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Report from the Field – Michele Whaley
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35 thoughts on “Report from the Field – Michele Whaley”
So Michele I have to ask. Do you fly from Alaska to Latvia across all of Russia? Or, being right next door, is it an easy flight?
Hmm…would be an especially easy flight if I could take the eight-hour charter from Anchorage to Frankfurt and the two-hour flight from there to Riga…but instead my students and I are meeting the group in Chicago. Luckily we get to spend the night in a hotel before we fly, but on the way back, there is an especially excruciating trip. After a 1:00 am departure from our small town, driving slightly over three hours to make the 7:00 am flight from Riga to Frankfurt, another to Chicago, and then, four hours after we land, we Alaskans will take two flights back totaling nine more hours.
Ah well. We’re young. Or they are. I’ll be back at school the next day, ready to shovel out my classroom! I might offer pizza to students who wish to come help me.
For those not familiar with the Alaskans’ globe trotting, they have been doing this for years. They fly hundreds of miles just to go observe someone, like when Jenny Kelly came to Denver years ago just to observe in DPS. One year Michele flew from Anchorage to San Antonio like it was a trip to the grocery store. I don’t see that happening with traditional teachers. There is a fire in Alaska and much of it comes from our wonderful Michele, of whom we are so proud. The Alaskans set an example for all of us. National leadership parameters being bookended from Maine over to Alaska. I guess those organizing this thing in the invisible world want to make sure that all the states in between get included, to insure that it is truly a national change.
Wow, Michelle…you are a power house! Go you! I love your reports! I like that term “descriptive grammar”…I’m going to look it up, but I’m also interested to hear how you’re meaning it. I wonder if we could have some working definitions here on the blog for terms like this for those of us who are still building our arsenal of smart-sounding vocab to use when explaining our methodology. “Articulation” was another one that popped up the other day.
Angie, thanks! I’m going.
About “descriptive grammar,” I used it meaning that students can talk about grammar, i.e. “Use genitive plural to describe what is not in existence, existence of objects between numbers that end in five and zero, and all plural nouns with verb constructions requiring genitive.”
It turns out that definition is incorrect and is more to do with prescriptive grammar, as descriptive grammar is how people really use it. Both have to do with rules.
My kids use grammar constructions correctly if they’ve heard and read them enough, and in a schedule of natural grammar acquisition. Past tense comes early. “My brother has” comes late for speakers of English. But by the time my kids hit college, they’re ready for grammar lessons.
Michele rocks. I thoroughly enjoyed her presentations at ACTFL in San Antonio last year.
Michele touches on some things that most people don’t think about but language teachers need to consider.
Prescriptive Grammar vs Descriptive Grammar:
– Prescriptivists tell you how the grammar ought to be. In English it has given us things like the following: 1) no split infinitive; 2) never end a sentence with a preposition. This does not reflect actual usage in every instance, and most prescriptivists believe in a mythical Golden Age of the language when everyone spoke the way they believe the language ought to be spoken. You hear them lamenting the decline of the language. Unfortunately for everyone, they don’t realize that the rules they are promulgating are often erroneous and were imposed by people who either misunderstood the language or thought it ought to do something that native speakers don’t do. (For example the rule about no split infinitives comes from Latinists, but in Latin the infinitive is a single word, so you can’t split it. The rule about prepositions is similar, plus people fail to distinguish between a preposition and a verbal complement; “to get off someone” and “to get someone off” have significantly different meanings. Some prescriptivists go so far as to claim that some of the language’s greatest writers didn’t know their own language.
– Descriptivists at least try to explain the language as it is actually used. The problem is that the written “rules of grammar” are only approximations of what is actually happening. Most of the time the language is far too complex to be reduced to a simple set of rules. The inclusions of “exceptions” to a rule merely illustrates that the rule has been improperly formulated. That is not to say that it is useless, but the limitations must be recognized. Take, for example, the English spelling rule (spelling is pretty straightforward, right?): “i before e except after c or when pronounced like a as in neighbor and weigh”. Do we dEIfy the hEIght of wEIrdness in the sCIEnce of linguistics? It’s a hEIst of sEIsmic proportions, and someone should forfEIt thEIr credentials as an expert, as a fEIsty KEIth StEIn would say before having his morning caffeine.
