Forced Output

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4 thoughts on “Forced Output”

  1. Yes, yes and yes again!!! It’s great to find people who can express one’s own thoughts so eloquently. And for me it’s one of the most beautiful things in the world to be able to speak another language . My only regret is, I speak only one but then again I learnt that one mostly the hard way: cramming grammar and vocabulary.
    All these so called communicative exercises where they are forced to speak before they are ready and which are not really communicative at all.

  2. Here’s a thought.

    Whenever we negotiate meaning we are also doing the right kind of error correction because it is totally meaning based.

    If I am not comprehensible, my students have to correct my error (of speed, pronunciation, vocabulary, etc.) so that they can understand the meaning I am trying to express.

    When my students speak but are not comprehensible, I have to negotiate meaning so that I can understand them. This may result in my re-stating what they were trying to say. The purpose is neither error correction nor modeling of the language but clarification and negotiation of meaning – something that we do all the time in normal conversations.

    Incidentally, I have had the following three unforced output scenarios arise in my class over the last 3 weeks:
    1. In a second-year class, one girl challenged a guy to a poetry slam in German. Then other students wanted to perform. This lasted about 20 minutes.
    2. In my other second-year class, the entire class argued with me in German about whether the Christmas season starts right after Halloween or after Thanksgiving. We went back and forth for about 15 minutes, and I may have convinced one or two of my position (after Thanksgiving).
    3. In one of my 3-4-AP classes, one of my students announced that it was National Sandwich Day. A lengthy discussion in German ensued about what a sandwich actually is. (Is an Oreo a sandwich? What about an “ice cream sandwich”? Does a sandwich have to have bread? Does a sandwich have to have two pieces? Does a sandwich have to have meat? Etc. As part of the discussion, I introduced them to the German “product and perspective” that a sandwich has two pieces of bread but a “belegtes Brot” has only one slice with meat, cheese, etc. placed on top of it.)

    These were wonderful moments of genuine communication and engagement by the class: the expression,. interpretation, and negotiation of meaning for a purpose [fun, social interaction, persuasion, information] in a given context [the classroom]. (Thank you BVP for the definition – I recommend his new book While We’re on the Topic.) The output was totally unforced, and the conversation had absolutely nothing to do with anything that I had planned. It was a clear winner for everyone.

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