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Another Hundred Years of Sadness?
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47 thoughts on “Another Hundred Years of Sadness?”
I love how we are the out-of-the-box educators! Asking “why?” of everything. I think it should be obvious that there is a problem when an education system is obsessed with teaching critical thinking skills, yet not enough teachers think critically about their own practices. (Critical thinking always seems to me like one of those goals that backward design can mess up, i.e. to what extent does critical thinking have to be explicitly taught and practiced? from a developmental perspective, how does critical thinking emerge? e.g. It was fascinating to read research about mental imagery that found that people with better visualization skills have better higher order thinking skills).
That’s exactly it, Ben: parents and admin get anxious and teachers question their worth, because learning happens internally where we can’t see it. And so, there is a fragile faith, one that easily gets broken between parent/admin and teacher, until the situation deteriorates and everything has to be proven.
Part of the problem is that you will hear short-term knowledge and long-term skill development both called “learning.”
Here are just some ways we can define learning:
receptive vs. productive
short-term vs. long-term
knowledge vs. skill
cognition vs. behavior
recall vs. application
Since school is compulsory and since kids aren’t always mature enough to know what’s best for them, learning for some kids will always feel “forced.” Who gets blamed when a student does not become responsible for his/her learning? Should teachers respond by forcing that student to learn?
I think part of the US problem is affluence. I think this is interconnected with motivation. Many kids are too far separated from what is real and education is taken for granted. For every unmotivated/affluent kid in the US I can show you 10 students, more mature and from developing countries who really want to be in school. When students in developing countries don’t want to be in school it is more often because they are too in tune with an impoverished reality, one in which a higher education doesn’t promise much economic gain.
I have always been fascinated by models and factors of human motivation.
intrinsic vs extrinsic
approach vs. avoidance
mastery vs. performance
cooperation vs. competition
means vs. ends
Doesn’t everything boil down to self-esteem? Isn’t that the root cause that should influence all our decisions?
I learned a lot about motivation in my 2 years in the Peace Corps. For the first time in my life, there was no standard to assess my success, there was no accountability, and no one telling me what to do. For 2 years, intrinsic motivation and my own values were what I had to rely on. Only every 6 months did I have to fill out a report for the US government of the activities I had done (which many volunteers fudged) and which had no bearing on my evaluation as a Peace Corps volunteer. I still remember what a former PC Volunteer told us when we were in our first months of training, hinting that in the absence of external motivators, it’s hard to work. I was surprised at how hard it was to motivate myself to wake up in the morning, to manage my time, and to persevere when confronting apathy and when receiving little support. Granted, I’d been through a lifetime of educational experiences opposite to this situation.
I remember wanting and even asking my director for a standard by which to compare my achievements and set my expectations, to which I was denied on the reasoning that every PC Volunteer faces a different situation. Not the most healthy of motivations that kept me going, but one I’d certainly acquired, was the goal to be the best volunteer in my group, impress my directors, get a good recommendation to further my career. I’d like to think that making a difference was most important, but it is hard to tell. Truly selfless, altruistic acts are uncommon, since we often personally gain in some way.
Excuse the long message. I drank the Krashen FVR Cool-Aid and tried to set up a program based on the “ideals” in what is not an ideal situation, i.e. I had no accountability for SSR all year. I occasionally gave 10 minutes for self-selected reading and have done so regularly for the past 2 months. I read during that time period as well. I was naive. Today, I had my first conferences with 8th graders and one of my most proficient 8th graders admitted to me that he had NEVER done any reading. Zero. While thanking him for his honesty and expressing my disappointment, I was dying on the inside. I plan to make conferencing my primary duty during SSR.
Next year, I plan to include more accountability. I want the students to log/graph their progress (fluency write, #words/books read, etc.) and their grades will reflect their growth, rather than meeting a standard. . . Because we have to adapt idealistic theory to the realities of the classroom.
Eric, I just came across an article that ties in with what you have expressed above. It comes from the book Rethinking Assessment in Higher Education: Learning for the Longer Term edited by David boud and Nancy Falchikov. The title is “Contradictions of assessment for learning in institutions of higher learning” by Steinar Kvale. You can find it on google books.
