 So let's start with some introductions and welcome everyone to this workshop the flight approach activity design assessment and publication My name is Chantel Warner, and I'm one of the three co-presenters Carl Blythe Unfortunately could not be with us. He'll be here later this afternoon. He got stuck in Atlanta And I heard a couple of participants also got stuck somewhere along the way So I'm happy to see so many faces here. So I'll go and start so Chantel Warner I'm an associate professor of German and second language acquisition and teaching. I'm at the University of Arizona So I'm one of the few people who thinks this isn't hot here in Austin at the moment I'm also the co-director of circle, which is the Center for Educational Resources and Culture Language and Literacy and it's what the part of getting the job was being able to say that quickly and Along with Coral who's hosting this workshop We're one of the 16 title six language resource centers and we'll say a little bit more about those later today I also direct our language program in German Studies. So that for us is the first five semesters So I train the graduate students who teach in that program and also do a lot of curriculum development related to that And one of my main interests and you will see that is in foreign language literacy and how we can develop that So that very much ties into the theme of this workshop All right. All righty. Good morning everyone and again I'm so thrilled that we were able to get as many folks considering that there are storm systems and all sorts of things going on around the country So I'm here from Cornell and I do find it very hot and very humid But I am a senior lecturer in French in the Department of Romance Studies there I've been in that department for I guess about 11 years, but my background really is in ESL So I was actually I went to it to Cornell about 22 years ago Initially in the intensive English program. I've always worked in post-secondary education. So But after 9-11 they closed that program because of the drop in Numbers of international students. So I was able to morph Into teaching French. I've been married to a Frenchman for 32 years lived in France But French was not something that I was thinking professionally of Doing But my background like many language teachers is somewhat eclectic. So my undergraduate major at Barnard and Columbia was Chinese and I Spent a year there teaching English and I've taught I taught in English in France as well and again always in either professional or University contexts So and So Chantel, Carl, Blythe and myself we are the three co-coordinators of this project And we'll let Carl say a little bit about himself when he joins us But he's the director of Coral which is the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning Who are the hosts of this event and he will we have been told be here by 11 o'clock today He just got stuck along the way So we want to start by saying Hearing a little bit about you who's in the room Then we'll do kind of an overview of the workshop and then we're gonna get started I think we're gonna keep ourselves pretty busy today There were a couple things that I heard in your introductions that I wanted to kind of hold on to for a second to flag things that we're gonna do And one was that many of you are moving across different contexts. So sometimes that's different levels some people mentioned while I teach Whatever language one and two, but then I also do AP or I've moved from This context into an immersion context and I think that's something you're gonna see that when we conceptualize when we think about this approach We are very much thinking about multiple levels and multiple contexts So that's something you're gonna see coming up that it is adaptable to different kinds of educational context different instructional context So that's one thing. I also heard a lot of people talking about Integrating reading and writing with other things so with speaking with technology how to bring that into the curriculum especially a couple of you pointed to and maybe a moment where Students are less likely to go out and kind of read on their own or feeling less engaged or motivated in that So how to bring that in in a way that's engaging for them And that's something I think that also is very much what we're concerned with And then the other thing I think which is kind of important for something I want to say a couple of words about is that a couple of people were mentioning that they are their program They're their department and even those of you who are not your entire department are probably in small departments in a lot of cases Or you might be the only person or one of the few people who's teaching what you're teaching And that very much is something that undergirds not just this project But the entire philosophy and the entire mission of the language resource centers like circle and coral because our mission is really to provide Collaborative projects and so that's what this idea of open educational resources Couple people already mentioned that and so I wanted to highlight just so you kind of know who we are I won't take too much time with that But in your folder you have some information about circle and about coral which will also point you to our websites Where we have online resources because even beyond this project Our two centers and the other 14 centers provide a lot of materials for language teachers So you'll find a lot there sometime when you get a chance to peruse the websites And this project in particular one of our main goals and our main motivations is To create a space where we can share quality materials. So a couple of you mentioned wanting to develop lessons