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Acquisition vs. Learning
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17 thoughts on “Acquisition vs. Learning”
I guess the hard part now is administrative and parent buy-in. How do you handle administrators and parents that want instant results from students?
Angela I wrote this last November about this topic:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/11/15/throw-the-dog-a-bone-1/
But now I wouldn’t do it. Not even five minutes. The time is too valuable. For me things have changed since last fall with our increasingly strong district initiative in favor of comprehension based methods. I guess it depends on who you have around you. Most parents don’t care, and most administrators don’t know, but the few can be truly difficult. I really don’t even know what a good answer to that question is. It’s really tough when you find yourself in a meeting trying to justify why you do what you do. Lawyers and doctors don’t have to do that. Why should we?
Even before enrolling in a linguistics course, I gave the following explanation to my principal and superintendent for changing approaches in my classroom, “Knowing what I now know, how can I continue to teach the way I used to teach?”
This summer I am taking a linguistics course as part of my masters program in ESOL. Every chapter so far validates Comprehensible Input as the most effective approach to language acquisition. There are numerous references to studies that reach the conclusion that language is acquired and not learned. There are even charts that compare the two approaches like the one that compares “Learning View of the Traditional Classroom” and “Acquisition View of Process Writing. After one of the comparisons the authors write, “Even though traditional practices prevail in many classrooms, current theory supports methods based on an acquisition view.” (Freeman, D. & Freeman, Y. Essential Linguistics What You Need to Know to Teach. Heinemann, 2004.)
Subsection after subsection provide linguistic studies that support the idea that the brain has an innate capacity to acquire language and possesses an innate knowledge of “universal grammar”. For example children make grammatical mistakes (usually with irregular structures) based on their application of universal grammar rules and not because of anything they learned or were taught. This is true despite differences in first language across cultures. For this reason grammar acquisition is an implicit function.
The book also mentions that phonotactics (the distribution of sounds in a language) is subconscious knowledge. Children acquire this as they develop language—it is not taught.
The bottom line is that brain research and numerous recent language studies indicate that traditional approaches to language acquisition do not correspond to what we now know about how language is developed. Someone may have already mentioned this, but after watching the following video, how can we continue to approach language as if we lived in the early 20th century and had no brain research to study.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
Sorry for the length, but the evidence for CI appears to be overwhelming!
…knowing what I now know, how can I continue to teach the way I used to teach?….
Right on.
Ardythe I never get to the research as it unfolds, it seems, and this is a great example of how our very small blog community can help each other keep up with things.
Thus, I encourage everyone to find their voices and speak up here. Remember, with the paid membership we changed from being a very large amorphous group to a very small group which has yet to break 50 people, so we need everyone to speak up and share your personal experiences as we grow together. I continue to like the new small group format here which slowly over time will move us all towards greater honesty and sharing on a personal level. Again, I make no claims to being an expert and this is not about me writing stuff about my version of TPRS, which, rather, can be found here:
http://susangrosstprs.com/
My sole purpose, and Bryce’s, here is to share things that have worked for us and to facilitate discussion like you offer above, Ardythe, and thank you for that.
Now, having put out an invitation for more discussion by all group members here – I love the discussion the most – I will yet again link to a set of blog entries that I feel cannot be linked to enough – the concrete busting idea that language learning is UNCONSCIOUS. Ardythe said:
…phonotactics (the distribution of sounds in a language) is subconscious knowledge….