In his introduction the author notes that “… prevailing forms of assessment in schools and universities have been examinations and grading, which focus on control, discipline and selection. … The dominating role of assessment for selecting and disciplining students is at odds with a knowledge-based economy, which requires a learning culture of life-wide and lifelong learning.” (57)
The author further states, “Educational assessment may thus facilitate learning by providing extensive feedback, clarifying the goals for learning, motivating further learning and encouraging active learning.” (58) [N.B.: Every single one of these principles is violated by the current standardized testing programs. – Robert]
I particularly liked this comment about the exams administered at medieval universities: “The founder of the university at Paris, Robert de Sorbon, thus in the thirteenth century compared the university exams with the Christian judgement of the Last Day. The main difference he suggested was that the judges over heaven and hell were much milder than the judgess at the university.” (61)
Also note the following: “Assessment for selection and for discipline has dominated higher education. … The potentials of assessment for enhancing learning have, though, until recently, generally gone unnoticed in the institutions of higher learning.” (62)
On the historical role of assessment: “Educational assessment has historically served as selection, discipline, knowledge control and, to some extent, as guidance of learning.” (62; emphasis mine)
On one contemporary role of assessment: “Examinations control what and how students learn. … Today power exertion is rationalised through the micromanagement of multiple-choice tests. To many students, assessment is still experienced as a threat rather than as an incitement to further learning.” (63)
“Examinations are checkpoints, where the operational decisions that define what knowledge is accepted or excluded in a curriculum are made. The examinations define for students what knowledge is worthy of acquisition and mastery, what knowledge is inside and what is outside a discipline.” (63)
On humans’ innate bent to learn and the system: “Children are natural-born learners — in their natural environment they learn to walk and talk without institutional or professional assistance; the latter task of mastering the mother language is probably the most complex cognitive achievement of their lifetime. After they have spent ten to twenty years within the educational system, it is today considered necessary to encourage and equip them for a lifetime’s learning. … some common aspects of education assessment, which may discourage an efficient, authentic, life-wide and lifelong learning: the grade point average as learning goal, the dominance of multiple-choice testing, test anxiety, the frequent lack of feedback and forms of examining and grading which hamper the development of authentic as well as self- and peer assessment.” (64)
One report indicated that 93 per cent of students in college have a grade point average as their learning goal, not learning for the sake of knowledge. (64)
On standardized tests: “… what is educationally vital is inherently at odds with efficient testing with unambiguous test items.” (65)
On feedback: “… feedback is an essential principle for efficient learning. Feedback solely in the form of a grade gives an indication of how far off the mark a learning performance is, but contains no direction for where to aim future attempts at learning.” (65)
“assessment of learning has prevailed over assessment for learning in American education” (65-66; emphases in original)
On extrinsic evaluation: “Common forms of educational assessment foster an other-directed learning. The external evaluations foster a dependency on others which counteracts the self-assessment, which is essential for lifelong learning …” (66)
“… traditional features of assessment practices in higher education are at odds with key principles of promoting learning …” (67)
On accountability: “Strict accountability demands pushes towards objectified quantitative learning outcomes, favoring grades and multiple-choice tests as decisive measures for accountability.” (68)
In conclusion:
This chapter started with the question of why assessment for learning today is regarded as an educational innovation. Attempts to answer this question lead to a series of contradictions of assessment in institutions of higher learning. First there is a contradiction between the institutional purpose of promoting learning and a general neglect of the potentials of assessment for promoting learning. There is a further contradiction between the prevalent use of assessment for learning in the apprenticeship training in the crafts and the arts — such as authentic assessment, portfolios, peer and self-assessment — and the minor role such assessment for learning has played in institutions of higher learning. These contradictions wer in part explained by the dominant functions of assessment as selections, disciplining and knowledge control in the history of education.
Today the rise of a knowledge economy requires efficient learning for more students for a longer time, and forms of assessment to promote efficient learning are coming to the for. This time a new contradiction arises, between assessment as promoting an efficient and lifelong learning and assessment as a control instrument for economic accountability. The former may led to educational innovations of assessment for learning — such as authentic assessment and portfolios, self- and peer assessment; the latter leads assessment in the direction of standardised measurements for commensurability and into becoming a stopwatch control of learning rate.
In conclusion, innovations of assessment for learning are not primarily a question of availability or development of assessment techniques, but an issue of what social function assessment plays in institutions of higher learning, and the role of learning in a broader historical and economical context.
Sorry this turned out to be so long.
Awesome Robert! Thank you for pulling out all those “gems” on assessment. I plan to read that chapter. . .
“Educational assessment may thus facilitate learning by providing extensive feedback, clarifying the goals for learning, motivating further learning and encouraging active learning.”
