Hey doc, tweet yourself!

Three years have passed since I became a Twitter aficionado. I have repeatedly written about Twitter in this blog, I have implemented the use of Twitter in my teaching of Italian, I wrote a book chapter on Twitter and I have preached Twitter to family, friends and strangers at my hair salon, bank—basically, everywhere I do my everyday things.

So I have praised Twitter as a tool for creating connections, networking with professionals in my field and related fields, communicating with people across the world. Then, a few months ago, after the AAAL conference in Atlanta, Georgia, I put forth a challenge to fellow linguists to explore technological tools not solely as a researcher but also as a student. I requested they use Twitter, Second Life and other social networking tools to learn a language in a mode that would be analogous to tasks and goals they set for their students. A formidable recommendation, right? Well, would you know that I thought I had been doing just that…but the reality of my use of Twitter to learn Spanish was, well, quite limited. So after I set forth this challenge, I decided to make a more earnest effort to emulate the efforts I had demanded from my students to learn Italian. Basically, physician heal thyself.

My following of Spanish-speaking tweeps is amazing. Some were already in my timeline prior to my issuing of the challenge—they are scholars, language teachers, teachers, interesting people whose tweets appealed to me. They indulge me and despite my lack of Spanish language skills (remember, I grew up in Canada so my third language is French!), engage with me when I tweet them.

What are my “tasks”?
Well, let me first preface all this by saying that my Italian has been quite helpful for me to jump in feet first. I started first by reading tweets and deciphering what was being said and how it was being said. The reading of these short updates—the least intimidating form of communication—is not only entertaining but also educational.

The next step for me was sharing some of the tweets with followers in my timeline. So as an exercise, I would retweet a Spanish tweet and translate it into English and Italian. By the way, I don’t know how my monolingual followers felt about this…I never asked.

Finally, it was time to open up the channels of communication beyond the “hello, how are you?” tweets. I started replying to their tweets, comment on their avatars and generally make myself “open” to conversation. Remember Erving Goffman’s seminal work The Presentation of Self Everyday Life? Well, that’s what I did, started presenting my everyday life in Spanish. Generally, it never amounted to more than a few tweets, but this parallels the type of exchanges we would expect our students to complete in ITAL101. Okay, so I think I’m have achieved the novice-mid/high level on the proficiency scale for reading and writing!

Then yesterday, I had a lengthy exchange in Spanish that spanned 8 hours (tweeting was intermittent, not constant!). I think I hit the intermediate level of writing, because I was able to

create with the language and communicate simple facts and ideas in a loosely connected series of sentences on topics of personal interest and social needs, primarily in the present.

The beginning of the exchange is reproduced here for readers who understand Spanish. After the customary apology by the language learner (me) for messing up in the target language (Spanish), one of the highlights of this exchange occurred. The words every language learner wants to hear—my tweep told me he understood me very well.

So, wherein do my errors lie?
Well, prepositions for one. The difference between “hacer” and “tener”. Limited vocabulary. Now, to confess (#yoconfiesoque): yes, I did use WordReference to translate expressions…after so many years of language teaching, I automatically recognize that idioms won’t translate. Now, did I think in English before I tweeted? Noticeably, it was more Italian in which I though but for the most part, I was able to immediately start replying in Spanish. Then, I’d be stuck and switch to WordReference to look things up.

Do I feel confident enough?
I’m OK, but hesitant to engage in more specialized language. For example, I read a tweet from another tweep in Mexico who was looking for help transferring text from PowerPoint to Word. Yes, I had the answer. I didn’t however have the language to tweet her through it in Spanish. Luckily, I recalled that her bio page is in English so I tweeted with her in English re the software issue, but after that in Spanish about ourselves. And she corrects me! :p

If I were to take the Spanish placement test, how would I fare?
I don’t know, maybe I could take Spanish 103. Need to build vocabulary and not rely so heavily on Italian (e.g., comer / mangiare / to eat) and, of course, verb conjugations. Are these findings normal? Well, given my desire to learn Spanish (on a scale of 1-10, it’s an 11), and my training as a language teacher, I would have to say that these are not. But I will acknowledge that in these exchanges I am a student and I too experience the anxiety of social networking in the target language.

