I’m going to repost this every few weeks or whenever I think about it for obvious reasons:
As we know, last week our group member Trisha Schutzius (Fort Collins, CO) rounded up all the information in the Robert Harrell Scope and Sequence articles and put them into one document that she called rSS/Sum. This summary and acronym by Trisha are very similar to what jen did with jGR to the huge benefit of our group over the past year.
Had those two documents not been formulated, had Trisha and jen not done what they did, we would never have been able to use the ideas that went into them because they never would have been put together in one place. That is a sobering thought for those of us whose professional lives have been changed over the past year by jGR and by some of the other finely distilled documents posted here over the years.
In effect, Trisha and jen have prevented the ideas found in those two documents from floating away into the galactic regions of thought that are now sparkling with potential in the world of foreign language education but – and this is the work we do here – were organized in such a way that we could actually use them in our classrooms.
(Note ed. – That is what is different about this group. We don’t just talk about ideas. We test them and stretch them and throw them against the walls of our classrooms until some of them stick, and then we report back here, someone maybe puts them together in the form of a document, and we move from theory to practice. We are practitioners of best practices in language instruction. We don’t just think. We act. We get up in the morning and go into American middle and high school classrooms and try stuff. Sometimes we get beat up. Badly. But we believe in what we are doing, in Krashen’s hypotheses, in the change we bring, and so we go in the next day for more. It’s what we do.)
So I have decided to make Trisha’s summary of Robert’s work into a sticky post here. A sticky post is an article that stays at the top of the published queue for awhile. New articles are published daily, but this article stays on top. So get used to seeing it when you log on here.
I suggest you read it again each time you log on. You need to know these things if you are going to be successful in making your classroom a real comprehensible input classroom. Like jGR, rSS/Sum is that important. It should be at the forefront of all the work we do this year – that is how important it is.
(The acronym by Trisha also serves an important organizational service in the galaxy of 3,920 articles and 22,446 comments – as of today – published here over the past eight years.)
Note for the record that both ideas mentioned here – jGR and now rSS/Sum – have come from le Chevalier de l’Ouest, Robert, who basically kicks ass.
So here it is. Refer to it often. Share it with colleagues. Bring it to meetings and then when somebody at some meeting says something stupid that doesn’t really help the kids learn the language show them the counter point from Trisha’s article. The page 2 Scope and Sequence for a four year program is especially revolutionary. If colleagues were to really read it and start unpacking it and comparing it to their own ideas of Scope and Sequence, which are connected to corporations and the text books they sell, there would be some good discussion generated, as per:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2013/02/28/michael-fullan-3/
(Trisha I have put some of the words in bold. If you want me to change it back let me know.)
Summary of Robert Harrell’s Notes on Scope and Sequence
The following is a one-page summary of the theoretical underpinnings and observations found in the article, “Robert Harrell on the Topic of Scope and Sequence.” See Page 2 for Harrell’s proposed Scope and Sequence outline.
The Scope and Sequence of a language program should:
1. Follow the order of acquisition. One way to know if something is late acquired is to see native speakers argue over it, i.e. por/para.
2. Shelter vocabulary but not grammar. (In other words, use limited vocabulary and unlimited grammar.) This follows the natural speech around babies and young children, and it means that students will receive the necessary exposure to late-acquired grammatical structures. As students are exposed to these late-acquired structures in the teacher’s speech, they will not be expected to produce them right away.
3. Promote Comprehensible Input (the speaking that the teacher does in class) as the single most important element, remembering that language is first of all acoustic (Segal), and that “a flood of input is necessary to get a trickle of output” (Wynne Wong, OSU). S&S should make sure all material is made 100 percent comprehensible to the student(s).
4. Recognize that receptive skills precede productive skills, so that listening comes before speaking, and reading comes before writing. The natural order is: listening, speaking, reading, writing. Each student will progress at his/her own pace, and each skill will progress at a different pace.