I think in theory this can be true, but I’m not sure what type of assessment can do this. . . I don’t know many people (especially young students) who are good at taking constructive feedback. Feedback too often is used to compare students and rank them and once ranked, there are winners and losers, and that rank will become part of that person’s identity. And then, it becomes a game about playing for rank, rather than learning (I was definitely part of that 93% at college with a primary goal of GPA).
“assessment of learning has prevailed over assessment for learning in American education”
I recently heard a TedTalk in which Stuart Firestein said that testing is for evaluation or for weeding and most often testing is for the latter. I think the difference is to make testing part of an intrinsic motivator, rather than an external force. . . how to assess in a way that makes the student responsible for his/her learning.
I think SBG is an improvement, especially in it’s use of descriptive levels. Still, most proficiency guidelines can describe the next level, but don’t tell the student how to get there. And we need more subdivisions of the ACTFL proficiency levels, especially at the Novice and Intermediate levels. As it is, it can take more than 1 school year for students to improve one sub-level.
I finally was able to pinpoint the problem I see in many traditional, performance-based FL assessments: teachers use backwards design to base tests on the curriculum content rather than based on the goal of what students should be able to do with the language. Thus, final exams test all the grammar rules and vocabulary lists that were “covered,” but do not test students on their ability to function in real-life situations. If we were to do the latter, it would be obvious that the content needs to be changed (along with the methods). Even if students “mastered” the thematic vocabulary and had good knowledge of the grammar rules covered, this would not help them much in the real world in which they need more high-frequency vocabulary and knowledge doesn’t always indicate skill.
I just had a random though: How cool it would be to be able to sit one-on-one with a student and assess him/her while playing a board game and speaking only L2.
I like it, James. Isn’t that Natural Approach-ish? In this way, it would feel less contrived, less like performance. And I think the student would really have to focus on the message. When thinking about the game (rules, strategy, moves, etc.), they expend cognitive resources and they’ll have less ability to monitor (control for learning) and we will better see what abilities have been truly developed.
One of my 8th graders (whom I’ve had for 3 years) asked me after class the other day if she and I could just have a conversation in Spanish and I could assess her on it… WHHHHAAATTT?!!! I’ve never had a student ASK me to assess him or her. She wants to show me what she’s learned-how cool is that. She told me that Spanish is the only class she has ever excelled in and he is very worried about high school since it will be more of a traditional classroom. I gave her the quote (is it Susie Gross?) “Nothing motivates like success.” And she nodded and smiled. She gets it.
Eric, you touch on something that was part of the article but I chose not to include because of length. Kvale compares assessment in institutions of higher learning with assessment in crafts and arts and indicates that assessment in the latter is geared toward learning to a much greater degree.
1. In an apprenticeship in a craft, the apprentice is doing real-life work instead of “academic theory” (my term).
2. The assessment arises from the situation itself:
a. The apprentice can see if the product functions as it should – does the table he made stand solid or does it wobble?
b. The apprentice receives peer assessment from fellow apprentices.
c. The master gives truly constructive feedback – next time use the router for beveling; how could you have started the screw so that it didn’t split the wood?
d. The end user gives assessment that truly means something: a sale or no sale.
e. The assessment is immediate and not separated by a significant amount of time between the task and the feedback.
3. The apprentice (or budding artist) is able to develop his or her own ability for self-assessment rather than relying on some external, mysterious process for determining quality.
In the foreign language classroom, we keep trying to simulate real-world situations, and until we can take our students into the target culture and language for the real thing, we will have to make do with simulations. However, I am trying to think of ways in which we can make the situation even more like the real world. As a teacher I am often willing to accept reversion to English; in a real-world setting with a non-English speaking native, the student would receive instantaneous feedback on whether or not he had communicated. Perhaps we should do more of that, i.e. pretend we don’t speak English. (Just a thought – I would still write down target structures and English translations and give students opportunity to ask for clarification, but if they really want something outside of that, they have to do it in the target language. Very early on my students are able to tell me they need to go to the bathroom and that they want to buy a package of Gummy Bears because they know they will get neither unless they say it in German. Some might say this if forced output; I say nay because they can survive the class without going to the bathroom or eating Gummy Bears, so they say it because they feel the need to communicate.) The more that we talk about the language and grammar, the further we remove instruction from real-world interaction.
In addition, assessment for learning is what we do all the time with TCI/TPRS: we analyze what students don’t know but need to, give them feedback by telling them we didn’t understand, etc. I’m trying to figure out how to make the TPRS process more like the real world; I feel like my circling, etc. is horribly artificial even though it is far closer to the real world than grammar.