Most legacy teachers haven’t studied the language sufficiently to formulate correct rules of grammar – and certainly not comprehensive one – but rely on the textbook formulations, which have been “simplified” for ease of presentation and memorization and thereby falsified. Sometimes the rules turn out to be completely false. My first college Spanish teacher called the rules of grammar in the textbook “gentle lies”. She said they are lies because there is no way they can explain the way the language is actually used, but they are gentle because they can provide a general guide that will cover most situations. (She may have been generous in that assessment.)
In all fairness, most T/CI teachers – native speakers and second-language speakers alike – haven’t studied the language sufficiently for that either. Fortunately, though, most of us have received enough Comprehensible Input to be able to use the language accurately (or at least accurately enough) since our own brains have created an internal representation and we have developed communicative competence, to use Bill Van Patten’s terms.
As Bill VanPatten maintains, learners’ brains will create an internal representation of the language that looks nothing like the traditional rules of grammar, but it must have sufficient data (i.e. comprehensible input) to do this. Totally unconsciously, the brain will formulate a hypothesis on how the language works; then, as more input is received, the brain can test the hypothesis; we simply have to keep learners from drawing premature conclusions, help them to sustain focus and achieve depth and integrity of inquiry. (Notice how I just included all four elements of Rigor from the Department of State in a description of a T/CI environment?) For example, because of the frequent use of the third person singular, many of my first-year students tend to use that form for everything. They have formulated a hypothesis: hat means “has/have”, but they have not sufficiently tested the hypothesis and need to receive more data so that they can refine the hypothesis as hat means “has” but habe/haben/hast/habt mean “have” and are used in some places but not others. What are those places? Need more data, so keep listening. I have to help them keep gathering data, continue testing the hypothesis, and persevere in not drawing a premature conclusion about habe/haben/habt/hast/hat. This applies to every aspect of the language. When you think about it in those terms, that’s hard work and quite rigorous. Fortunately, the V-12 turbo-charged engine of the unconscious mind is perfectly capable of doing this when fully engaged, whereas the 4-banger engine of the conscious mind is quickly overloaded and breaks down under the weight of grammar rules.
In my 20+ years of teaching languages (5 years teaching Hebrew in seminary; 20 years teaching Spanish and German at my current school), I have never heard anyone talk about this other than on this PLC. I wonder why that is.
Robert, your teacher was way ahead of her time! Even “gentle lies, covering most situations isn’t right, as you point out. I think those gentle lies in grammar books can be described as “explaining what you might sometimes hear.”
Krashen does a great keynote on this topic, explaining why rules can’t teach language, and Van Patten adds to the chorus. After reading Van Patten’s article on the dearth of acquisition specialists in universities, I’m feeling a little less optimistic that CI is going to win out in the mainstream. I was having a frustrated conversation with Laurie last year at some point, because I couldn’t understand how teachers at our school could continue as they are in both grading and helping students acquire language. I ranted something about how “all the research says…” and Laurie gently explained that not everyone who teaches is a research junkie. All of a sudden I got it better. That’s why my garden is a mess, but I row (great time to think). I love reading this stuff, and there’s only a certain number of people who love the research AND are fanatic about trying to implement it. Then there are the few who do it really well…but they’re probably not in the universities. Probably all of them are on this blog!!
I’m always so guarded about using the term “unconscious”. I don’t want people to think I’m some luny academic that is out of touch of how to connect with children. The conversation here recently about the left side of the brain where consciousness resides and the right side where unconsciousness resides has been helpful. In fact, if anyone (uh, humm; Robert) has a book suggestion on this left/right side of the brain from the lense of an educator, that would be great.
Sean, I’ve been reading “Teaching Another Language through Actions” by James Asher. Part of section 2 is about the hemispheres of the brain and brain function, including unconscious functions of the right brain (comprehension, not production). He speaks as a psychologist about language acquisition and other subject knowledge based on that distinction.
I have heard more recently (past 10 years) that there is less definitive evidence that the hemispheres are so totally separate in their functions. Maybe the 7th edition has addressed that. I have a copy of the 2003 6th edition.
I’ll look into that book. Thanks, Diane!
You might want to look into Daniel Kahnemann’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. He’s a psychologist who won the Nobel Prize for Economics because of his research into how we make decisions. He doesn’t talk about Left Brain, Right Brain but rather about System I, quick and automatic, little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control and System II, effortful mental activities. It’s easy to see that System I operates with acquisition and System II corresponds to what we have consciously learned. I found his research and discussion fascinating and quite relevant to us language teachers.
