I once had a native Spanish-speaking colleague propose a deal; in order to improve his English, he was to speak only English to me, and in order for me to improve my Spanish, I was to speak only Spanish to him. Without wanting him to know how I reaaaally felt about language acquisition so soon after meeting, I hesitantly agreed to the terms.
The results were disastrous.
When teachers complain about their certain practices that create more work for themselves and take time away from students acquiring the target language, my response is usually “well then, don’t use them.” Follow the logic below to arrive at why you need to wrap your head around changing Assessment & Grading practices so that you can use your prep/planning time, and personal life, for more useful and enjoyable endeavors…
On last week’s Tea with BVP, Bill VanPatten discussed what humans do when they listen to and read messages, known as Input Processing (IP), and then elaborated on his work with Processing Instruction (PI). Don’t let that acronym palindrome (PIIP, or IPPI) confuse you! Bill’s Processing Instruction (PI) is an instructional technique used to gently push students into linking form and meaning while processing input, although it’s meaning-based and communicative in nature, not explanation-based like pop-up grammar, etc. Regardless of using Processing Instruction (PI), the language teacher should be aware of what’s going on as students process input. So, what do they do first when they listen to, and read messages?
Spring semester Tea with BVP starts up again this week, but before the winter break, Bill VanPatten dropped what that weird keynote speaker at ACTFL 2016 would call “mind grenades,” and he dropped quite a few. If there’s one episode to listen to, it’s Episode 43. Among others, here’s one gem that sticks out, and sets up this week’s episode:
“In fact, nothing in a textbook is psychologically real” (click here for a psychedelic treatment of the audio)
Others followed:
Pīsō Ille Poētulus is a poetry novella, so don’t overlook the Poetry Audio Album as a classroom resource, or more importantly, to improve your own rhythmic fluency. If a picture is worth a thousand words, the audio is invaluable when it comes to “feeling” the rhythm of Latin poetry. You can get it on iTunes or Amazon, but it’s better to download from Band Camp! Alternatively, I can mail it to you on a USB Drive. Continue reading
Mārcus et Imāginēs Suae Bonae is another recently published Latin novella (the first Latin book sold by TPRS Books!) co-translated by myself and John Bracey.
In a classic classist—not the classiest—Classicist move (probably better as “elitist,” but that phrase was too good to pass up—not unlike Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog), someone began the ole questioning of usage and word choice. No surprises. I’m well-aware that everyone’s a critic, but we could all learn a thing or two from the following video (serendipitously shared by Bob Patrick earlier this week). In sum, the focus of any 10 things shouldn’t be the 1 negative—there are 9 other positive things to make note of:
Yep, that would rule-out Sentence Frames (e.g. My favorite food is _____), and any other scaffolding when it comes time to creating a message. The result is “traditional language practice” which has not been shown to lead to acquisition. A single genuine utterance (e.g. “pizza”) as part of a communicative event (e.g. “Charles, what’s your favorite food?”) is more beneficial in the long run.
Listen to highlights from the latest show for more on these Second Language Acquisition (SLA) takeaways.
There are two main camps, and one outlier when it comes to the role of Input and Interaction in SLA. Both assume Input is necessary. However, there are those who believe…
1) Interaction is absolutely necessary in addition to Input.
2) Interaction is beneficial, but not necessary.
3) Interaction isn’t beneficial at all (very few believe this).
A good place to start is defining Interaction, which Bill gave us as “NOT forced speech, but 2+ people demonstrating that they are involved in meaning making (e.g. speaking, facial/eye expression, nodding, other gesturing, etc.)”
A caller brought up the point that Interaction between the teacher and students is under scrutiny by those looking for students to do more of the communicating. After all, it certainly “looks” like lecturing, but Bill’s Principle #2 of a definition for communication (i.e. interpretation, negotiation, and expression of meaning in a given context) supports the process of a teacher expressing ideas to students who interpret those ideas is, most certainly, communication! Bill’s best advice is to “talk with, not talk at” your students. He further warns “if you say 2+ sentences without involving students, you’re doing something wrong.” I see this play out well when teachers circle tactfully. The teachers asks many questions and repeats student answers in order to increase exposure to input, but the students are involved and interacting. I see this play out not-so-well when teachers frequently restart a story from the beginning, or continuously retell the events without new ideas or questions with new information. So, 2+ sentences, then checking in with students is a GOOD strategy.
So, where does Bill stand on the role of Interaction? When learners signal that input is NOT comprehensible, their interaction leads to more comprehensible input, but clarification and negotiation are not needed all the time. Like Stephen Krashen and authors of Angelika’s quote, Bill agrees that the role of Interaction does not CAUSE acquisition, but it can be beneficial, placing him in camp #2.
It’s clear that non-idiomatic language (hopefully not with structural errors) has an effect on the mental representation of a student. It would be silly to deny that. Although Bill VanPatten advocates for teachers to have high proficiency levels in this week’s Tea with BVP, he also mentions that we don’t know for certain what the negative impact of exposure to low-quality input is over different periods of time (e.g. K-12 Spanish vs. 4 years of Latin). Regardless, I think we should be asking this:
Does the negative impact of using non-idiomatic Latin outweigh the benefits of an improved experience and inclusion of ALL students in the Latin classroom?
If the answer is “yes” in a catastrophic way, an extreme suggestion would be that all Latin teachers below X proficiency level should immediately resign, or at least refrain from creating and/or publishing materials for students. These teachers should attend the available immersion events (e.g. conventicula, rusticātiō, Living Latin in NYC, etc.), listen to Nuntiī Latīnī and Quōmodō Dīcitur, read as much Latin that they understand as possible, and then get back on the horse when they’re up to speed. A less-extreme suggestion would be that they should simply not teach Latin communicatively.
If the answer is “no,” or “yes” in a non-catastrophic way, then the teacher should still definitely seek out those same ways to improve proficiency, but perhaps with less urgency. They should certainly keep teaching, and we could certainly use the published materials.
Personally, I feel that ANY mental representation of language is more beneficial than what has been going on with Grammar-Translation, and my hunch is that the negative impact is nowhere near catastrophic. Thus, it’s only a matter of time until the teacher’s proficiency improves to a high level, which means that each year students will be exposed to richer and richer input.
Note how the most effective solutions to improving proficiency become an issue of access—the immersion events aren’t cheap, and not everyone has a local Latin conversation group with highly proficient speakers. Teachers with more money and time have greater access to understandable Latin. Note, also, how the issue of access brings us right back to the classroom. A CI classroom is about extending access to Latin to all students—students typically left out in the grammar game. Realize, too, that most Latin teachers, themselves, have been denied access to communicative proficiency, and are doing what they can to improve it.
Season 2 of Bill VanPatten’s show kicked-off today. Click on the first link you see, here, for highlights from the show in just under 15min, but catch the full episode if you have more time.
People have criticized me for not quoting many Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers other than VanPatten. Until the others make their work accessible by coming out with their own show, or make themselves more available by answering my emails and phone calls, I’ll continue to promote a guy whose work easily applies to what we do in classrooms—especially at the secondary level—and is advocating for positive change in our departments.
Here’s a 30sec soundbite from Episode 28 that covers 1) context as a “straw man,” 2) language acquisition vs. time, 3) setting realistic goals, and 4) ability vs. knowledge:
Magister P. 