At the same time, we have to remember the internal (within the student) and external (outside the classroom) factors that affect learning. An apprentice who doesn’t want to be a carpenter but would rather be a computer programmer probably won’t produce true quality work; a student who sees no reason to learn a foreign language besides meeting a requirement to do what he really wants to do in college will probably never become a fluent speaker.
Okay, just some thoughts with no real solutions.
“I feel like my circling, etc. is horribly artificial”
Robert, that is so true. I think that that is partly why it is so hard for people to believe in TPRS.
Observers who watch someone demonstrate with a language that they (the observers) know cannot believe that TPRS is either effective or sufficiently challenging. (Believe me. I sat next to doubters on two different occasions when at workshops with Blaine. What an annoyance.)
That is also why it is hard to go slow. As the more expert language speaker in the classroom I can get bored with what I am doing and want to hurry it along a little. But the student is not bored by the repetition as much as I. S/he is energized by comprehending what the teacher is saying and and knowing how to interact.
And what is the real world? The real world of the students who are caught in the joy of the interpersonal mode is a conversation about a real or make-believe event or entity.
Perhaps there is a more real-world solution, but I am presently finding that more real-world is a temptation that I have to fight, like more vocabulary, or more grammar. The beautiful thing is that we are increasing the likelihood that they can make it into the real world of L2 where they will get real word feedback.
“And what is the real world? The real world of the students who are caught in the joy of the interpersonal mode is a conversation about a real or make-believe event or entity.”
Thank you for this clarification, Nathaniel! I also sometimes feel that my circling is artificial. But Ben in “Stepping Stones” states that circling serves not only to get crucial reps, but to add in detail. On one hand, circling is artificial in the sense that we don’t circle subject, verb, direct object, etc. in normal conversation (Although we do this with little kids, no?). But on the other hand, circling isn’t so artificial if we’re using it as a mix of “mechanical” circling (changing subject, then verb, then nouns, etc.) and “new info circling” to add in details not already established.
But your clarification frees me from judging the realness of my circling, since my kids and I are REAL-ly interacting with each other, I REAL-ly want their ideas, I am REAL-ly interested (most of the time 🙂 ) about what they did last night, why Rishi couldn’t stand the bad habit of Rohit, etc.
To add on to Robert’s apprenticeship analogy, maybe we can think of circling as the practice an apprentice would do on scrap wood to refine a cut, or stain application, etc. before applying the skill to the table or whatever s/he is working on. In that case, the practice is not done on the actual table, but the practice is no less “real” just because it’s not done on the piece that will be sold.
Again, thanks for the helpful clarification!
The way we concentrate repetitions is not natural, it’s even better than natural input!!!
That said, I’m not big on repetitions for the sake of repetitions. If the students can feel the circling as overly “teachery” then I think some resist that. Circling in and of itself doesn’t mean the student is focusing on meaning. Think about it: after you make a statement, then students can answer many of the circling questions after that that just based on what sounds different from the original statement. In other words, they are waiting to hear that 1 or 2 words that gives away the correct response. We need to get repetitions, but they also have to be meaning-based and meaningful.
How to get repetitions and not feel repetitious? . . . that is the question. If you watch Blaine Ray videos of him doing a story, his circling isn’t even apparent. He’s not parking on a sentence and drilling it into the ground.
How to get repetitions and not feel repetitious?
I think this is the kind of advanced skill that we all develop more over time. I even think that different classes and age levels handle repetition differently. I don’t think that little kids mind it quite so much.
Maybe I should say, they don’t notice it so much! Because they need the repetitions so much more.
True, Eric -I’ve caught myself getting overly teacherly a few times the past few days when I try to DO too much in class (that is, when I catch myself trying to rush acquisition), trying to circle stuff into the ground just for the sake of getting repetitions. And it’s precisely at that moment when eyes start glazing over, because who likes to hear stuff repeated over and over if they’ve already gotten it? It amazes me how fast the feeling of interest in the room can die when I get even a smidgen too teachery! It’s like the glaze over my kids’ eyes during turbo-circling (bad circling) is the red area of a car’s rpm indicator. Slow down! Enjoy the ride! What’s the rush?
It’s helpful to remember that if a student isn’t captivated by whatever we’re circling (the student is listening with the intent to understand and/or the student is humored and/or the student is hooked by the personalized content, etc.) then the reps aren’t really reps at all, they are just noise. The only reps that count as reps as far as increasing the likelihood of acquisition are reps which our brains find noteworthy for whatever reason our brains might find something noteworthy.