Diane I can’t imagine the hemispheres as separate. What works for me in the right brain/left brain image is that one takes us into teaching from the heart, the other from the brain. One works in languages and the other doesn’t. So the actual function location in the brain is of little interest to me. We just need to get rid of the dry teaching that brings such limited results.
Yes, that’s definitely true. I wouldn’t want that important concept made easily dismissable just because (in James Asher’s book, anyway) the separate brain functions of left and right are the basis for quite a lot of his explanation of why comprehension-based instead of output-practice-based teaching works.
I’m still reading – he has a good bit more on the topic in the third section of the book. I’m really struck by how much he talks like TPRS people about language teaching. TPR has been “known” in teacher circles for years and years, yet if they really read what Asher says, it criticizes all the same stuff we do. He refers directly back to Krashen, and several times mentions Blaine Ray’s “new TPR storytelling” as a great alternative to the norm. There are differences too. To me it’s really obvious that Asher and TPR developed mostly by teachers of Western languages (so much on how to include tenses, s-v agreement issues, how he treats reading) even though it got started with Japanese.
Also Ben, Asher said the same thing you do as a way for teachers to get started: do 5 minutes of TPR in class and then do the usual textbook stuff. The teacher gets experience, the kids enjoy it, and the transition doesn’t shock either.
I can’t wait to hear what you say about TPR in St. Paul. I know you are doing sessions on Listen and Draw, but are there any on TPR you are doing? In the afternoon (since we are doing war rooms in the mornings and evenings).
No, I’m just presenting Listen & Draw (with several twists for paths through it). You know there are several of us from the PLC presenting? I think it’s cool – Alisa and her colleagues, and Mike Coxon, if I remember right, on MovieTalk.
I feel pretty weak about TPR. I use lots of gestures in class, but very little “real” TPR. I’ve concluded it’s a big reason why other teachers can avoid English in giving instructions more than I can early on, so I’m aiming to figure it out better. (All that on Julie Soldner & vPQA, and Annick said the same about DPS teachers, and Haiyun is concluding the same, and Eric seems to see some of the same benefits to using TPR for such language comprehension development…) And I have attempted things in the past. It never has gotten to that really useful stage where it’s as complex as directions for class activities. I’ve taught look, listen, speak, stand up, sit down, that’s about it. This year I didn’t really even do those words that way, I just point to a word wall and said them when needed.
I’m on the 4th section of Asher’s book which is on sequencing an actual lesson, and my first thoughts are that there is WAY too much new stuff at once. This is why I want to test things out in the war room. If it bombs with you people, that’s ok with me. Maybe there are adjustments for a radically non-cognate language. I want to know before I try in class.
Also Asher isn’t talking about adding adverbs to commands, and I keep waiting to read that. That’s what I see a lot of from TPRS people – Linda Li, for example, from the very beginning. I think that’s where it gets compelling.
I wonder how many adverbs.
quickly, slowly, happily, angrily, loudly, quietly, in a scared way, in a funny way, beautifully, (not__)
For class issues later: understandably, clearly
also any cognates: egotistically, in an organized way, romantically (thanks to Katya P), interestingly
At least in Russian, all these take a simple ending change to be adjectives, so hearing them from the beginning makes everything potentially more interesting and comprehensible. And all take the “not” beginning, doubling the vocabulary impact.
Thanks Michele. I was wondering if I had to put up another poster with lots of new words, which I will not do because minimal use of posters is in my view a key to success in our work with CI. The only posters we should have up in my view are the question words, the Classroom Rules, the ISR and a word wall or verb wall (however we do that frontloading work) that keeps growing over the course of the year. Most of us have far too many posters up in our classrooms. Kids have no idea even at the end of a year of being in the room what most posters mean. I also hear you saying that we can take advantage of the fact that many adverbs tend to be cognates, so no long list is needed. Plus, it will help when we can get ourselves to remember in the moments of class to just ask the question “how” as we roll along with the story. Not to teach the word, but to enjoy finding out how the boy spoke to the girl, how the dog felt when confronted with the idea of flying in a space ship, etc. If we ask questions in our CI classes because we want to know, not because we have to teach adverbs, then we are honoring the vision of Susan Gross that we dive right into the process on an emotional level and stop faking like we want to be in class just to get a paycheck.
Hi, Diane, you noted “there is WAY too much new stuff at once.” Quick comment.
If the pagination is the same as the 3rd edition, check page 4-6. This was for 53 lessons which were three hours each, 5 days/week for a total of 159 hours of instruction.
A three-hour class (180 minutes) is like 4 days for most of our schedules.