That's what we want you to do too We've planned in a lot of time to do really hands-on Supported and guided activities where you're creating things for your classroom But also very much with the hope and the intention that you will be willing to share those materials so that no person is an island But that we're rather all working together It's it takes a lot of work as many of you I'm sure know to create materials from the ground up to go without the textbook or even with a textbook to create a new curriculum so this is a way of us kind of working together and Creating a community of practice where we can share those labors and share those insights and share those approaches and methods Together so that none of us have to work alone The project's flight foreign languages in the literary you'll keep you'll hear us keep saying flight and foreign languages is The flight is foreign languages and the literary in the everyday So just know that that's our shorthand flight, but it actually grew out of a previous project that was supported by Coral and was led by Joanna and I'm gonna let you say a couple of words about that Yes, so about five years ago. I'd contacted Colin I said, you know, I'm interested because I was I was actually hired into the Department of Romance Studies for French to coordinate the first-year program and I had done that already for for several years and I of course became frustrated with textbooks and and and with Assumptions and and all sorts of things. So anyway, I contacted Colin. I said I'm interested in adopting and adapting the open French textbook that's at Coral-François-Entractif and It is in PDF editable PDF files. So I thought I could change the content adapt it to my context However, in terms of literacy Development I wasn't satisfied and so he said great make your own materials create a kind of a supplement If you will but one thing is I want you to share it whatever your results are share it So I began doing what we all do is just creating lessons finding interesting materials Etc. Etc. And it began to evolve and it turned into in this case a kind of a full-blown approach And it's an approach that can be applied to any language. So not only did I want to share it as Just just say lessons that could be that could be Used Independently so this is the web version right and these are all in Word document. They're downloadable They're free to be used free to be manipulated in any way you wish so all of the chapters in this textbook This is the bundled form Which can be sold as a textbook? But here is individual Documents the only constraint is that you maintain attribution So my name and the name of coral because coral is the host the publisher of this textbook so Open educational resources run quite a spectrum and Carl will be speaking about that at the end of The workshop tomorrow and really giving you an understanding of what oer means Because it's a word and a concept that is used widely But what we've discovered over time is that most people really don't quite understand what is involved And a lot of there are certain assumptions for example that oh, yes free materials But there is no quality control and how do I know if this is something that would be appropriate? And how does this fit into right the kind of curriculum that we have so these are the kinds of questions that we'll be answering This project is a peer edited and that's part of the work that we're gonna be doing with the assessment section Not only how do you make a flight lesson, but how you assess how you? Under give feedback for someone else who may be creating a lesson and what that process is for eventually publishing your work So it's not about getting you to publish a textbook. It's about doing what you do all the time as teachers but bringing it to a level that Then you can share with other people have other people respond to perhaps modify And bring it to yet a further, you know level of of interest and satisfaction Just to kind of there are a couple of resources that we want to point you to online that we're gonna keep coming back to you through The workshop but before I go there actually, let me just do a really quicky What are we doing here over the next couple of days? You have a more detailed? Agenda in your folders, I believe But really as Joanna mentioned her project the original project around the literary in the everyday Resulted in what is ultimately a textbook although. It's a textbook that's designed to be Manipulated and tweaked in the way that we I think all probably tweak the textbooks that we use Part of this is to lay that bear a little bit to make that shareable I have the advantage in many ways of having a team of graduate students who are kind of Limitless in terms of creative energy, but even we often need other insights need other inspirations and can share those things out So this is a project that really takes what a lot of people are already doing Builds on it further through this approach and then also gives us a context in which we can share those materials So those are the two sites I'll be showing you what we're gonna do We're kind of already there is doing the introductions then Joanna's gonna lead us through what is the flight lesson? So this is really the what is this approach especially for those of you who haven't participated in a previous? Professional development opportunity that's gonna be kind of the intro to the approach Then this afternoon what we'll be doing is talking about how to create lessons and actually creating lessons It's gonna be very hands-on throughout the workshop. You're gonna be working as much as we're working even though This is this very forward-facing moment. We're gonna have you talking more