Thanks for so clearly defining this process. I am prepping for my various coaching gigs this summer and this is one thing I am working on–especially for training purposes.
What do you do to make circling more interesting? What sort of questions do you ask that make them attend to the meaning and not to the circling?
I am compiling a list right now. Please send me your ideas.
Voice. (The elephant is GREEN???) Whispers.
Adding tag phrases ( Really! You think . . .? Interesting. Class do you think . . . ?)
Facial expressions.
OTHER????
Circling for the sake of repetitions gets boring very quickly.
thanks for your help.
Those are great suggestions, Teri.
Technically not circling (?), but:
How about re-stating what a student said and then asking another student and comparing those two? (If the kids can handle it – no one should feel they’re being called out/their statement is being questioned.) I have done that to try to keep it about the kids, not about me.
Also… fake arguing with the class. Back and forth until they get emotionally insistent or laugh in their answers. The emotional component – getting it some way – is big.
The article and discussion had on the forum about VanPatten’s “The Evidence is IN: Drills are OUT” there is explanation of Paulston’s helpful distinction between mechanical, meaningful, and communicative drills. Circling, depending on the level of the question, can be ALL 3 types of drills.
Mechanical = the response is completely controlled, only 1 way to respond, and it doesn’t require comprehension of the stimulus. If you can substitute nonsense words, then it’s mechanical.
Meaningful = controlled response, 1 way to respond, need to comprehend
Communicative = uncontrolled, more than 1 response, need to comprehend
I’m afraid that most of the circling questions are mechanical, meaningful at best, and rarely communicative drills.
E.g. statement: There is a blue cat.
Mechanical? question: Is there a cat? Answer: Yes. (substitute “sarko” for “cat” and you can still answer correctly)
Mechanical question: Is there a cat or a dog? (substitute “bleeper” for “dog” and you can still get the right response).
Communicative/meaningful question: What is there? Answer: A cat (communicative if asking for a new cute answer and meaningful if the answer is already known)
Communicative question: What does the cat eat? (communicative if unknown) or any unknown “Why?” question
Maybe processing instruction should inform how we ask questions in order to keep the focus on meaning . . .
Asking compelling questions is a way to get compelling answers.
It is such an important skill, but there are CI teachers who never quite get good at this. I’m trying to find ways to help them learn this skill. And practice it.
It all goes back to Susie Gross, who says to ask two circling questions maximum and then get more information. And…you don’t have to circle anything that they get the first time.
Today (in our final), we were doing the chatty boy story.
-Who talks a lot?
-Where does the boy talk a lot? (at the lesson)
-At which lesson does the boy talk a lot? (Russian)
-In whose Russian class … (circle, circle, because “in whose class” is a new-ish construction)
**Who can translate what I just asked?
APPLAUSE WOW!
-Where does the boy go?
-Whom does the boy meet at the theater?
-Where does the boy sit when he meets SK at the theater?
-What does the boy do when he meets SK at the theater and sits next to him?
***Liam, what does SK do when the boy sits next to him at the theater and talks about basketball and movies?
(Liam answers in a complete sentence)
WOW!! APPLAUSE!!
The total shock that they can remember an entire question/answer makes them all hang on. You’re still circling anything they haven’t acquired, but they don’t notice, because there’s an extra detail added each time.
I probably explained what everyone knows, but after five years, I’m still getting this. I did it right this morning, since I had a story written up that they would be reading for their final.
To add, and this is what Susan Gross says, the way to make sure they are getting the meaning when we circle, we ask a lot of “What did I just say?” and “What does __ mean?” . . . still, I’m not a big fan of interruption of the L2 flow. One reason I am big on gestures is that it’s another way students show me they understand the words and a way for me to show them without having to constantly check comprehension. When we progressively add details, we repeat structures, and I like that. That isn’t what I first think of when I think of circling. I first think of how we circle/drill subject, verb, and predicate of the same sentence. . . I rarely do this.
I have to say that I am terrible at circling-I do not do it in a systematic way when I ask a story. Does anyone feel that circling is not always necessary? Especially when the meaning/story is compelling enough?
Trudat. . . at least in the most traditional sense of circling (staying on the same sentence with no added details).
Robert – I’m off topic, but I want to contact you to order your two books: Nordseepiraten and Ritter von Heute. Hilfe?
Send me an e-mail at harrellrl at aol dot com (just change the at and dot to the proper symbols and take out the spaces).
I think that maybe the ACTFL Can-Do statements would be better benchmarks for us than I previously imagined, given this discussion. They are real-world functions, based on the appropriate (novice low/mid/high etc) ability with the language.