I have never had training in TPR. I saw it modeled in a UConn class I observed. The instructor did a total of about 8 commands. I was impressed with how quickly the students were able to get to the point of the total physical response to the command in Spanish. But it was not a TPR class. So I have never seen it go as far as Asher took it. If most people do what I saw (and, consequently, what I have done) no wonder it wears thin really fast. I am glad you are following through with your plans to read it.
I suspect that, like TPRS, it looks easier than it is and when it does not get the mileage that Asher got with it we assume the method is at fault. Asher notes on page 1-44 that “TPR flourishes in a team venture in which ideas flow generously from member to member sparking more ideas.”
Hi Nathaniel, thanks for the comment. I’ve finished reading the whole book now. I also had to remind myself that the ESL class example listed only a very condensed sense of the class content. Also, he kept stressing the need to go at your students’ pace of success, while keeping in mind the need for novelty (different commands, mixing up words already known). One of their class periods is like my whole week of class time (I see students 4x per 5 days).
Yet, it still strikes me that there was a lot of new language, because in those 4 days, I’m aiming to target only 3 chunks of language, usually. Of course with question words, etc. there are other words heard and used. I aim for about 2 days on auditory and 2 days on reading (with auditory support) in class. I think in the TPR ESL class described, they must have had about 10-15 words per class, maybe more. Again though, Asher repeatedly encouraged using only 3 new items at once and using only them until all students had a strong, confident response of comprehension with those. Then add more new, he says. (What I do at that point is read with them.)
I think possible reasons that sample TPR class could do so much: almost zero classroom management issues – adults who wanted to know English; and very little time on reading. It was almost all auditory comprehension. After several classes, the teacher read a long list of the words now familiar to them, and they read a short story. It was obvious to me that this was with a (mostly- it is English!) phonetically written language with an alphabet that the students all apparently already knew well. (I want to know more about those students’ backgrounds. Apparently they knew the alphabet. Did they know any English before?)
The adverbs that I associate with TPR almost never came up, only slowly and quickly. They did include emotions in later classes (which could’ve been turned into adverbs, but they didn’t).
I was also struck by how blurred the lines were between TPR as Asher really envisions it and early TPRS. Contee Seely and Blaine Ray were mentioned positively – also Todd McKay as an elementary/middle school teacher, someone I haven’t heard of. I felt I got a glimpse of the early 90’s language teaching innovators and how they related to each other.
Nathaniel this is only my opinion but I think we need to be careful about seeing too much potential in TPR. Maybe we can rely on Diane to tell us how far Asher took it. I don’t think he took it very far and that it is only as useful as a five minute thing in class when it is really wailing.
What Asher said here:
…TPR flourishes in a team venture in which ideas flow generously from member to member sparking more ideas….
doesn’t describe TPR in my mind. It describes PQA and TPRS.
Our interest in TPR is about six months old here on the blog as I remember and was never intended to “bring back TPR” or anything. TPR IS boring.
About a month ago Eric sent a tape that made it interesting but I think Eric would agree that our real interest in TPR was to find out cool ways to just teach verbs. One thing we all figured out together here under Eric’s prodding was that we need to teach verbs better, especially early in the year. Carol Gaab inspired Julie Soldner to front load everything she did with verb work using TPR and vPQA would not work as it does without lots of TPR to start the year. Lots of us want to hit verbs a lot harder next year. TPR can serve well in that task. That is its big value as I see it, and I have recommended, in my new book even, that we use it along with verb slamming for just that purpose.
Again, just my thoughts here.
(This also may reveal a bit of historical conflict that may have occurred between Asher and Blaine. I really don’t know. The latter picked up where the former stopped. I do know that Blaine consciously set out to create a way to teach based fully on Dr. Krashen’s work, and it is quite apparent as well that Asher provided him with his springboard to TPRS. But he, Blaine, is the only one who added in all the flourishing and sparking, and in the most genius way in language instruction history.)
To summarize: basic TPR is in my view for hardwiring verbs in, maybe one per day, for a few minutes at the start of a class. That’s it. The rest is Blaine’s stuff. He defined everything. Yes, TPR has value and I hope that Diane shares her findings with us because most of us should be snoozing in June to recover from last year. But TPR is not a system, it ain’t nothin’ but a thing.
