I don’t use the L2 left side translations of the question words any more. I only put up the English. I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner.
The reason is glaring. When we do that, when we walk over and put our hand on the question word chart, they have to process the sound that they are hearing but also as well the word that they are seeing in the target language.
Vision dominates heavily over hearing in humans, by a very large margin. Most research indicates that the human experience is over 90% visual. Then what happens in the child’s mind each time we put our hand on the question chart? They look at the word in the TL, right? And they then think about what they are seeing.
But wouldn’t they hear it a lot better if the L2 translation wasn’t there? There would be a more fleeting registering of what the word means, without interruption, and they could focus on the meaning more, and the process of listening to the story would involve less of the conscious mind and therefore less effort, which is the point of the research.
I’m going to try it in Georgia this weekend. I know that Tina is moving in this direction too, with different aspects of one word images. She is stronger than I am on this particular topic. I’ll report back.