Do you have the Walking Dead fans in your class?

Some of my Ss have tried to convince me several times that the Walking Dead story was cool. While they worked on giving their opinions on what they liked and didn’t like in their favorite tv series and creating posters, I heard and read their reasons for liking the ones I found gross and stupid and I gave mine. We discussed a bunch of things while having small talks. And while in a group you get a variety of opinions on the same subject, with one learner a small talk can lead to interesting discussions and we always learn new things. For me is the fact that I learn more and more about what my teens are up to and get a chance to understand why they like what they like. For them a chance to learn new vocabulary, pronunciation and shape their grammar as they get the support they need to communicate in English. Well, my intermediate 14-year-old teen L. is fully of love and energy to communicate in English and he is the reason why I ended up buying a comic book and exploring the zombie topic and its potential use as a learning tool.

About a month ago I ordered it (you can get a copy here or you can get the digital version on google play, I prefer the paper version as it easily circulate around the room) and last Tuesday L. asked me about it. When I got home though, I found the package and I was excited to start reading. I never liked gore and I really have a sensitive stomach to anything next to gross. So the comic book seemed like a good choice for a person like me. It wasn’t long before I started looking for apps on google play and I found couple of them that I would like to use if he was interested of course.Needless to say that all this excitement is due to the solid reasons they have given. L. makes all sound really cool when he talks about it and then I brought myself into it with his exciting view of the storyline and characters as we read today the author’s intro the discussion got deeper and comparison between the comic, the book and the tv show was inevitable.

Couple of Apps we used today:

The Walking Dead Yourself App

The Walking Dead Quiz App

As you can see I turned myself into a walker, but what was really great was L.’s comment when I offered him to do it himself. He replied that he’d be the survivor. Doesn’t this tell us something about how they feel and see things? I thought his point was really interesting and reminded me of what the author says in the intro to the comic series.

To me, the best zombie movies aren’t the splatter fests of gore and violence with goofy characters and tongue in cheek antics. Good zombie movies show us how messed up we are, they make us question our station in society… and our society’s station in the world. They show us gore and violence and all that cool stuff too… but there’s always an undercurrent of social commentary and thoughtfulness.

Robert Kirkman

L. is also my walking dead advisor. I just discovered today that the first season is all around the first volume. And he assured me that I will want to watch the tv show after reading it. So if you are not really interested in this kind of story, think again. Teens have a lot to say when we bring to the room what they are used to watch, read, listen and play. And by buying and using the apps, I am trying to educate myself not just to understand it from their perspective, but also to learn the language around this genre that I am not used to in order to be able to give them the support that they will need when they will give the try to talk/write about it. Even better create activities or use Apps that they can focus on the language. Many students asked me if we were going to watch the walking dead, I’m aware though that few of them are like me and hate gross stuff. The comic book is surely a great idea to bring in what they like. 😉

So don’t you give it a try!

Speaking a language rather than our own

While reading Bonny Norton Chapter about Identity and Language Learning which was kindly shared at EVO Mentoring 2013 for Week 3, I connected it straight away with something I realized was going on last year- most students although seem to be motivated to learn a second language, they seem also not willing to invest in it orally. It just seemed oddly unsurprising that the more pressure students got into speaking, less they seem to engage in the oral skills tasks.

She raised the following point,

“[..]opportunities to practice English is structured by unequal relations of power in the home/work.” ( p.2)

As soon as I read that, I started wondering whether it also applies to my own classroom and if somehow my students feel overpowered by authoritive figure of the teacher. Because when we are judgmental, we look with our own eyes and perspectives, then it is easy to assume that they are not as interested and willing as they should be. But as I consider Bonny’s studies and the notions of power, identity and investiment, I start to understand that the problem may not be actually the fact that they are not eager to learn or speak, but the power that others have on this goal/task that subdues their own identities. This turned into food for thought and questions who actually is responsible primarily for the progress in learning the target the language as Bonny brings out to our attention. I could easily put the blame on the STUDENT as it is commonly accepted by teachers that a good learner is someone who,

” seeks out opportunities to learn the language, is highly motivated, has good attention to detail, can tolerate ambiguity and has low levels of anxiety.” (p.3)

Then, we could easily agree also that  a student who doesn’t match the description above,

“might be considered unmotivated and inflexible.” (p.3)

I never thought of this as I never considered that my identity as I understood it was at stake when I was learning a second/ third language, especially as I have lived in other countries for while. For me language IS a powerful tool for communication and integration into the community that I had never thought of it as something negative at all, as I was so eager to acquire their languages, be able to communicate and become independent. I still remember how proud I was the first time I was able to get a cab to my favorite store and had to negotiate the fare while learning Arabic, or when I traveled from Alexandria to Cairo on my own by train. Or when I didn’t need to carry a dictionary around anymore in London.

Motivation & Purpose to learn English – 2012

By reading what Bonny refers to by identity and contrasting it with my own experience in language learning, I discovered that my sense of identity never felt at stake because I never felt overpowered at the time and had a clear picture of the effect of it in my future. It makes sense to me and makes me go back to the beginning of 2012 when students were asked to write on a slip of paper ( see pictures above of the box) why they were learning English and most of their answers reflected an impossed commitment to study the language as this perspective usually leads us to think of them just as unmotivated.

“[..] identity is how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future.” (p. 5)

I’m intriguid now and I wonder how each individual that steps into my classroom see the world and relate to it when comes to second language learning? And how does his/her view of it affect his/her own learning?

Why do learners, even those that seem so motivated to learn, freeze at the chance of interacting with speakers of English? There is a number of students’ names that come to my mind while I’m writing this post.

Book added to my to-buy-list this semester:

Updated on 02/26/2013

It is not so much about learner identity, but I thought it brings some new thoughts on discussion of culture knowledge and multilingual identity.

So Where’s Home? A Film About Third Culture Kid Identity from Adrian Bautista on Vimeo.