My B.A./B.S. from UConn included a minor (i.e., 4 courses) in linguistics. The prescriptive/ descriptive distinction came up pretty early in Intro to Linguistics. Unfortunately, language students tend to get more literature and prescriptive grammar than linguistics. Part of the reason is that linguistics is not easy to follow, at least for me is was as much a challenge as it was a joy. One reason I took four linguistics is that it not only satisfied my curiosity about language in general; it also met the UConn requirement for a minimum number of courses with extra writing or with a quantitative bent to it.
A knowledge of linguistics, including Chomskian and pre-Chomskian gives one a different perspective which I believe is an advantage over someone with a Spanish grammar for teachers course. Part of this is because linguistics is descriptive. It does not prescribe how language should be spoken. It is concerned with how language actually is spoken as a means to try to determine how language is constructed in the mind. So for example, a study on the use of double negatives in “black” English challenges the prescriptive double-negative prohibition, which always includes the slogan from math, two negatives make a positive. That is true in multiplication, but not in addition. In addition, two negatives make a greater negative. The following example illustrates that. (These are not the exact words from the study, but they are close).
Student: Mrs Smith, Johnny don’t know nothin’.
Teacher: Cherie, is that the proper [prescriptive] way to say that?
Student: No, Mrs. Smith. The proper way is Johnny doesn’t know anything. But that’s not Johnny. He is so dumb that he don’t know nothin’.
In Cherie’s mind, the single negative was not strong enough to express her opinion of Johnny. She certainly was not saying that Johnny knew something.
The researcher went on to explain that “anything” have both a negative and a positive usage. When textbooks presents lists of negatives and positives, they are the listed as someone/no one, something/nothing.
I know something. (There is something I know.)
I don’t know something. (There is something I do not know.)
I know anything. (e.g., anything you ask me I will know it and can give the answer. Similar to I know everything)
I don’t know anything (There is nothing I know)
I don’t know nothing (Emphatic from a descriptive point of view, although prescriptively is is considered substandard. Perhaps less emphatic than “nuttin’.”)
So “anything” is not the affirmative of “nothing.” It can be seen as the acceptable double negative equivalent of “nothing.” If this is the case, then those “double negative” languages like Spanish, French, etc. are not weird; they just express with different vocabulary sets. See Robert’s treatment of split-infinitives and ending sentences with “prepositions” above.
I think teachers in CI/TPRS are more open to linguistic analyses because that is where the research comes from. Echoing Robert above you do not see many people who are interested in linguistics outside of CI/TPRS circles. Perhaps the traditional goal of language learning helps to account for this: If prescribing grammar rules for memorization, the only questions is what can we do to inculcate and learn the prescribed rules.
Robert, great post.
I found another one in CaffEIne. I am also glad to hear I am not the only one whose students overuse HAT [wish I knew how to do italics on this] a bit. I wish they could catch that one quicker, but it reassures me that I am not the only one whose students do that.
Eric, thanks. The site supports limited html. To do italics and boldface, place the appropriate symbol within Spitzenklammer:
– Immediately in front of a word or phrase, use the letter i for italics and the letter b for boldface.
– Don’t forget to cancel the command with /i or /b, also within pointed brackets, as appropriate.
To italicize Spitzenklammer, it would look like this – only with pointed brackets rather than round brackets: (i)Spitzenklammer(/i)
Michele, is your regular program coming back now that parents spoke up? Or is your school cutting it to go full immersion? If they’re doing the full immersion program, I hope that doesn’t mean that they’re cutting your position.
Sean, I don’t know. I’m going to be in Latvia until right before school starts. As it stands, I’ll teach three sections of computer-based classes (all the core classes, plus health and some math for credit recovery and newcomers) and just two mixed-level Russian classes. No level 1. They won’t let me go, just won’t necessarily let me teach Russian. Whether it’s part of the overall plan to push out the older teachers is conjecture on my part…add to that my “feisty nature”… – I hate that often-used phrase for older women; and most of my colleagues and students laugh out loud at the idea I could be aggressive. Only for what’s right…
There’s a chance I can teach for a new private school. The director’s 30-year program at our school (School Through the Arts) just got cut too, and he retired in protest. He’s had this plan in the works for some time, so I’m hopeful that might be a place I can go be myself if I have to retire.
The “good” news is that you have so many certifications and skills that they cannot “make’ you retire, even by eliminating the Russian. But computer-based classes???!!! What an incredibly horrific “use” of your gifts, talent, knowledge, dedication, passion and so much more. Incredible….by all definitions. Short-sighted, bizarre, political….oh I could go on and on….
I’m glad that you are being allowed to teach the students that you started with. So glad…and I know that they are as well.