Even with my training, different things put me off a bit, especially the unwillingness of tweeps to engage. Now, when I follow a new Spanish speaker, my first tweet to them is a greeting telling them I’m trying to learn Spanish so they are forewarned!

Challenging all foreign and English as a second language teachers

During a wonderful colloquium at the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in Atlanta (more on that in a subsequent post), I set forth a challenge to the audience and co-presenters who were interested in using Twitter with their FL and ESL/EFL students: Try to learn a language using Twitter yourself.

As teachers/researchers, we always deliberate the implementation of new tools (especially Web 2.0 ones) in our classes. We research the literature, we outline our agenda, implement the tool and make the necessary adjustments as our project proceeds. The most rewarding part of our research is when we analyze our data and review the students’ perceptions so then we can reflect on the challenges and reconsider the project for future implementation.

So we’re ready to go with our action research, right? Well, why not familiarize ourselves first hand with what we want our students to do by putting ourselves in their shoes? I know that although we are already bilingual (or trilingual or polyglots), we are interested in learning other languages. So why not use Twitter as a tool to language learning ourselves?

Start by finding speakers of the language on Twitter. Start following them. Create a Twitter list (see my list for my Spanish tweeps from whom I’m learning) so you can follow their tweets. If you are a little gun shy initially, that’s OK…just read their tweets, follow their conversations, view their links (no, this is NOT stalking ). Eventually though, you may want to say “buenos días” and “¿cómo estás?” so that later you will be in a position to interact with them as you become more comfortable with the language you are trying to learn.

Can you learn the language by using Twitter alone? Of course not! But the tweets are a good springboard and I hope they encourage you to discover all other media available out there (books, blogs YouTube videos, music, movies (and clips), etc.)

the birth of a new legacy perhaps?

I remember reading an article in NYTimes on Jan 21/09 covering the “Nation’s Many Faces in Extended First Family.” As an appendix to this article was the great graphic below giving us a glimpse of this First Family, to demonstrate that this family has multicultural roots.

Inherent in a multicultural family arise many issues for a society, which traditionally has been so ingrained in homogeneity, both with respect to visibly noted differenced as well as socially practiced ideals. Issues of tribe, religion, language, to name only a few.

No, I am not a member of a visible minority, that is, I’d like to think being female does not put me in that category. I was raised in Canada and would like to think that multiculturalism is an accepted way of life. However, I still question whether that is possible. As my focus tends to be about language and the inexorable connection between language and culture, let me develop the Canadian problem. French is an official language of Canada, but how many Canadians actually speak French? Let’s just say, in the US where Spanish is not the official language (nor is English for that matter), a larger percentage of English speakers are inclined to learn Spanish than Canadians learn are to learn French (after obligatory school instruction).

Can we really look at ourselves within our milieu and  state that one culture does not predominate? Although we are getting better, I still think we have a long way to go…

I hope this First Family will pave the way for a truly multicultural society, free of race superiority and xenophobia.

Arriverderci AP Italian?

Just 4 years into it…and now this!

In the fall, I had published an article on Italian teacher training in Foreign Language Annals (the journal for the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages). Shortly before its publication, the editor had asked me to comment on the then recent decision of the College Board to no longer support the financial costs of administering the Italian Advanced placement exam. Here is my comment:

Worth noting are the results of the inaugural year of the Advanced Placement Italian Language and Cultural Exam, particularly with respect to New Jersey. Villa Walsh Academy in Morristown was recognized as an Exemplary AP Italian Language and Culture Program for small-size schools that “lead the nation in helping the widest segment of their total school population receive an exam grade of 3 or higher . . .” (The College Board, 2007, p. 52).