Nobody likes that Krashen suggests that language learning is unconscious. It kind of takes their power away. They don’t get to be smart and flashy teachers who deliver the grammar goods and get high fived in the hallway by their awesome four percenters and their mothers. We have a 13 year old coming from France on Tuesday to spend three weeks with my Evan who just failed Spanish and whose teacher got arrested last weekend for child abuse. The French kid, bottom line, is coming here because he ain’t learning shit in French schools and his parents, most Europeans, know this and so kids in Europe do home stays in other countries the way kids in the U.S. watch TV. European teachers go the conscious analysis of language route. Paralysis via analysis really applies there. Watch the movie Mademoiselle de Chambon on this. The opening scene is a hilarious representation of how nuts studying grammar can be as a family tries to help their kid with his homework. It is a must see if you are a language teacher. Somebody told me yesterday in an email that Krashen is officially “out” in the academic spheres. I’m glad to hear that. He should never have been placed in their dark mental box in the first place, he is so far beyond them. Of course he is. He brings language learning out of the arena of failure – analysis – into the arena of success – unconscious absorption of the language. I really think he is like Carl Jung in that sense. They had to reject him because if they didn’t reject him they would have to reject themselves, which is not something the ego is good at. Here is one of many links on this site to this crucial foundational concept, and I make no apologies for repeating them here so often. We need to keep the “language is an unconscious process” piece in our minds if we are to succeed in our jobs:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/07/19/learning-a-language-is-an-unconscious-process-3/
It is true. Krashen is cited throughout the textbooks used in all of my ESOL classes so far. He is also on the forefront of advocating for bilingual programs (they provide comprehensible input) instead of English immersion (little to no comprehensible input–especially in the beginning). There is a considerable body of research that indicates English immersion kids make gains in the beginning, but then reach a plateau. Kids with true bilingual programs (with appropriate comprehensible input) overtake the immersion kids in standardized tests and continue to make gains over time. The conclusions are that one key factor is CI.
As a Spanish teacher it breaks my heart that your son had such a bad experience with the language. My own daughter cried (she is not a crier) when I told her that she would have to take Spanish 3 (it is the only language offered at her school). By chance, we spent a month of the summer before her junior year in Peru touring and visiting family. The trip changed her life because Spanish was no longer just a subject she took in school. After two years of Spanish, this was the first time that she saw the language as a means to communicate and it changed her life. What a shame that it took traveling to another hemisphere for her to discover that language is for communication and not a subject to learn through dissection of words and phrases in a clinical manner by applying learned grammatical rules and memorized vocabulary.
Guess it is no wonder, when the approach to teaching modern languages has not changed much in many places from how dead languages are taught.
Sometimes I think that the greatest service I do my students in regard to how the language is viewed is to conduct business in German. I ask students in German to move desks, pick up paper from the floor, throw something in the trash. If I find a pen or pencil on the floor I ask in German whose it is. Those are simple, straightforward uses of the language to conduct everyday tasks – suddenly the language has a purpose.
I have a student who is determined to fail because he wants to go to the continuation high school. So, he does no work and claims that he should never have taken the class because a foreign language is beyond him, but when I turn to him and ask a question about class discussion, or when he wants to go to the bathroom, very decent German comes out of his mouth.
Currently I’m doing Oral Interviews with my level 1 students just to see where they are. Once we get past the “assessment brain freeze”, they are doing very well. If I had a class in the upper 20s to lower 30s they would be even better, but it’s really difficult to provide all the CI they need and hold them accountable with classes of 40+. And just think what could be accomplished if we followed the German model and limited class size to a maximum of 25! Better yet, we should follow the Finland model of education.
Not too long ago “Language” or “Language Educator” magazine had a short article about deaf students in a Latin American country. It was a unique opportunity because most of them came from rural areas and were brought together to a school for the deaf. From their self-taught hand signals, the students very quickly created a full and complex signed language. Interestingly, students over a certain age never became totally fluent in the new language. I’ll have to see if I can find that article again.
I’ve got neurons firing all over the place, but I’ll latch on here: I’ve been giving Oral Interviews for the first time this year.
I didn’t call them that. I titled them “Speaking Assessment/Part/Exam”, as close as possible to what my colleagues term this “portion” of the “final exam”. They weigh the four skills equally 25% each. It’s very false, this programmatic output [yes, duh, preaching to the choir].