Mira Canion and I will be talking about these at NTPRS and ACTFL, so it’s a good thing I like them!
My finals are all “show your stuff.”
My advanced Russian kids are “coming back for their ten-year reunion,” and have to tell the others at their (breakfast) table what they’ve done in the last few years. Their listeners will check off topics they cover. I’ll circulate, and when I’ve heard five correct uses of the past tense and a few other grammar issues, I can move to the next kid (they can get the grammar nailed when they ask questions, too). It’s not about whether everything is correct. They just have to occasionally operate at the Intermediate Mid level (approaching grammatical fluency).
You’ll note that I’m assuming everyone can do this if I listen long enough. I am sure they can, and I’ll just wait ’till they show me their stuff.
The last time we did this, it was lots of fun. They will have pictures and they will talk for an hour or two, depending on how long it takes me to hear everyone. Kids will help cook (my room will be a mess!) and it will be a good way to end the year.
I look forward to this session Michele!
I remember reading some of the “can-do” statements a couple months ago, after some discussion of the topic on this blog, and being a bit sad about the expectations. I went back and quickly looked to see if I could find what it was that made me feel that way, but couldn’t find that language. Hmmm. Either way, this session will be a good one for us L2 teachers to have a better handle on for sure!
Jim, my new standards are based on those ACTFL can-do statements: http://jameshosler.blogspot.com/2014/05/my-newest-standards.html
I recall the complaints (at least mine) with the Can-Do statements are related to their output-orientation and mentioning of semantic vocabulary sets. . . I’ll need to look at them again. Output is the final goal, but I feel like too many teachers lack SLA knowledge to know that a goal of output and a test of output doesn’t mean you have to teach with output.
I just ignore the output stuff, or at least I alter the wording slightly so that just freewrites and essential sentences will do.
And I just use jGR for interpersonal.
Michele, I am definitely stealing this idea for advanced classes as a fun final. Thanks for sharing.
Do you have a checklist or rubric of the information (life accomplishments since they graduated, etc.) you are looking for when you listen to each kid? If so, would you mind sharing?
I do have one, and don’t mind sharing! It’s in this post:
http://mjtprs.wordpress.com/2014/05/07/advanced-final-project/
I’d love to see improvements you make on it.
and a great speaking rubric contributed by another of our teachers is in this post:
http://mjtprs.wordpress.com/2014/05/09/rubrics-speaking-and-interpersonal-skills/
I just glanced through an Algebra 2 textbook. It’s almost scandalous how much attention math gets but how little anything I saw has to do with anything. We aren’t alone, folks.
James, I hear what you’re saying. I excelled in math classes in school, taking Calculus my senior year of H.S. I think much of this mental exercise/fatigue/burnout could have been put to better use. With Trigonometry, I do find much value in some of the things I learned. Particularly the Pythagorean theorem. You know, the high-frequency stuff. (I realized how frequent it is when working in carpentry and furniture building… but struggled to apply it because I had only ever had to do the work on paper).
So I think this is a very fair comparison James… so much of the math that is learned is not very frequently needed (unless you’re an engineer maybe… .2% of the population?). And it is not taught in a hands-on way in most classrooms, therefore taxing to apply in real-life situations.
I like this guy’s approach to math education. More intuition building versus skill building.
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover
Ben should be invited to give a TEDx talk.
Agreed. Let’s make it happen! Limiting Ben to 15 minutes is gonna be hard though, hahaha.
I am surprised Stephen Krashen doesn’t have a Ted Talk (that I’m aware of)!!!
Yup!
TPRS is 100% assessment-for-learning. Weak choral responses, exit quizzes, or slow/non-fluent actors = go back.
One thing AFL learners need to remember is this: the kind of conscious feedback we would give a Socials or English project won’t work in an FL class, or not atleast until the very upper levels.
I also take issue (and have argued with Sara Cottrell on Twitter about this) with “real world” teaching. In my view, if we focus on most-heavily-used vocab– in whatever context/use we can in class– that’s all the real-world training kids need. It doesn’t matter if it’s blue flying elephants or if it’s the life and death in a Salvadorean street gang. If it’s comprehensible, and can be made repeatable (ie it’s interesting), the kids are getting something useful.
When kids show upnin Mexico or France or China, if they have had loads of CI bult around high-frequency vocab, theynwill be ready to rock in a few days. We do NOT have to do clothing and restaurant units, bla bla.
