Lately we’ve had some stellar reports from some of the group. Here’s another one, and one we’ve been waiting for, about how Chris Roberts’ presentation went at Central States last weekend. I give this young teacher a 10 for courage and an overall 10 for walking into the lion’s den and basically kicking some major ass:
Hey Ben:
March 14-16 was the Central States Conference on Teaching Foreign Languages here in Ohio. It consists of about 18 states and there were a couplen of hundred different sessions and workshops and a few hundred foreign language teachers. My impressions on the conference:
There were quite a few sessions that were TPRS in disguise. It’s no secret that TPRS is outright despised by some in the profession and it was apparent that there were presenters presenting some of the things we do in TPRS without saying that it is TPRS.
There were some sessions that tried making themselves sound friendly or similar to TPRS (without saying TPRS) but you could tell that they really weren’t. The output/immersion/grammar loving bunches were out in droves, wolves in sheep’s clothing. I saw so much of the “fun ways to teach grammar” crap that it is sickening. There was also a whole lot of technology thrown in as well.
On the topic of technology, and on the bright side, some speakers made mention that technology and Rosetta Stone cannot replace teachers. Mira Canion had some great jokes on that (great presenter that Mira Canion; and it’s obvious that she also does standup comedy because she’s hilarious).
One common theme that I noticed throughout the conference, with many, many sessions to present on it was the “keeping it in the TL” theme. People are catching on to the ACTFL Position Statement but it is apparent that they’re not fully reading the ENTIRE statement. There was a lot of advocacy for what I’d say “immersion”. There was a lot of bad talking the use of English and translation.
Every single freaking session that I attended you would have presenters describing things they do in class and then, on a side note, say “I of course do this all in target language”. They try to make it sound like they do EVERYTHING in target language, all the housekeeping stuff, classroom management, EVERYTHING. Bullshit!
But you of course want to sound good in front of a group of a bunch of WL teachers so you’re of course going to say that you do everything in TL. But that’s the problem, everybody is misinterpreting the Position Statement as if it says 100% TL use. So my session, “Staying in the Target Language: 90%” came up. It was actually the last session on Saturday so not as many people came that would have if it was midday Friday but I had more attendees than I expected (at least 20).
I’m not one to brag about things that I do, but I rocked it (thanks to everybody’s help on here that gave me advice). I remember seeing one guy in the audience who was visibly skeptical at the beginning but his body language changed throughout the presentation and by the end you could tell that he was very receptive to what I was saying because I was throwing out so much research on them that there was nothing anybody could argue.
Afterwards, I had like 5 or 6 people come up and tell me how great I did. One of them was a University professor who prepares foreign language teachers. She asked me where I went and said that she wishes her students were more like me and that my university must be great. Then another person came up asking what school I went to because I “did great” and am “very knowledgeable”. Then, a friend of mine, a well-known TPRS coach, Gary DiBianca, said that it was brilliant.
It was just great, the feedback that I was getting. I had such an adrenaline rush going, the dopamine was definitely flowing. I even had an Arabic teacher come up and thank me. The reason she thanked me was because throughout the whole conference she kept being told how evil translation and use of L1 as a means to establish meaning is and it was making her feel bad.
She thanked me profusely for showing her that L1 does have a place and that judicious use of English as a means to establish meaning is not a bad thing. I’m very glad that she attended my session and was able to leave the conference on a positive note, rather than not knowing what the hell she was going to do when she got back to the classroom.
I had a good time and I will definitely continue presenting on things that I am passionate about.