A repost:
In the spirit of wasting time in class in favor of self care and fun with the kids, I offer this game, which is done entirely in English:
- With beginning kids, when explaining to kids that everything (in French at least) is either masculine or feminine, I tell them that I will say a word like “lake” or “pencil” and they will try to “feel out” if the word is masculine or feminine.
- (This game is done when the question comes up about how you can tell if a word is masculine or feminine – is there a way to tell which it is?* And of course we say that most words that end in “e” in French are feminine, etc. but that isn’t any fun. I ask them if they want to memorize lists of gender, 100 per week, and they groan, and so that sets up the game of appealing to their intuition to figure it out. They love to do this. They could do it for an entire 85 minute block.)
- Once I say the word, they have to “feel” whether it is masculine or feminine. Sometimes I add in adjectives or verbs, which really messes them up, making them think about the word being served up.
- They make their guess, saying “masculine” or “feminine” in a triumphant way usually, because they are kids.
- I usually do a little Regis Philbin move and wait before dramatically accepting their answer or rejecting it with a buzzer noise and the phrase, “Thanks for playing! Next!”
- If they get it right, they get another word. When a kid gets past three or four right in a row, the class tenses up and the excitement in the room is palpable. Today I told them that if anyone got fifteen in a row I would buy them a car.
- A million hands go up after each kid’s attempt. I pick the next hand. All the hands next to the hands of the hand that got picked groan that they didn’t get picked.
- Repeat the process.
What does this do for their French? Nothing. They don’t even hear the word they are guessing in French, but in English. So why do it? Because we need to stop riding so high in the saddle and being so nuts about CI. OK, CI is great. It’s a revolution in language instruction. It’s the baddest ass and only truly badass approach to teaching a language that I personally have ever come across, with the exception possibly of … oops, there are no exceptions; nothing even comes close to TPRS. But let’s not let us forget why we are here. In my opinion, we are here to have fun and enjoy each other’s company, not be the best. Can anybody relate to that, or am I just going through some kind of phase? (Answer is that I’m not, and that I have been waiting to learn these things for almost four decades now. Yes, I’m a little slow on the uptake. It was my education that was at fault. Nobody ever told me to relax. I always thought it was a war.)
*(Of course, we all know that the real way to know if a word is masculine or feminine in a language is to hear it enough times so that we instantly identify it as a result of the sound of the word banging around in our head a million times in meaningful context over years (my definition of language acquisition. But when you offer a group of bored kids a little competitive trip into the use of their intuitions, they love it. One time, a guy who was not recognized as “smart” by the class rolled off 10 straight correct “guesses” as to the gender of the ten nouns I offered him in class that day. He instantly became smart in the eyes of the class. Is not human intuition going to replace human intellect soon anyway? Indeed, is not CI instruction more intuitive in nature than mere intellectual/robotic processing of information? Isn’t language intuitive when used in its most pretty ways (poetry)? Aren’t we well into the new intuitive way of thinking already? We seem to have made it from instinct to intellect ok – now we’re moving from intellect to intuition. It’s about time! I’m looking forward to living in trust that the story will unfold well via emergent targets via an intuitive instructional process and not one based in intellect and the presenting of facts, which is the direction some people still want to take TPRS/CI instruction, bless their hearts. They want to keep it all in their heads. I welcome the change in CI instruction to non-targets. I welcome the change to trusting intuition. I celebrate the demise of the intellectual snobs who daily pollute our work with CI. Got off topic a bit there. Oops. Mes apologies.)