You will be an amazing teacher wherever you are……if they wish to erase who you are, they are not educators in any sense. What a blessing that someone else they have attempted to crush is looking for a new way to help Anchorage students. As a teacher, linguist and musician you have so much to offer a new school.
Love you,
Laurie
Sean it is my belief that one reason for all the TPRS/CI confusion and hoopla, the main reason, is that in our instruction we address a completely different, as in completely different, part of the brain*, which I describe as whole brain learning to include that part of the brain that requires conscious analysis, self awareness of how one is learning, etc. It represents a very small part of the action but invites the “whole brain” label vs. the completely “right brain” label.
But the cold hard fact is that the process occurs in the right brain, hidden and later processed/parsed out during sleep after tons of listening and reading first during the day. Each day the input flows in, each night it is parsed out to make the language system grow. It’s all very natural and effortless, as in effortless.
The left brain teachers know this deep down, even if they are not aware of it, and so we become their instant enemies. We challenge them at the risk of losing our jobs if they are in control of the politics of the building we are in, so we need to tread lightly but firmly. With every CI class we teach, good or bad, we bring them closer to the end of their professional worlds, because their product stinks so bad and ours, when done properly, has a wonderful fragrance.
That is a very true statement, not overblown at all, and I make it on the backs of over 33,000 classes that I have taught in my 37 years in the classroom. The fact that their left brain product stinks is why Helena has met her match in Eric and Alisa lately. We bring something that is three dimensional and human and they fold it up into something that is two dimensional and robotic.
They got away with it for some time but can’t anymore – not with people like Eric and Alisa and Michele Whaley and John Bracey and all the rest of the TPRS/CI wackos out there tracking them down, even bringing their message to other countries now. Latvia anyone? Why not?
Those superstar four percenters from when they were in school dominating the classroom with conscious analysis will soon be out of a job. Ain’t it? Laura, if she can learn to not confront too much, will be vindicated in her building. Our jobs will be happier once those robots are gone. I am not saying robots, just that the way they teach is robotic and boring as hell and did I say that their products stink? They will be gone. Nobody wants that crap anymore. Sorry I had a point somewhere.
Oh yeah: what we do resembles what artists do much more than what deliverers-of-instructional-services (Ted Sizer’s term) do.
Here is how that left brain/right brain dichotomy works in terms of drawing. It is not far from what we do:
http://www.learn-to-draw-right.com/right-brain-drawing.html
*the part that actually learns languages…
Immersion’s 2 biggest problems:
A) assuming all input is comprehensible
B) forcing learners to speak.
Michelle you should write ip the data and send it to Steve Krashen. Congrats. You crushed it.
Chris
It sounds like you could have endless retirement possibilities, Michele.
We look forward to you keeping us updated on the Latvia venture.
What Chris said about the data. Maybe you could bring Krashen and VP together.
Unfortunately, if I share the data, it will be out in the world where I can get in trouble sharing results that will point directly at certain kids and one other teacher. I’m thinking about sharing it with our curriculum head in a tactful way, but tact is not one of my skill sets, so I’m going to go to Latvia, see what happens there, and find out whether I can frame a larger discussion in which these results are only a part of the picture.
We will try to bring Krashen and VP together; they’re evidently already friends, and we’re going to be playing up the fact that they are keynoting at AFLA (Alaskans for Language Acquisition) two years apart. Carol was going to try to get VP for iFLT this year or next. I felt pretty good that I got to him first. (See? I’m not tactful.)
If your experience in Latvia will be anything like the sister program, now unfunded and no longer available, called ISLI, it’ll be a great, great summer. I went to China in 2012 for 6 weeks on the State Dept. funds for non-native Chinese language teacher training. I know you’re guiding a group of teenagers, but may get a lot of the same benefits I had from the program.
However, they said that the first year of the program was a lot of playing it by ear! Lots of last minute changes, etc. There’s still a high school program in China with NSLI-Y. I have a few students who maybe should apply before college.
I’m hoping for the best, Diane! Some of my kids have been on NSLI-Y programs to Russia in the past, and so I have high expectations.
My last update from the US: got the pre-program OPI reports back. I teach only two of the kids, but their reports were right on. I trust OPI results for the most part.
Laurie helped me think of my own prompt for a pre- and post- conversation: for the kids to tell me their impressions of the town and their host family.
The results of the placement assessment that the program gave the kids were exactly opposite the results of the OPI. So much for the claim that the test measures how well kids will talk.