All Of My Daily Activities, etc.
– input-based strategies & activities

If this stuff interests you, consider putting a few things in place to support the move towards a more comprehension-based and communicative approach. Here are the practices fundamental to my teaching, making the daily stuff possible:

Core Practices
CI
Grammar
Textbooks
Curriculum
Grading
Look, Listen, Ask
Course Grade
Assessments
Speaking & Writing

Continue reading for explanations of each…

Core Practices
You’ve seen the umbrella, right? Here’s my CI shield.

CI
Here’s my latest attempt to clarify what CI is and isn’t. It all starts here because comprehension is step ZERO.

Grammar
I don’t explicitly teach grammar. Students are already exposed to a LOT of grammar in my classes. Grammar is always found in context, like all language and communication. The most convincing reasons for not teaching grammar are probably the studies showing how the effects of instruction drop after a few months, and disappear after 8+. These basically show how most teachers are wasting their time, even if it appears to be effective in the moment, or over one’s career. But we don’t need studies to show this. Instead, consider how beginning of year/unit “review” reflects that students don’t actually KNOW the content—they only knew it enough to pass a previous unit, etc. Furthermore, even when I do address grammar on the rare occasion that a student notices and asks about the language, I still don’t test or grade that knowledge. In fact, in a different world I would sooner teach grammar explicitly than I would grade it.

Textbooks
I don’t use them. Aside from a focus on explicit grammar, textbooks overload students with vocabulary in a way that lowers confidence for all but the those with the spongiest memory. Textbook chapters typically have at least 20 different words used just once or twice in a text passage. Very few of these new words recur. As a result, students are exposed to a LOT of meanings, yet only a few grammatical structures at a time according to the chapter grammar focus. This has not been shown to aid comprehension—the sine qua non of language acquisition—and inhibits the student from creating mental representation of the language. Instead, I shelter (i.e. limit) vocabulary to few meanings, recycle them often, and unleash grammatical structures as needed. Thus, students are exposed to a wide net without the cognitive demand of new meanings, and build mental representation more effectively. This was a major reason for writing texts that beginning students understand.

Curriculum
As flexible as possible, never stale. The Universal Language Curriculum (ULC) combines features from various successful curricula I’ve implemented, and observed. It was designed to be the most student-centered, collaboration-ready, Second Language Acquisition (SLA)-aligned, and school-friendly representation of what to actually teach. We have Class Days learning about familiar topics like oneself, school, community, and then Culture Days exploring a topic from target-language-speaking cultures.

Grading
I do as little of this as possible. Grading doesn’t cause learning, or acquisition, so why spend time on it? Instead, students self-assess & grade (see Course Grade below).

Look & Listen, Respond/Show/Ask
These are my classroom rules. They’re the main factors contributing to how much input students receive, an how comprehensible the target language is. Looking & Listening is the only way to receive input, so that’s the main process during class. The 2021-22 update clarifies when students should Ask. That is, they’re expected to Respond or Show their understanding non-verbally, and if they can’t do either one because of incomprehension, then it’s time to Ask for clarification.

Course Grade
New for 2022-23, I have two standards: Process & Growth in somewhat of an ungraded approach (see this most-recent post on that). If I see or get evidence that students aren’t meeting expectations, I’ll update the standards grade accordingly. I do this on a rolling basis, each week, and it takes minutes. Students self-assess & grade once at the first progress report, then at the end of each quarter using the updated rubrics in the blog post above.

Assessments
I don’t spend any time whatsoever creating these. Like grading, testing doesn’t cause learning, or acquisition, so there’s very little need to spend time on it. Instead, my assessments are authentic, and in real time. When a teacher recognizes that a student doesn’t understand, they’ve made an assessment. The adjustment is making the language more comprehensible. The response is providing more input. Anything else is unnecessary. In fact, the response is always providing more input, so analysis might lead to the teacher thinking they need an explicit lesson to improve a perceived deficiency (which we know the effects of disappear). For maintaining expectations of teaching language in certain schools, short, no-prep quizzes that are input-based do the trick. These are 4-question comprehension checks we used to score, but now won’t be scored or collected, just discussed as a class (i.e., immediate feedback). Any student could put them into their digital portfolio Doc as evidence, or upload pics of notebook, etc. (see the blog post in the section above). This is a well-oiled machine for anyone required to use it.

Speaking & Writing
I don’t test these. Speaking & writing are forms of output, which is a result of input. Since listening & reading causes speaking & writing, there’s no need to focus on the latter. Also, there’s no need to speak or write Latin, so let’s stop there. While modern language teachers might feel pressure to get students speaking (often mistaking the ends with the means), there’s no logical rationale for Latin. Instead, I use student writing as one more step away from becoming more input, and I expect no verbal responses in the target language. 1-2 word responses are encouraged, but even a response in English shows comprehension. Still, students do begin speaking Latin, eventually. This shows me that all I need to do is provide opportunities for students to speak, and anything that comes of it is welcomed. If students don’t speak, I’ll be providing input no matter what, anyways. This is interaction, which sometimes is misunderstood as paired speaking activities, yet interaction can be non-verbal. As such, if I were to teach a modern language, I would have the exact same outlook; expect no output, but welcome it when the time comes for students to produce it naturally.