Notwithstanding the national results for the inaugural year, the College Board has announced the imperiled position of the AP Italian exam. Practitioners, politicians and ambassadors, and community supporters alike have mobilized in support of the exam (as evidenced by messages from the president of the American Association for Teachers of Italian, various letters of support, a recent meeting of the Ambassador of Italy to the United States with the College Board, etc.). It is the hope of this author that the ongoing negotiations with the College Board will soon yield positive results for the future of the AP Italian exam.

Here we are, just months later, the AP exam has been discontinued, with this ray of hope from the College Board:

[w]hile AP Italian will not be offered in 2009-10, if at some future date the funding partnerships needed to support an AP Italian program arise, the Board of Trustees will consider renewing work to develop and offer the AP Italian course and exam.

Between the two announcements, the Italian community came together and worked very hard to try to raise the $1.5 million (originally $4.5 but reduced in negotiations) required. This community raised a good chunk of the money, but everything was contingent upon the Italian government’s contribution of more monies. Unfortunately, the Italian government did not come through.

In an email sent today to the AATI, the president of the teacher’s association made the following comment:

By not having an AP in Italian, the Italian language acquires in certain quarters of society a de facto second-class status.

My personal take on this situation

I first read about the College Board decision on Jan. 8 in an article in the NY Times. Once the initial shock wore off, I did two things: tweeted it and then wrote an email to the president of the AATI. In his reply to me, he referred me to two other news articles: The Washington Post and the LA Times.

Having read the latter article, I was a tad annoyed that the presentation of stats compared Italian AP examinees and Italian high school programs nationally and in the state of California to Spanish. Uh, hello?! Did the journalist not reflect on the status of foreign languages in the US and realize that Spanish is not just another foreign language but rather a language of the US (since it does not have an official language)? I also emailed him and tried to explain to him that his presentation of the statistics was not an equitable comparison for Italian. I used the adage “comparing apples and oranges” and that Italian has always been and should be compared to French and German, the other foreign languages that maintain a foreign language status in the US, unlike Spanish, which is a second language for all intents and purposes. Well, his reply to my request for a follow-up paragraph accurately representing the reality of the Italian AP exam within the context of foreign languages was rather dismissive. So I will, for the sake of making some noise, post it here. In 2008:

• Italian AP had 1,529 examinees and increased by 18% since 2007.
• French language AP had 20,675 and German 5,259.
• Both, however, experienced a decrease since 2007 (-5% and -3% respectively).

Yes, economically speaking, the exam is not financially feasible…but we are growing, not at the initial projected rate, but let’s face it, we aren’t Spanish!

What options are available?

First and foremost, the idea of taking the test via computer vs. pencil and paper. Terminally Incoherent’s blog post about electronic test taking gives some examples as to benefits and pitfalls of these types of tests. Financial justification by the College Board cannot be the only reason to go this route.

Next, find more money. We are in the midst of the worst recession since pre-WWII across the globe. Can we really be expected to find more money? Unfortunately, Italian has been considered the “stepchild” of modern foreign languages, given the limited number of speakers of it world wide (according to Wikipedia, Italian ranks 20^th in terms of native speakers, and it is an official language in: Italy; Vatican City and San Marino, both geographically located within Italy; Switzerland; Croatia; Slovenia). So to whom can we turn for financial rescue? Obviously, Berlusconi’s government is unable to fulfill previous promises given Italy’s economic turmoil. Italian Americans? Many of them who have already generously promised monies must be applauded. They recognize the value of maintaining language in tandem with culture (funny how many people label themselves Italian American but cannot speak the language and for the most part, don’t encourage their children, grandchildren to study the language/cultural formally).

Another possible strategy? Find ways to lower the cost of grading the exam. I have never been involved in grading it (but I have been invited to be a reader this summer), but I can appreciate the entire grading process. Language learning isn’t just right/wrong answers, it is negotiation of meaning, free writing, persuasion, narration. There is also an oral component that needs to be evaluated. Finally, the 0-4 grading scheme is revisited every year in light of the test-takers.

What else can be done? I’m not sure.

I hope that we can reinstate the AP exam in the future.