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On Reps – 1
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13 thoughts on “On Reps – 1”
This might be the right place to thank Jim for his “nappy nap” story. The reps I am getting on the main structures are off the charts. We started with it on Monday and in one of my classes we are just getting to the third location today. The other classes finished their story yesterday. What a compelling script!
Okay, I need Jim’s book. I will ask Santa:) Seriously, I was thinking about this just today. We can’t put away a set of structures in a file drawer because we are done with them, which led me to the conscious effort I am making this year to re-cycle and re-cycle again and again. That, to me, has become a big part of the art of TPRS/CI. Narrow and deep lends itself perfectly to this endeavor, I think. Carol Gaab once told me keep the story tight and simple; embellish the reading. Seems simple?
“Carol Gaab once told me keep the story tight and simple; embellish the reading.”
Brilliant. The story (aural) needs to be simple but the reading (visual) can be more complicated because 1) the new structures have already started to be acquired aurally and 2) reading can go at the individual student’s pace and re-reading is always possible.
I have always wondered at how some teachers who post to moreTPRS can get stories (that is, ask a story aurally) that is so complicated, with Donald Trump going to the bottom of the ocean to get a new hair-piece from a squid that lives in a cave with an undead zombie dragon who is able to dance and sing well but who has bad hair. Are those teachers just going out of bounds in asking their story during Step 2 of TPRS?
Yes and the kids aren’t learning much, not even the structures. It seems to those teachers as if their kids are learning all those words like squid and like that (non targets that are incidental to the story) because 1) they look at the teacher in ways that are deceptive and 2) short term memory kind of works for a few of the kids, the ones who are motivated, but ask them any of that vocabulary in a week – it won’t be there. Teaching without full focus on the targets, saying a target in every single sentence we say, represents a disservice to the kids. This method demands that we get repetitions on targets – that’s the way we get the gains. There is no other way. 28,000 reps are needed for each structure. Hee hee.
So much of acquisition and long term memory is about images and emotion. A few times this year, I have asked a 2nd year class about a structure from last year. Most of the time, the kid who has the answer is a) not an academic 4%er, and b) has a look of sheer joy on his face when he tells me, both because he is happy to have the answer, and because he is taken back to that moment, or those moments, when we were having so much fun working on a story.
On a related note, I am reading a book called “Moonwalking with Einstein,” about memory athletes, those people who can memorize the order of decks of cards, or random numbers to 10000 digits, etc. The world champions do this not through being a 4%er with some sort of “photographic memory,” but by being really good at converting the information into memorable images or objects, and placing those images in spatial contexts, like their childhood home, or their block. Then they simply take a mental stroll through their house or neighborhood, and it all comes back to them, after an hour or after a month. This is how the ancients were able to memorize texts, and how people understood the nature of memory until only a few hundred years ago. It is about comprehensible and compelling input. If it’s not compelling, then our minds won’t care enough to hold onto that info–or else we must convert that info into compelling info through images and narrative.
I’d like to hear it explained how one of these guys finds a 10000 digit number so compelling!
…if it’s not compelling, then our minds won’t care enough to hold onto that info–or else we must convert that info into compelling info through images and narrative….
One way to convert is via gestures. We never gesture enough. Gesturing is one of the distilled essences, to be mixed with the other few, in my view, and gesturing is doubly important because it bypasses the analytical and image-based part of acquisition and happens right there in our bodies. One gesture is worth a million words. I just wish I could remember to do them.
I have been thinking a lot about compelling lately. Krashen was really sharing that out from 5 to 3 years ago, but I fear he got little response and the whole thing kind of died. The term never became compelling input, but he might have liked that, I feel.
One thing I have noticed is that in my level 3/4 class when we read Le Voyage Perdu for the first part of class and then in the second half of class start working with Le Petit Prince, I find myself much more animated about the CI we generate about Le Petit Prince. The images and feelings in that book are truly compelling, they give us layers and layers of compelling stuff, whereas the other book is just not compelling at all. My thought is that how can we make it compelling to to our kids if its not compelling to us?
Just some random thoughts on the above comments.
This is a good conversation.
Narrow and deep, tight and simple, embellish the reading, images and emotion. These are phrases for my “List,” the distilled essence list that mustn’t get too long because it is the distilled essence.