I gave a list of questions and copied various picture stories a gazillion times. We rarely got to the picture stories. I said: “You know what we are going to talk about. (family, friends, pets, pastimes, reading, sports, and lots more) I ask a question – you hear that it’s about your family, then go crazy! Tell me about your family 2, 3, 4, 5 sentences. I’ll respond. I’m not going to try to trick you, I’ll just ask a logical question. Answer it. We’ll go from there. Be ready to talk a bit about any of the topics represented in the questions. From there, tell me what picture story you’ve looked at most and we’ll talk about it.”
Boy was it refreshing!! I did say: don’t you dare come up and sit there and ask “how do you say ‘pet’ and ‘sister’ and other words you should have reminded yourself about.” So not a pure OPI by any means. I also gave them this: http://msgerman-csd.wikispaces.com/Practice+Paper Practice Paper is used for essay writing usually, but I told them: having a Hirnblähung [German version of brain fart] as you prepare? Then go hear, click “I give up” and look at all my suggestions.
I learned: 1) I love this format. They can prepare, they can try to memorize, but they really are mapping German concepts in their brain, because *I AM NOT GRADING THEM ON CANNED RESPONSES*!! Glorious!! They have to sift through phonemes and memes and semantic chunks to make sense of input and give any real output. And between you and me, half the time I couldn’t find my original set of questions, so I rarely read anything verbatim, and they had no sense of where I was going except the question’s connection to what I had just elicited from them.
2) CI is working, even with how weak I was in its service this year. Because seriously, the real feedback the kids got this year was dynamic feedback in class. *I AM AN ATROCIOUS LATE GRADER* Many kids learned this and jumped off my CI bandwagon. Many stayed on because they took me at my word, because mom and dad raised them well, because I amused them, because my grading system fit in with their grade aspirations, for any or all or other reasons.
And I was able to look in their eyes and tell them how and why they were successful (I took rubrics off of Scott Benedict’s site and used a lot of language from the Mega Strand Assessment here.) I was able to tell this dear wonderful girl who put up with so much bull hockey from a number of boobs in class: “you are getting an A on this speaking assessment, not because you are better than the nincompoops in the corner, but because you responded to each question with at multiple short answers, you understood and responded to my follow-up questions, you quickly worked around words/concepts which you didn’t know yet. Moreover, you can be proud that you are processing my German without difficulty. I made no [very little] effort to slow or dumb down what I said, and you were picking it up with impressive readiness. You can be very proud of your work.”
–In turn, her friend-of a similar demeanor-did not avail herself nearly as well. A matter of too little input, definitely. But someone who needed much firmer rules from the get-go: most definitely. She told me too: “this is hard, worksheets are much easier.”
–As well: I’ve got a young man who processed so damn fast from day one !!! But whose behavior is in the bucket!! (for all classes–bigoted words, sexist jokes, outright idiocy) He had checked out too early, but his comprehension was still really strong — yet, he had not invested enough effort/energy/intention to bring much to the fore in speaking or writing here at the interview. Yet he produced enough for a low C speaking, hovering between a 2 and 3 — and crazy enough, the “scantron part” [a mix of: a few Genial elements, Michael Miller Sabine und Michael Level 1 Semester 2 Exam parts, and NY Proficiency Exams; though if my colleagues ask, I haven’t changed the exam one bit!!] was pretty decent for him–low B range.
–One more thought: I have this delightful kid who just bleeds “success in a TPRS class”, doesn’t give a hoot about homework [especially traditional] but will give his all in class, act, answer, model. BUT: he clashes with the Man every now and again, and decided to bubble in his name because “my final doesn’t count, I could fail it and still pass”…. I said something to the effect of: are you sh*t*ing me, this final’s an experience!! There’s a Popeye cartoon!! How dare you? [I threw my back out, I may have used the colorful language.]
He ends up feigning a true attempt, but — get this — he comes up for his “speaking exam” and is absolutely dynamic and fun and genuinely interested in engaging in dialogue. CRAZY. And he gets a C+ [I’m grading to the rubric, not to deal with my guilt]
And if I had had my 10+ minutes with him, I bet I would have worked that grade up, he would have gotten in the swing of things and earned a higher grade.
