Unveiling quality language education insights: LEA Newsletter Sep 2023 Edition

Greetings on the LEA Newsletter Sep 2023!

I hope this post finds you well and that you have enjoyed a fruitful September. In this transitional shift of seasons, we witness a striking contrast unfolds across hemispheres. In the north, September marks the change to autumn, with shorter days and cooler temperatures painting a vivid fall landscape. Meanwhile, in the south, spring triumphantly returns, shedding winter’s grasp, extending the length of daylight, and awakening nature with blossoms, lush greenery, and melodious birds. And of course, for many of us who are also nearer to the poles or equator, seasonal changes seem distant, and yet we do observe the variation in our environment.

Does such phenomena not also apply to our professional work and personal health? Language Educators Assemble (LEA) has just received some server enhancements, as our hosting provider upgraded their servers backend. This is one of the many routine improvements they progressively roll out in “seasons”. Following that, LEA would also be investing more efforts in optimisation of the website, so that all of us can have a better browsing experience. If you noted that LEA has been missing in action for a while last week, this is indeed one of the reasons.

The other reason is more personal. I encountered two continuous episodes of illnesses that incapacitated me for a while. And when I have just shared on the importance of taking breaks periodically, these episodes are my body’s reminders that I should cut myself some slack. And I did heed the advice – nothing matters more than health, regardless of physical or mental health.

Thankfully, with support from family and colleagues who are more like friends, these episodes have somewhat concluded. I am still cleansing the last bit of the illness residue, but I should be able regained my pink of health in due time.

My dear fellow language educators, we also need to be sensitive to our different seasonal needs within our professional journey. Having expended our energy continually in our classrooms, we need to find time to recharge through mindful reflection and purposeful reading. While we take these breathers, I hope LEA can be one of our best come-to platforms.

This month, I continued on the next question within the Miniseries “Decoding Definitions”, tackling on a common query I receive “What is the difference between Mother Tongue and First Language?”. I have often encountered people, including beginning linguists, that tend to take certain terms as universally understood. Two of those terms are “mother tongue” and “first language”, where both terms are usually used interchangeably as though they are synonymous.

However, when we read deeper into articles written by applied linguists, we realise that people may be denoting a different sense of the terms in different contexts. So, to be a knowledgeable consumer of research, we should be more cognisant of the variation in nuances so that we are not making erroneous assumptions when we try to translate findings from those studies. I do urge for all of us to explore the nuances in the difference between mother tongue and first language, and gain insights into how these reflect an individual’s cultural and linguistic identity.

On top of that, I also revisited one of the earlier articles that I have published “7 common feedback mistakes to avoid in language education (with tips on how to do better)”. In its earlier rendition, I discussed about fallacies about feedback in which some of us may engage. In this update, I renewed some of the examples, added in another couple of common mistakes that I gathered over the last year, and also did my best to collate and construct tips to address these mistakes.

Last but not least, I decided to bring our colleagues into the zone of “language attitudes” – an important mental construct that has profound implications on learning and attrition. In this article “Assessing Language Attitudes: Practical Guide of 9 Proven Methods for Language Educators (with Pros and Cons)”, I shared comprehensively on the methods that researchers have used in eliciting language attitudes. Of course, I have calibrated them in consideration of our operating contexts as practitioners in schools and classrooms. Hopefully, these methods can prove to be useful in gathering the attitudes of your learners and stakeholders, so that you can devise your follow-up strategies accordingly.

I hope we’d find these articles as valuable as I did. Take some time for ourselves, recharge, and reflect on what truly matters. If you have any thoughts or would like to discuss any of these topics further, please feel free to reach out.

Wishing you strength, wellness, and a reinvigorating season ahead.

Warm Regards,
Chin Yew KIEU
Founder, Language Educators Assemble