If anyone is feeling frustrated that their kids aren’t producing much in their classrooms right about now, consider:
It has been said that a flood of input must precede a trickle of output, meaning that we delay assessing writing or speaking output until it happens naturally with our students. The rule of thumb in comprehension based instruction, if it is to align with what the research shows, is “no forced output.”
Robert Harrell, a German teacher in California, has pointed out that Hart Crane has said, “One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right time.” I love that sentence.
Grant Boulanger, 2016 Central States ACTFL Teacher of the Year, has written, “When acquiring another language, first we learn to listen, then we learn to read what we have heard. Then we learn to write what we have heard and read. Finally, we speak because we’ve heard, read, and written it.”
Grant also writes, “My focus has shifted away from spending time thinking up clever activities to make kids use the past preterit…I’m laser-focused on speaking with them and providing them things to read that they understand and find interesting. I hardly ask them to speak or write at all. I require them to talk, but only to respond to my questions. Their job is to show me when they understand and show me when they don’t. We call it negotiating meaning.”
Grant continues, “First they are allowed to answer nonverbally. Soon after they reply with one word. I hardly have to even coach them into stretching their answers into phrases or sentences. Phrases emerge naturally and at different times for different students. And, by January, the vast majority are chattering uncontrollably at home, on the way to the dance, in the cafeteria and their other classes.”
“I believe that they want to speak. I believe that’s why they register for my classes. I don’t believe that making them speak before they’re ready will lead to what we want for anywhere close to the majority of our students. On the other hand, if we put the focus of their job in class squarely on comprehension, if we encourage and applaud any efforts at output, if we avoid over-correction [Tina has famously said that “any correction is overcorrection….”] that spotlights what they’ve done wrong instead of celebrating that they’ve produced meaningful language, they will want to speak with each other more.
“They do this at first in their own safe-zones – home, car, with friends or in their own heads – and later in sheltered subject matter classes. If we do it in that way, a trickle of output will in fact become a strong flowing stream. And, paraphrasing John DeMado, if our students think that they are owners of their language, then they will be more willing and likely to want to renovate or improve their own accuracy over time.”