Day 4: Creating A Space for Conversation
As a student in the TESL masters program at RIC, I am constantly reading research that shows the benefit of conversation to students learning an additional language. Conversations allow students to practice and play with the language and learn from the mistakes. In addition, conversations between proficient speakers of a language provide a model of a language for language learners. However, I believe that Turkle and Wesch would argue that all students would benefit from a classroom that explicitly teaches conversation skills and incorporates conversations into instruction. At almost every family gathering, I hear my grandmother, Noni, state, “Doesn’t anyone know how to talk to each other anymore? You only talk with these plastic things! (referring to our i-phones). Although it’s true that we can be found sending a quick text to a friend during gatherings, we do mainly have our phones out at gatherings to show pictures or tell stories to relatives. When we are conversing we...
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