Here’s my take on “real-world.” Proficiency is language skills in the real-world. These types of assessments are critical. Preparing students for the real-world should be the common goal. Tests and content should be backwards designed from that goal, rather than designing tests that cover YOUR curriculum. The traditional curriculum and methods are way off what would help real-world functions. The danger is of course that the majority of FL teachers currently have little background in SLA and thus how it is tested becomes how it is taught. Testing output means practicing output.
Vocabulary words are not created equal. There is much greater return from words that are high-frequency. It is important we realize that high-frequency lists also account for “range” – the use of the word in multiple contexts, thereby controlling for vocabulary that occurs a lot, but only in limited contexts. So when we focus on the high-frequency vocabulary, the students will be able to apply to many contexts. Consider as well: the word “go” can cover “run, walk, travel, slides, etc.” but the reverse is not true, i.e. there are fewer instances when you can use “run” when you want to say “go, walk, etc.”
Studies have shown that comprehension depends on 95% coverage. That’s 2,000-3,000 word families in the spoken register. (Note: a word family is the base word, inflected forms, and derivatives, e.g. excite, excited, excitement, etc.). You can literally obtain advanced proficiency with a vocabulary of 3,000 word families. Other studies support 98% coverage necessary for comprehension, which means 6,000-7,000 word families (for speech).
Of course, traditional, semantically-related vocabulary sets are WAY WAY WAY beyond the first 3,000 word families. There is even research showing that vocabulary should not be taught vertically, in semantic sets. That is theorized to be due to interference, e.g. you remember that “strawberry,” “kiwi,” and “pineapple” were all fruits, but you can’t remember which was which. Vocabulary instruction would be more effective if taught horizontally, like we do in TPRS stories, a little bit of many themes in every story.
It should also be said that the original study supporting 95% coverage (Laufer, 1989) defined comprehension as a 55% or higher grade on a reading comprehension test. I don’t know about you, but IMO 55% isn’t much comprehension. Hu and Nation (2000) recommended 98% coverage and reading comprehension was defined as a 70% or higher. Schmitt et al (2011) found that for 60% or higher comprehension, then 98% coverage was necessary.
All of the above studies were of written texts. Zeeland and Schmitt (2012) found that similar coverage percentages are required for listening. Actually, comprehension averages were still pretty good at 90% coverage, but there was much more variation in the results (some subjects were better than others at dealing with the incomprehensibility). At least the number of word families necessary to reach 95% or 98% coverage in listening is lower than for reading.
. . . my recent research interest has been vocabulary acquisition. . . if that’s not obvious 🙂
Ya. What I mean is, if we limit the vocab to high-frequency stuff– used in any way that is meaningful, fun and repeatable– we are getting them ready for real world.
What I object to is the idea that kids have to do “real world scenario” practice to get competent. My neighbour is doing her level 3 French food unit and the kids are being assessed in the hall with her listening to these basically memorised dialogues where 1 kid is waiter and other 2 are diners (meanwhile the deafening din from her class is most certainly not French being practiced).
The teacher tells me “it’s for when they arein the real world” and I get it cos I used to do it. But it’s unnecessary. If they heard a food item every story or 2nd story, and heard “I would like” and “it’s tasty” (or whatever) here and there throughout the year, they’d pick it up too. And probably better, cos ey wouldn’t be wasting time making and listening to shitty input.
I appreciate all of the comments on real world language use and how it relates to the CI classroom. Really, I know all of that; just sometimes you get these strange thoughts.
I used to do the “communicative activities” as well. One was a “fashion show”, and most students wrote scripts which they tried to memorize; listening was often painful because if someone forgot or fluffed a line, everyone would just stand around and look at them or whisper in English, “That wasn’t the line” or “It’s your turn” or something equally non-real world language use. As I was gradually moving toward TCI but still doing some of these activities, I had two brothers who simply forgot about the assignment. They were fast processors, paid attention, and had a good foundation. I told them to just stand up and talk about what they were wearing and what they wear for sports, for scouting, for church, etc. Theirs was by far the best presentation, and I have never again done the “fashion show” presentation. Instead, we just talk about what people have on and what they wear for sports, dates, prom, etc. I do have a lesson in which I teach the class in German how to tie a tie – definitely a real-world task. I can tell how well students comprehend by watching them manipulate the tie. (Yes, I bring enough ties for everyone in the class to have one.)
Hi Robert,
Love the tie idea. Now if I could only learn how to tie a tie, then I could perhaps teach and demonstrate it in the target language…
OK, there is a project for me now.