One last note: I had a kid come to me during my prep period to do his “speaking exam”. A kid, mind you, who can’t take German next year because he will be enrolled halftime in vocational school. I had no agenda but to talk with him. I did not plan to talk with him for 45 minutes. But I did. It started with a question that led to Family Guy and Brian and various characteristics of Brian. In German. Bouts of English to get him going, but eventually all in German.
–My two colleagues, the two to whom I am closest, share my prep. They were fairly speechless. Largely about me giving up a prep, but also: they saw what I really meant when I berated our current final exam process and what I was doing to ameliorate it and make it more real.
Ardythe, is Krashen now receiving largely favorable citation? Or or they just starting to follow up on his ideas without yet giving him much credit? Such is how paradigmatic shifts usually start: tentatively, and in bad faith.
My last sentence should have been, “Such is how paradigmatic shifts IN ACADEMIA usually start: tentatively, and in bad faith.”
Frank,
Krashen’s works, whether articles, books, or research, is an astounding number of dissertations and other studies. He is huge in the reading world with his studies showing that reading and writing are acquired, and is a speaker at reading conferences. The author of a literacy text from my last semester mentioned in one chapter that she runs into him frequently at reading conferences.
However, Krashen mentioned in an article that while research supports the acquisition view, administrators are not always aware and are still pouring money into strategies and methods for instruction of skills that students would acquire anyway.
Robert, et al, we’ve talked here in the past about backward planning in the sense of heavy CI for language items that will commonly appear in a conventionally published text to be subsequently read. Accordingly, other than possibly direct TPR, one good way to prepare the students for some of the vocabulary in common classroom commands is to target that vocabulary in PQA, storyasking, and follow-up written texts that we prepare for them. We all do that more or less, I suppose. But perhaps not as deliberately as we could.
I agree wholeheartedly, Frank. My comment was directed at the idea that if we use these structures only in what students think of as “instructional time”, they will tend to harbor the thought/attitude that the language is just another academic subject, no matter how we teach it. If I ask them to do normal, everyday things in the language, they experience that it’s for real communication. I also speak the language to my students outside the classroom – part of the Standards, BTW. (How many of our grammar colleagues have students yelling the equivalent of “Guten Tag, Herr Harrell! Wie geht’s?” across the Quad? And these are my at-risk students.) CA World Language Standards, “Settings” 1.1, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1: Students recognize/participate in/initiate/sustain age appropriate cultural or language use opportunities outside the classroom.
Dear Angela, Ben, et al, I beg to differ. We do indeed give instant results, at least more meaningfully instant than those of the traditionalists. So those teachers’ four-percenters may conjugate some verbs, correctly fill in some blanks without even checking back in the book, or whatever else of that ilk. Yet often they are neither able to understand nor produce real communication. We, on the other hand, quickly have certainly more than 4% of our students who can use the language to understand and produce real communication. Not so?
Ardythe,
I just watched the YouTube video you recommended. Thanks for the link and you comments. Awesome stuff. It is on my favorites list now, and I will use it to help explain what I am trying to do in Spanish class.
Two phrases are rolling in my head because they resonate with CI-based instruction:
“Aesthetic education”, education using all of the senses (versus the current popular model of anesthetized education)
“Divergent thinking”: multiple answers to questions.
Great discussion! As I read back through the blog posts, I feel much more prepared to talk with my administrator and parents about language acquisition. I’m very new to TPRS, and hope to start implementing it in the fall with my 7th and 8th graders. Also, I will be teaching Spanish at a summer program for about 3 weeks (1 hr a day) for high school students…any ideas as to how I should approach it? I was thinking along the lines of Ben’s circling with balls/PQA…let me know what you guys think.
Anglea my suggestions are:
https://benslavic.com/resources/workshop-handouts.html
and in particular these four activities (stories come much later for me):
Workshop Handout/Segment #1: Word Association
Workshop Handout/Segment #2: One Word Images
Workshop Handout/Segment #3: Circling with Balls
Workshop Handout/Segment #4: Word Chunk Team Activity