…narrow and deep, tight and simple, embellish the reading, images and emotion. These are phrases for my “List,” the distilled essence list….
Ruth this is something you wrote here that I keep reflecting on. I think I know why. What you wrote there are sign posts to the Pure Land. That is the place I experienced with my middle school 8th graders about six or seven years ago, a very distilled place of shared focus on the language together with my students that lasted a few minutes only and only occurred a few times.
The Pure Land may not be connected to the distilled essence term you used in your comment, but I am making a connection. Grammarians can’t even hope to go to this place, if it is indeed a place, since they keep their instruction in only one small section of their students’ minds, a truly small section especially when discussing language instruction, which occurs in magical realms of inner galactic neurological activity that are far beyond our ability to articulate, research, or even discuss in an intelligent way, a realm where happiness is.
As we search so crudely in outer space via space probes and space ships and all that for things that mean something, so also our inner search to define how the galaxies of the language acquisition system function and to make books and computer programs about them as instructional tools are crude, and crude is the word to describe all aspects of language instruction that are not based on comprehensible input.
I am thinking about this place, distilled or pure or whatever, where we link whole mind to body and heart in our instruction. We can hope to go to that place but I have not been able since I left those 8th graders for high school teaching again five years ago. Hmmm.
Anyway, maybe it’s not possible any more because the noise of the world is just getting too loud. I don’t know. But those pure silent places described in the link below are certainly distilled and certainly essential. Distilled essences – what a great expression! It means to me that at the base of all the articles here, infusing them, might be a truth about language instruction, a coming-into-wholeness, that may seem impossible right now amongst all the noise but may one day be possible.
We deserve such an essential place, because things must balance, right? Or is it supposed to all be about constant grating struggle in our classrooms?
Here’s the Pure Land link, written originally six years ago:
https://benslavic.com/blog/the-pure-land/
Related:
https://benslavic.com/blog/the-intuitive-classroom/
“…sign posts to the Pure Land.”
What you wrote above, Ben, is completely connected to my distilled essence list. I hadn’t called it the Pure Land, but that’s where I want to go, and as I read the blog, I try to pick out the simple words, my signposts, that will help me remember what’s important amidst the confusion and tumult of school life.
Even if I never really get there, it’s a good destination. I hope just keeping it in mind and following the signposts might help me shape my interactions and attitude and see me through the rough days when I want to quit. Although, the best thing for that is just coming here to the blog.
“…things must balance, right? Or is it supposed to all be about constant grating struggle in our classrooms?”
This is pretty much rambling and thinking out loud, and I don’t know if it follows your track. Looking at the world today, it seems to me that the balance has to be inside each of us.
I’ve taught in a middle school for many years (not French until this year). I know that a lot of the grating struggle is always going to be there because of who we are working with and the world we live in. We might be learning and evolving in our understanding as teachers, but they’re still kids growing up in this strange world. We are part of their grating struggle, and we get a new batch of them every year with a new set of struggles, so in many ways we have to keep going back to the beginning. We can’t progress from year to year except in our way of being, and ideally that is reflected in our classes. I like to think that if we are clear, balanced, and loving (with spine!) in our classrooms, we can get closer to the Pure Land, even if we never get there. I want to remember always to encourage, build confidence, and be honest and real. The way we are all trying to teach is all about doing that. It’s so much bigger than the method.
I like this a lot–I have been very conscious of this lately. I often tell my students that learning Spanish (or any language) is a process that lasts for an entire lifetime.
That being said, it is often difficult for me to reconcile the idea of a life-long process and college course where I have to assign a grade to a student after only 10 or 11 weeks. This is especially difficult for me when many of my students have had 3 years of high school Spanish and others are having their first experience with the language. It’s like the true beginners are punished because the false beginners were fortunate enough to get three years worth of input (even if a lot of it wasn’t comprehensible) in high school.
Andrew, I wonder if you can hold an expectation for your students with more exposure to Spanish to respond in larger phrases and to have them hold themselves accountable to speak with better pronunciation. Then, these more experienced students can turn to their less experienced peers and speak directly to them as a kind of “Partner-Pair”. Perhaps you could have a seating chart that alternates experienced with inexperienced and then do multiple Partner-Pair quick exercises to break up your whole-group instruction.
Of course, I’m not in your situation… just brainstorming.