My heart goes out to students whose learning style is predominantly visual. The reason is that languages are not learned visually – they are learned primarily in an auditory way. Reading, writing, speaking – all emerge from listening.
Most students have been made into visual learners by the nature of instruction in schools (thus fully two thirds have been taken out of their natural learning style), but when a truly visual learner encounters a language teacher who insists on speaking the language in the classroom, sparks will fly, if not little torches, or worse.
The reason for the conflict is that the child has been taught over years spent in school buildings that they can succeed (read: earn high grades) simply by reading and writing things. When the auditory teacher starts teaching via L2 speech – because listening is the bedrock of language learning – the student becomes immediately totally confused – she has never developed the listening skill because she has never had to.
This naturally spins out into the psyche of the learner. There are emotional reactions and accusations that the teacher is not teaching properly, when, in fact, any language teacher who aligns with the work of Stephen Krashen is right on target with what will be done in foreign language teaching this century, in spite of all opposition or hot air to the contrary.
Next year, we who have a full load, roughly 150 students, will go into our classroom intending to flood the airwaves with meaningful and interesting (and on the good days compelling) comprehensible input, and we must be ready to be met with the protestations of our predominantly left brain/visual students.
We must have a game plan ready which includes compassion for the confused kid, good communication with the parents, gentleness to invite the change in her so that she can find another way to succeed, and constant positive communication with the parents, who must be made to understand that they are no experts at this, in spite of the fact that they know how to say Parlay vous after four years of high school study.
Those parents must be made to clearly understand that the state standards in foreign language education are now moving finally – after twenty-five years – into alignment with the national standards and that:
– you as a teacher are now required to speak the language most of the time in the classroom
– their child is probably very talented at learning via listening, but just needs some practice at it and an open mind to accept that this one class is going to require her to learn in a completely different way from the learning style she uses in her other classes, except her music classes.
– those standards are never going to revert to the old visual model that once described foreign language education in the United States.