Cheers,
Sabrina
Children output language naturally only when they have had enough auditory input. Auditory input changes into authentic speech output only over years and years of exposure to the language. We don’t know how it works.
Largely ignored by traditional teachers, this process of unconscious input naturally becoming unconscious output requires far more time than is actually available to them – it’s just that way. It is a process that cannot be rushed or controlled since it is unconscious.
Again, we can’t know or control how the process of unconcious input becoming speech works. Chris, what you describe that teacher doing above – forcing the conscious minds of the students to bring what is a hidden and magical process under the control of the conscious mind via memorization and forced speech – can’t work.
If I may say, I think that we are discussing here the single most misunderstood aspect of comprehensible input instruction. Of all the things for a teacher to miss aligning their instruction with, missing the idea that language learning is an unconscious process is the most destructive to them and their students.
If a teacher fails to grasp that language learning is an unconscious process, and thus fails to tailor their instruction to that one simple fact, then they will just continue to perpetuate their legacy of abject failure onto their students.
They will perpetuate this failure onto their students no matter how many verbs their students can conjugate or how many games they may invent for their students. All their hard work and the resulting microscopic gains made by their students will make them sad and they will secretly hate their work.
This has become very evident in talking with my current colleagues. They lament the complexity of French and Spanish conjugations, they talk with disappointment about their students’ errors with verbs, spelling, and accent marks, they talk about how they’ve sought to assist their students in memorizing through songs and chants.
But they don’t comprehend that language is acquired, not learned, and that it is an unconscious process developed through hearing and reading language with focus on understanding meaning, not focus on all those things they are stressing with their students (spelling, sound, pronunciation, grammar rules).
It has been wearing on me this month as it’s hard to sympathize. They think it’s different for me because Chinese “doesn’t have” grammar… it doesn’t have verb complexities but of course it has correct sentence structure and word usage. Of course it’s different for me because I am harping on meaning, meaning, meaning, not form. Do they understand? Then they’ll get correct form in the long run.
They screw up in a TPRS class too. But they are way more fluent– in upper levels– in their output. I used to mark 4th year provincial Spanish exams before the Province got rid of them. I can honestly say that first-year TPRS kids are WAY better than a lot of those 4th-years were. Certainly waht I have seen Adriana Ramirez’ kids doing is.
The other thing people need to remember is, not all verb conjugations are equally used. I am sure Eric Herman can dig up data on this…but I would be willing to guess that the singular forms are more used (in conversation and writing) than the plural forms. Also not all tenses are equal. For example in French you almost never say “j’ai eu” (I had– passe compose) but you much more often use “j’avais” (I had– imparfait). Yet in every French text I have ever seen, you learn passe compose before the imparfait. Same is broadly true in Spanish. You also VERY seldom use the past perfect subjeunctive in Spanish (“que hubiera ido”). Etc.
Regarding spelling, the research is clear: the more you read– for 95% of kids– the better you spell. For pronunciation, same: more you hear, the better you sound (I imagine this is especially important in tonal languages).
I have had student teachers (for other teachers) come into my class to observe and while not everyone wants to do TPRS, I always ask “how much did you hear me in the target language?” and they ALWAYS say “way more than in the ____ language class.” This, to me, is the bottom line: TPRS is a way to stay in TL– c0mprehensibly– more than any other method.
In other news, I am coming to IFLT cos I just won Pro-D $$. Ben and Hosler (and anyone else) let’s GO DRINK SOME BEER one (or all) of those evenings!
Chris
I use Bryce Hedstrom’s breakdown of the verb inflection frequencies. . . this could very well guide your choice of structures.
http://www.brycehedstrom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/VERBS-IN-THE-TOP-505-SPANISH-WORDS.pdf
Of the top 505 Spanish words on this Wiktionary list “The verbs appear in many different grammatical forms: present (92), infinitive (24), preterit (14), imperfect (8), present subjunctive (7), imperative, etc.”
Anyone know a study or frequency dictionary that reports the frequency of the different tenses? I thought I had read that past tense was most common, followed by present, but maybe that’s wrong (wrong when looking at the top 505 words).
Yeah, I’d tell my current colleagues, if they were more interested in TCI, is that verb endings are apparently later acquired. And that if you keep exposing the kids to correct language in speech and reading, over time they’ll have more & more native-like output.
…weak choral responses, exit quizzes, or slow/non-fluent actors = go back….
…if it’s comprehensible, and can be made repeatable (i.e. it’s interesting), the kids are getting something useful….
…we do NOT have to do clothing and restaurant units, bla bla….
Word.