I’ve always wondered what language represents. I was told in college that words are symbols, like the word chair is a symbol for a chair, or the word liberty is a symbol for what we think of as freedom. Something like that.
When I hear the word chair I think of the thing. I image it – making some kind picture in my mind. Is that how it works? Hmmm. Clearly there is something pretty sophisticated going on when somebody speaks a sound and I get an image of a chair in my mind. Pretty powerful stuff!
But, which came first, the written version of the word or the spoken word? I’m going to guess the spoken word happened first. We are probably wired to hear it first, then associate it with the thing, put that into memory, and then, after years of that inputting process, we can speak the words. Writing, I am assuming, is something that occurs way later, if at all.
I mean, if we are hardwired to learn languages because knowing what someone meant when they yelled, “Run! Bad Ass Cavemen!” (or whatever they called them back then), it was because it was an issue of survival. I have got to believe they didn’t write the words down first and communicate the danger in that way.
So, if that is how I am wired, and if I am in a school and just a kid and am brand new to a language and a teacher just writes a word down and hands it to me, then what? Am I to do everything through translation? That doesn’t sound like much fun.
Can’t I avoid my first language, just a little? If I am a kid I want to be able to dream in the language and avoid all the translation, right? Isn’t that the question they always ask us in their intuitive selves? And we tell them yes we do dream in the language?
And can I dream a language I have never heard? Can I “catch” it? Can I read it later if I never heard it? I don’t think I can. The little squiggles on the paper wouldn’t mean anything to me. I would need to have heard a word first, like thousands of times in context, for my mind to get what it means and then eventually over thousands of hours of that I would be able to read it or some day even speak it. That is my reasoning.
Well, if it is true that I would need to have seen and heard a word like thousands of times in context before I can identify it and before I can read and eventually speak it in a flow of thousands of other words, then why do language teachers hand kids written worksheets that hone in on individual words when they are in seventh grade, like this one:
Matching
Match each item to the statement or sentence listed below:
a. Bailo, canto y toca la guitarra
b. Necesitas estudiar mucho.
c. No estudio y tampoco trabajo.
d. No nadas, no patinas y tampoco te gusta practicar deportes.
___ 1. Eres muy talentosa.
___ 2. No soy deportista.
___ 3. Usted es muy paresosa.
___ 4. Tengo mucha tarea en la clase de matematicas.
So, the seventh grader looks at this shit and is supposed to be able to read and understand it off the worksheet in their first year, after vastly insufficient quantities instead of the like thousands of times that the brain needs to hardwire it?
The kid (who had such hope at the beginning of the year – remember?), having not heard the words in interesting and meaningful ways and repeated like thousands of times in context, is supposed to be able to read that stuff above? In seventh grade? When they can’t even read English that well?
Can we say, “…setting kids up for failure…” on this one? Visual work in the language thrust on the kid when they are most vulnerable and haven’t the skills do do that worksheet through no fault of their own? What bullshit.
Reading stuff that is boring, not about them, analytical, favoring only a few of the kids in the room and not all of them, this visual worksheet preceding the sound work from which authentic language acquisition originates – that’s supposed to be effective teaching?
Worksheets and matching exercises and writing handed to the kids before they have even a clue of what the language sounds like except for “my name is” and “I am tired” and a few of those actually difficult greetings?
Any day now – the technical set up delays are just about over, this blog will be private. I cannot wait. I don’t care if there are only ten people to talk to. I can’t hold my tongue any more on this bullshit. I’m gonna need a place to rant from time to time and it’s gonna be here.
I once heard Mary Anne Williamson say that if we focus on the solution and not the problem then the problem will automatically disappear. I believe that, but, as I continue to focus on the solution in the new incarnation of this blog, I’m gonna get my rants in.
I actually found the above worksheet in my son’s room under his bed while doing some spring cleaning today. Evan hates Spanish by the way, and he doesn’t think he’s any good at it. My hands turn into fists involuntarily when I think about how much my beautiful 14 year old boy now hates languages.
I cannot believe that teachers of languages are not aware of the fact that worksheets like the one above are total confidence breakers in young children. I would appeal to all young teachers just entering the field to study up on Krashen before it’s too late and you hate your job.