if “doing it” means to practice then you most likely will succeed. So if you also diversify different ways to practices, like in groups, learning something visual, learning by a lector and/or by just practicing on your own.

Everybody has to practices to learn something. There are different ways of practicing like for instead studying. We as students have to practices a lot to learn something, and to think outside the box when we read. Like in didactics we have to acknowledge the different theory’s to find out how we would teach our self. I have to say that the ability to think outside the box’s gives everyone a very good chance to actually remember this and hopefully to never forget it, or know how to use this for themselves in their own teaching.

PRACTICE MAKES A CHAMP;

The second week

This week I decided to work with the books and started with chapter one in English teaching strategies. I read throw the pages and wrote down the keywords in my notebook. This way of learning is the best for me. I read throw it and afterward write down the keywords. I think it is good to know how you learn best before you start to think about how to adapt the teaching to the students.
After this chapter I read about the English Subject Curriculum to see how the curriculum has changed from 1959 and up to now. Teachers today are very different, some are very traditional and others are very new think by giving the students more free passes to explore their own mind. After reading about this I started to talk to my mother about her education around English. She started to learn English in the fifth grade, due to the fact that she was a student at a very small school and that the forth and fifth grade was in the same classroom. I myself experienced that when I learned English. I was first introduced to English in the second grade when we learned how to count to teen and the different colors. This was learned in the same classroom as the third grade.
After this I started reading in teaching a foreign language. This I had earlier read it but decided to refresh my memories. I wrote down my own keywords to make it easier for me to refresh my own memories later on before the exam.

After I had done al this I began to think about my self as a teacher; I decided to see every student as a different person and to try to teach after their needs. I read throw my own notes that I had taken in class and also some of my old notes from last year about the different strategies.
I also read throw chapter 2, 3, 4 in English Teaching Strategies and next week I wan't to work with these chapters in the same form as this the others chapters.

I now have learned about the changes in the curriculum and also some of the most know strategies and have thought about this and how I myself would like to teach.