throughout the rest of the day So be prepared and then tomorrow we're gonna be talking about assessment And this means on one hand integrating assessment into those lessons that we're creating but also how do we assess our lessons so we're gonna come at that from those two different angles and Then tomorrow afternoon, we'll be really talking more about kind of the nuts and bolts about publication So how do we share these materials? How do we keep that energy going forward and how do we keep collaborating? What does that look like and then also very importantly when we're talking about open educational resources this question of licensing How do we make sure that when you're sharing you're getting credit for the work that you've done and you're giving credit to others for The work they've done while still keeping things very open. So that'll be the focus of tomorrow afternoon The two resources that I want to point you to just quickly And I think everyone's online But we'll hopefully during one of the breaks catch us if you're not or if you have problems with the technology because we will Be using the internet a lot. The first one is the flight website if you haven't already found that And so the URL is f l l i t e dot org So my question to you first for forgetting us thinking into this this question of how do we understand? What a flight lesson may or may not be is just to open up the floor for a moment and to ask you What does flight mean to you at this point? What are some of your assumptions? What are some of your reactions responses? What do you think this approach? Touches on or or is about or or some of its objectives But just as a situation if I just did the I mean the transcription of words it seems as flight something is going to write a raise let's say raise or something Interest or development or levels or whatever. So it's just flying Yes, yes, exactly. So flight is an example of the litter in the everyday and that's right. Yeah, yes, exactly What I was working with is the two fundamental challenges that the field of foreign language teaching and learning is struggling with and the first comes from I mean my own experiences At a research institution is very much this divide between language and literature that is so anchored in the educational system in the United States and as it filters down into high school and elementary school It may seem perhaps and I don't know because that's not my experience in teaching It may seem sort of abstracted, but it is it runs through this the the the the spectrum of How we think about Literacy how we think about texts reading writing, etc. So bridging that gap finding ways to create sort of curricular coherence both in terms of content and skills that goes from elementary secondary into college language requirements into majors in languages literatures Cultures and then into graduate programs that are going to be Forming teachers to teach those fields, right? How do we create some kind of curricular arc and coherence that that will hold up throughout? so the sort of multiliteracies approaches and Text-based approaches are gaining a lot of ground in this area and Flight of course falls under that broad umbrella But there is a second challenge and I think this is where flight takes an interesting spin Away or not away from but just a more Specific way from from multiliteracies and that is the challenge of moving away from rule-based form-focused understandings of language and Moving into as many people have mentioned a more systems-based way of working with language that is about meaning and how we make meaning So all of our textbooks all of our grammar reference books are still largely within the vein of what can be an inheritance Let's say from structural linguistics about rules exceptions to rules and errors So how do we how do we create a? Curriculum that can that can get us thinking about language differently And I do have as far as this conflict. I have a sort of a lighter take on it in the form of a joke for you so A linguistics professor is lecturing his students one day and he says in English To negatives form a positive and In other languages like German like Russian for example Two negatives remain negative However, there is no language in which two positives form a negative and From the back of the room a voice calls out. Yeah, right So, you know the rules and the exceptions to the rules that we that that we teach all the time Don't come close to adding up to how we make meaning out of language so this is this is the challenge and this is what Flight the flight approach hopes to address and there are many linguistic theories and many of you Are some of you are specifically in the field of linguistics in various ways There are many theories that can help us to to sort of inform us in this quest So the approach that I took that draws from say prototype theory that cognitive linguistics Is aimed at being an intuitive approach because many of us don't have the time to to do the equivalent of a new degree In a particular linguistic theory that's going to get us where we want to go right so we're all very busy and So I'm trying to plug into intuitions that will help not only us as language teachers, but our students as well, so the idea of the literary in the literary in the everyday is Quite different from what we might think of I heard mentioned a lot of times literature the word literature comes up but what do we mean by literature and So the literary in the everyday clearly is about bridging that gap But it's also about thinking about the notion of the literary in a different way So if we go down to the key terms following things like socio-coachal theory and cognitive linguistics, etc again the notion of