questioning levels

Latin & CI Criticism: Challenging Work & Higher-Order Thinking

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A frequent complaint of comprehension-based Latin teaching is that students aren’t challenged enough. Critics point to Bloom’s “understanding” level, assuming that everything stops there, imagining students hanging out in the lower-order thinking levels. Given that assumption, the critic’s takeaway is that “CI Latin” is unchallenging, and lacks higher-order thinking.

Untrue.

What is true is that comprehension-based Latin teaching prioritizes understanding as step zero. Under such an approach, nothing is done without first understanding the Latin in front of all students. One immediate implication is that Latin texts must be level-appropriate for beginners in the first years of a new language. And that level is quite low. Therefore, it is true that these texts are at a much, much, much lower level than the kinds of texts traditionally used in Latin classrooms, but that’s just text level. This says nothing about thinking level. Do these truths mean that students do NOT engage in higher-order thinking with these lower level texts? Are students NOT challenged when reading and discussing in class?

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Crazy vs. Calm: Reverse Questions

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Reducing listening activities and doubling-down on reading last year had amazing results, even for a year with the lowest interest in the language I had ever seen. We read novellas, embedded readings from MovieTalk clips, tiered versions of various existing texts, and Type ‘n Talk (Write & Discuss) class texts. Overall, instead of what I’m gonna call crazy content creation (CRAY-CC), I had a lot of success with all that calm content creation (CALM-CC). The former is something like 110% energy-filled classes with a massive focus on interaction. The latter isn’t. Both are different approaches to comprehension-based teaching prioritizing input. The former has a far greater emphasis on communicative language teaching, which isn’t necessarily sine qua non as some make it out to be. While I truly believe this applies to all languages, it is especially the case for Latin.

Of course, I don’t disparage anyone doing the former, though I do recommend that language teachers do what they can so new teachers see CRAY-CC as just ONE approach to providing input. In other words, it would benefit anyone new to the field if experienced comprehension-based language teachers presented and shared the non-negotiables and principles of CI more than specific CRAY-CC activities, methods, etc. For me, CRAY-CC was trending when I started teaching. Granted, I did learn most of my strategies and techniques from all that, but it would have been nice to be presented with other options that fit my speed, style, mood, etc., and especially that of my students. Luckily, I became more responsive to their reluctance, and adapted. In the end after 9 years of focusing on CRAZY-CC, I finally settled on CALM-CC classes for my 10th year. The reading development truly was magical. We generated class texts based on what were were discussing, learning, and reading, and it was all more than enough content. No order-at-cafe/taberna role plays, and no paired speaking activities that lacked a purpose, either.

Granted, that doesn’t mean I ditched speaking Latin altogether, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend that. At this point, I would recommend a kind of speaking Latin in the classroom that looks different, though, such as communicating with students (fully accepting their English responses), and just skipping on the kind of listening demands that seemed to require 100% silence on their end—ultimately leading to classroom management disasters—that so often accompany CRAY-CC. For a CALM-CC approach, many greetings, instructions, and daily interactions can be done in simple Latin, and have value. Then there’s questioning.

Questioning IN LATIN can be tricky given issues with asking questions when reading a text, which I found became more of a problem when reading ramped up. But let’s say I wanted to ask more questions IN LATIN, and let’s say you do, too. Assuming you had a classic Classical background with approximately 0% speaking Latin, maybe you recently went to a conventiculum, and now you want to speak more Latin in the classroom. That’s a great idea, though not everything you learned and experienced can be applied to your students who have an uncia of the prior knowledge you do. Just as well, here’s an activity inspired by a graduate student who recently presented a selection of Virgil (in English) during a mini lesson, asking yes/no, either/or, and “do you think that” questions that reminded me of what I used to ask IN LATIN as early as the first weeks of school. I call it Reverse Questioning…

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NTPRS 2017 Takeaways

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Before having the opportunity to present a couple workshops, my mind was blown quite sufficiently during the week. Overall, the Advanced Track with Alina Filipescu and Jason Fritze got me thinking about aaaaaaaall the things I’ve forgotten to do, or stopped doing (for no good reason) over the years. Thankfully, most of them are going to be soooooo easy to [re]implement. As for the others, I’ll pick 2 at a time to add—not replace—until they become automatic. This will probably take the entire year; there’s no rush!

Jason referred to high-leverage strategies—those yielding amazing results with minimal effort (i.e. juice vs. squeeze), and I’m grateful that he called our attention to everything Alina was doing while teaching us Romanian. ce excelent! I’ll indicate some high-leverage strategies, and will go as far as to classify them as “non-negotiable” for my own teaching, using the letters “NN.” I’ll also indicate strategies to update or re-implement with the word “Update!” and those I’d like to try for the first time with the word “New!” I encourage you to give them all a try. Here are the takeaways organized by presenter:

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NTPRS 2016: More Changes, More Thoughts

/ magisterp / 8 Comments

After attending iFLT, I spent another week in Reno at NTPRS. While iFLT offered more opportunities to observe teachers teaching students, NTPRS offered more opportunities to actually BE a student for those of us in the Experienced track. I appreciated the short demos that most presenters gave, even when the workshops were not titled “___ language demo.” There are some game changes here that warrant their own posts  (e.g. embedded readings straight from the source, Michele, Whaley), but I have much  else to report on. Like last week’s iFLT post, this one includes more of what I intend to think about and/or change for 2016-17. They’re organized by presenter:

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Why “do you understand?” is pointless to ask…

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Language teachers usually ask this when something indicates that a student didn’t understand (e.g. verbal response “huh?” or non-verbal response deer-in-headlights expression on face, etc.). If this event has already happened, asking the question serves no purpose. In fact, it might even make the matter worse by putting the student on the spot. The student will likely answer “yes, I understand” just to get their teacher to move on to someone else. Here are some comprehension check alternatives:

1) Did I just say/ask X?
2) Did I just say/ask X or Y?
3) I just said/asked ____.
4) What did I just say/ask? -or- Who can tell me what I just said/asked?

The alternatives above are arranged by questioning level from low to high (i.e. yes/no, either/or, fill-in-blank, open-ended). The questions could certainly be asked in the target language, but one popular strategy is to ask, in English/native, “what did I just say/ask?” to a so-called barometer student, who would be one with the slowest processing speed. This popular strategy is interesting because that kind of question is technically harder to answer than “did I just say/ask X?” It’s probably a non-issue because we’re dealing with the native language, but for the sake of variety, or if you find that your barometer students are struggling, you could start asking those lower level comprehension checks in English/native as well the classic “what did I just say/ask?”