5. Aim for manipulation of the language before any sort of explicit grammar instruction because this leads to greater gains in fluency and retention of the explicit instruction.
6. Balance the brain’s need to automate via repetition and its desire for novelty (the analogy is a driver experienced in using a manual transmission, who remembers something unusual from his car trip).
7. Supply enough meaningful (comprehensible) and significant (to the student) target language (input) to keep the brain focused and put language into long-term memory.
8. Promote the unconscious acquisition of the target language by concentrating on the message in that language, rather than talking about the language in English. When the language system has been internalized to a greater degree in the language program, only then can the linguistics of a particular construction be discussed in a way that enhances, rather than hinders, the student’s use of the language.
Related Observations:
A. Varied repetition is necessary for retention.
B. The concept of “ i + 1” for language acquisition assumes that “i” is the linguistic knowledge a student already has, and “1” is the linguistic knowledge he/she is ready for. This is different for every student. A teacher who makes input 100 percent comprehensible and uses all necessary grammar, rather than one specific target structure, will provide i + 1 for the varying levels of language acquisition present in a given class.
C. The time necessary for true mastery far exceeds the time available in the school setting, even in the best of circumstances.
D. We need to decide what ought to be accomplished in a language program and how much can be accomplished. Our real goal should be to give students “real life” language skills, rather than preparation for its use in a college classroom, which few students will need. Our goal is also not a linguistics course, where we are teaching ABOUT the language, rather than teaching the language itself.
Page 2
The following is an unedited segment of the article, “Robert Harrell on the Topic of Scope and Sequence,” which considers the Scope and Sequence essentials:
So now that I have prefaced my submission to you with all of that, if I were free to design a Scope and Sequence based on ACTFL, Krashen, SLA, Brain-Based Research, etc., I would have something like the following:
1. In the first year students are introduced to oral language through interpersonal communication in the target language on topics directly related to them and their immediate environment (e.g. personal description, family, friends, and interests) with the emphasis on hearing and understanding spoken language. (90%+ target language in the classroom and out.) As their ability increases, students are given ample opportunity to produce language spontaneously and without coercion. Cultural literacy and competence are developed through embedded culture, just as grammatical and syntactical competence is developed through embedded grammar and syntax. Additionally, students “learn how to learn”, i.e. the conditions and procedures that support maximum acquisition of a language. Students are exposed to written language through reading short texts based on class discussion and storytelling.
2. In the second year students continue with oral language development through interpersonal and interpretive communication on topics related to the students, their community (including school) and their environment with emphasis on hearing, understanding and responding to spoken language. At this level students’ exposure to written language increases through reading graded readers and short, simple authentic texts. [N.B.: I think this would put most “level 1” readers at the correct level for maximum benefit.] Students are supported by techniques such as Scaffolded Literacy, Embedded Reading, Essential Sentences, and Embedded Culture, Grammar and Syntax.
3. In the third year students continue developing oral language through interpersonal and interpretive communication on topics related to them and their larger environment with emphasis on hearing, understanding and responding to spoken language. They begin oral presentational communication. Students continue developing literacy and improve their textual interpretive communication skills through reading increasingly complex texts (both graded readers and authentic texts). Toward the end of the year students begin to develop their written presentational skills, aided by such devices as Sentence Frames.
4. In the fourth year students expand their ability to communicate in all three modes of communication (Interpersonal, Interpretive, Presentational) through listening, speaking, reading and writing about themselves, their environment and the world at large in formal and informal settings. They continue developing cultural literacy and competence as well as their ability to manipulate the language through strategic use of multiple time frames and perspectives. Students also learn how to continue language acquisition in formal and informal settings both inside and outside the classroom.
Rigor and Relevance are addressed at all levels by empowering students to discuss things that relate to them, connect to real life, and are novel, engaging and involving (Relevance), and then pursue those things in depth with integrity and sustained focus (Rigor).