a language not as a computational set of rules and exceptions, but as a system of systems right for meaning making and Prototype theory in particular that I find so intriguing really says to us that languages have prototypes for everything from sounds to words to sentences to genres to every level of language and from those prototypes we Extend and create metaphorical meanings and uses so it's a very different way of Organizing a language and therefore the literary within that context Refers to this plasticity the plasticity of meaning the multiple layers of words that words or more complex Structures can convey right language is plastic and we subvert it we remix it we recontextualize it all of the time in our everyday speech and every type in every type of speech act or or written genre you have a List of what we call flight categories, and they're really about meta categories of the literary So the literary is encapsulating this notion of how we play how we make meaning out of prototypical forms so we come to things like genre play which may involve Generating new meaning through genre subversion so that can be modern fairy tales or the sort of Fractured fairy tale if you will or prose poems or narrative essays There are many sort of blended genres and multimodal genres. You can work with narrative play Anyway, new takes on familiar storylines narrative twists, etc Visual play right so the literary in the everyday when we talk about text its text in its broadest sense it from from the Written word to oral to image So you can subvert meaning through through visual Play and when it comes to text that could include punctuation or formatting right visual symbolism media intertextuality, etc grammar play now grammar play is is Getting at this notion of we have to rethink or rework how we how we deal with grammar So if you're familiar with the terms foregrounded grammar non-standard grammar in poetry things like nouns as adjectives and I'm going to give you an example in a moment Symbolic play generating new meaning via symbolism. So that's where things like metaphor Metonymy digression, etc word play it could be puns a spelling capitalization Of course with texting and things like that. We've taken on new dimensions of meaning with capitalization. It's shouting. It's Expressing emotion. So how we play even with something as basic as capitalization What is a platonic form right? So that that notion of a capital that expresses a very different meaning than then the lower case as well sound play Could be rhyming homophones a little iteration pragmatic play That gets into register Perspective play points of view characterization and finally culture play right how how are how is meaning subverted Made a new through playing with practices values schemas of products code switching multi-lingualism, etc So our idea was in order to facilitate people getting into this dimension of language when you look at a text because here It's all about well How do I find a text that's going to achieve the the principles or an embody the principles of where? I want to go with with a flight approach So you have to start looking at text differently and looking for different things in in text in order to build a Lesson around it. So the idea here is that you have a starting point Something that if you have this these categories in mind you can start to then think about what You might be finding in your text. So I have three nouns here Letter water hair and let's just do a quick Just take a moment and tell me let's think about count and mass nouns and tell me how you would categorize these nouns and Maybe think of a in your own mind an example sentence So letter What do you what do you say? Water Can you give me an example? Yeah, if you say water just like I mean tea tea it can be different types of tea water different types of water Yes, I want to water you mean I want to bottle up water So what a means water water and if we talk about water in general, so it is uncountable now Okay, and even English grammar textbooks, and if you look at romance languages when it talks about Article systems and nouns break nouns down into one or the other and then you have these exceptions like hair in English That they say can be both however, if letter is a Count noun, how do you get a sentence like letter was the only form of communication on the island and if water is a Mass noun or a non-countable noun. How do you say things like I'd put together a little? Plausible exchange at a restaurant the waiter says we have a number of waters and beers on tap What would you like and the customer says I'll have a water right? Which one would you recommend? So the lesson here is that nouns are not one or the other that all nouns have the potential to express a range of meanings and what you have to do is to plug into What are the meanings of in this case form so we can say that letter is? prototypically count water is prototypically non-count but Adding these very changing the forms changing the context. We can generate new meanings If we understand what those meanings are so it's not about trying to memorize lists of vocabulary Oh, these are the count nouns these are the non-count nouns these are the exceptions That just leads you to a dead end you want to give students the tools that you that they can play with Language and see so the text in the flight in a flight lesson is the is that the Trigger it's the thing you have to find if this is what you wanted to teach you'd have to find a text That's going to give you those examples of language play so that students are working with the full system instead of this little isolated Pieces of that larger system and they never get that sense of the system otherwise