Marcellino Berardo

Collaborators from Cherokee Nation, University of Oklahoma and University of Kansas worked together on a Cherokee tone and vowel length project. Our work represents a unique contribution to language documentation, especially with respect to prosodic features of tonal languages. Additionally, it demonstrates the benefits of cooperative and interdisciplinary sharing of expertise and exemplifies how the varied skills of many people, including speakers, learners, theoretical and applied linguists, documentation specialists, second language specialists, teacher trainers, and technology specialists can complement each other. Overall goals of our project include the accurate description of both tone and vowel length. These features will eventually be represented and accessible to the community through an online dictionary. Training sessions were designed around these goals and an educational component of the project involves applying this knowledge to Cherokee second language classrooms as a pedagogical resource for helping learners improve their Cherokee pronunciation. Tone can be challenging to document because it is relative to both the speaker (e.g. vocal tract, pitch rate, emotional state) and phonetic context (e.g. manner, place, word-size, phonological phrasing, focus). This is a difficult task even for native speakers and more so for learners. Linguists led user- friendly (often non-technical) workshops illustrating numerous techniques to make Cherokee tone and vowel length more salient. Teams, consisting of one first language speaker and one second language speaker (typically with no background in linguistics), worked through the tasks with both members contributing to the marking of linguistic features. Results of the ongoing project include word lists illustrating different Cherokee vowel length and tonal characteristics, recorded files that illustrate different tones and vowel lengths with different speakers, and a growing database containing over 1000 acoustic measurements for tone and vowel length. These materials provide us with an empirical base from which to begin evaluating current models concerning the typology of prosodic systems. The literature on Cherokee tone documents five or six surface tones (Johnson 2005; Lindsey 1985; Montgomery-Anderson 2008; Author 1975; Uchihara 2009; Wright 1996). Our findings suggest that Cherokee has a high level tone, a relatively level low tone, a low falling tone, a high falling tone, a rising tone, and a super-high tone. We will discuss these findings, present a preliminary acoustic analysis of Cherokee tone and vowel length, and share the lessons we learned from taking a holistic, collaborative approach to the description, documentation, and teaching of tone and vowel length in Cherokee. *The opinions expressed in this abstract are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cherokee Nation.

This investigation focuses on syllable boundary demarcation in Hualapai and Havasupai, both native American Indian languages spoken in Northern Arizona. In an attempt to understand better the nature of the syllable, allophonic variation with respect to syllable position is examined. Cross-linguistic eviduace suggests that sounds may take on similar characteristics according to their position in the syllable. I. Maddieson (1985) found phonetic vowel shortening before geminates in languages as diverse as Kannada, Hausa, Finnish, and Italian. Phonetic vowel shortening in closed syllables was also found in Havasupai. A relationship between lexical stress and allophonic variation inside the syllable was found in Hualapai and Havasupai. Vowel lowering in closed syllables was also found in Hualapai and Havasupai. (Author) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********...

Research pr1or1nes of the lmguisbcs commuruty, such as representing cogrutive processes associated with hnguishc knowledge, piecing together human (pre)history, and uncovering values and attitudes that underhe language use do not always overlap with the pr1onhes of local commuruhes interested m preserving their language Of central unportance to many local commuruties 1s to have more speakers of the language to strengthen the hngwsttc factor to group identity and to continue the hngwstJ.c hentage A fundamental question arises from the conflicting research pnonties of the two communltles "Should the purpose and direchon of linguistic research on endangered languages primarily benefit the lmgmsttcs commuruty, the local commuruty, or both?" The nature of the research depends, of course, on the answer to this basic queshon It 1s the view of the Loyal Shawnee Language Comnuttee that the needs and pr1onties of both commurut1es should be addressed This paper outlmes the LSLC's...

Collaborators from Cherokee Nation, University of Oklahoma and University of Kansas worked together on a Cherokee tone and vowel length project. Our work represents a unique contribution to language documentation, especially with respect to prosodic features of tonal languages. Additionally, it demonstrates the benefits of cooperative and interdisciplinary sharing of expertise and exemplifies how the varied skills of many people, including speakers, learners, theoretical and applied linguists, documentation specialists, second language specialists, teacher trainers, and technology specialists can complement each other. Overall goals of our project include the accurate description of both tone and vowel length. These features will eventually be represented and accessible to the community through an online dictionary. Training sessions were designed around these goals and an educational component of the project involves applying this knowledge to Cherokee second language classrooms as...

Cherokee, the sole member of the southern branch of Iroquoian languages, is a severely endangered language. Unlike other members of the Iroquoian family, Cherokee has lexical tone. Community members are concerned about the potential loss of their language, and both speakers and teachers comment on the difficulty that language learners have with tone. This paper provides a brief overview of Cherokee tone and describes the techniques, activities, and results from a collaborative project aimed at building greater linguistic capacity within the Cherokee community. Team members from Cherokee Nation, the University of Kansas, and the University of Oklahoma led a series of workshops designed to train speakers, teachers, and advanced language learners to recognize, describe, and teach tone and how to use this information to document Cherokee. Following a participatory approach to endangered language revitalization and training native speakers and second language users in techniques of lingu...

In this paper we show that much can be gained when speakers of an endangered language team up with linguistic anthropologists to comment on the documentary record of an endangered language. The Cherokee speakers in this study examined published linguistic data of a relatively understudied grammatical construction, Cherokee prepronominals.2 They commented freely on the form, usage, context, meaning, dialect, and other related aspects of the construction. As a result of this examination, we make the data of Cherokee prepronominals applicable to a wider audience, including other Cherokee speakers, teachers, language learners, and general community members, as well as linguists and anthropologists.

ESL professionals have traditionally taught the four language skills, vocabulary, and grammar in Intensive English Programs (IEPs) to help incoming students satisfy the university’s ESL requirement. As international education continues to change, however, the ESL profession will need to re-conceptualize its role and make explicit its evolving relevance. IEPs and traditional ESL classes are not necessarily applicable to short-term programs, whose purpose is to give participants some experience at a US institution with a focus on a specific discipline or area of study.  This paper demonstrates two ways ESL professionals re-envisioned their role at the university for short-term programs (STPs) by creating English courses for the international education experience. With linguistic and cultural guidance from the ESL instructors, participants in these English courses critically analyzed impactful observations, perceptions, ideas, or events from the STP and gave PowerPoint presentations at...

The Kansas University Academic Accelerator Program (KUAAP) is new to the University and brings with it a reconceptualization of the first year experience for newly arrived international students who have not yet fulfilled the University’s English as a second language requirements. In their first two terms, international students in KUAAP take classes in English for academic purposes (EAP) alongside General Education (Gen Ed) courses. By their third term, students no longer take EAP classes.

In fall 2016, the School of Pharmacy reached out to the Applied English Center to create an English class for pharmacy students who speak English as an additional language (EAL). The English for specific purposes (ESP) pilot course would target English for the community pharmacy setting. The idea behind the course was to help EAL students who have succeeded in the classroom but need to adjust their pronunciation and oral grammar to be more comprehensible to local Kansas patients.

We created an anthology for English for academic purposes (EAP), which includes a collection of chapters from different textbooks typically used in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. We chose textbook chapters because our high-intermediate reading/writing students, mostly undergraduate students, will be exposed to textbooks in all of their freshman and sophomore courses. Some of these students are already taking two or more freshman-sophomore level courses. We chose disciplines from the sciences, humanities, and social sciences because our undergraduate students must fulfill KU Core requirements, which include courses in these fields. The content in the textbook chapters, however, is not the point of the anthology. The point of the anthology is to illustrate academic English in different disciplinary contexts. We use the anthology to teach students how academic concepts get expressed in English and to help students work with entire textbook chapters.

A key reason for launching ILI at AEC is to help us rethink our practice and improve professionally through the exchange of ideas, techniques, materials, assessments, reflections, and so on. This supplement offers ways to think about practicing and interpreting TESL within the framework of TESOL International Association 1 and MIDTESOL. TESOL’s framework consists of three parts: (a) Interest Sections, (b) Content Areas, and (c) types of sessions. TESOL also has conference themes that we can use to help us reimagine our practice. Similarly, MIDTESOL has conference themes and session types but unlike the international organization, MIDTESOL does not require interest section affiliation and does not categorize presentations according to content area.

Counselors help explain AEC policy to students. One of the most important policies at the AEC is the placement policy. Placement depends on different factors such as proficiency test scores, previous course work, grades, and teacher recommendations. The AEC considers these factors to move students up to the next level or pass them out of the program. In general, students are ecstatic when they pass, happy when they move up and less happy when they don’t. On rare occasions, counselors come across a situation where this general rule does not apply. Placement is irrelevant.

In this essay I add to the discussion on CALL, LEO, and technology use at the AEC. I begin with a brief discussion of CALL and LEO and then survey issues and challenges relevant to the broader field of computer-assisted language learning. Before I conclude with some additional uses of CALL-related technology at the AEC, I offer the beginnings of a pedagogical agenda for the AEC that incorporates CALL.

We teach English to international students for the purpose of academic achievement at the University of Kansas. The assumption is that students cannot be successful in university classes without the ability to use academic English well. This is most obvious at the lower levels. If the student cannot understand any spoken or written English, then s/he cannot take notes, read textbook chapters, write papers, take exams, or participate in class discussion. This assumption also implies that as the student’s English improves, proficiency will become less of a factor in academic success.This essay is intended to help us discuss assumptions associated with language proficiency and academic success and to identify how well students need to be able to use English in order to fulfill the university’s ESL requirement and be successful in their chosen academic program, at least as far as language is concerned. To this end, I begin by characterizing different kinds of proficiency. Then I highlig...

"I dont have any place to go and talk Indian," was a comment made by an elderly Speaker of Loyal Shawnee (Sawanwa) in White Oak, Oklahoma. The chiefofthe Loyal Shawnee Tribe reports there are 8,000 tribalmembers and yet only a handful of eiders still remember the ...