The Intellectual Caverns of Non-Productivity

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12 thoughts on “The Intellectual Caverns of Non-Productivity”

  1. I saw this over on Facebook first, and replied there as well. Here’s a brief addition:

    When my students read along with me, I see them respond emotionally: they laugh, they roll their eyes, they gasp, they smile, they say things like “This story is so sad!” or “That’s like our story about —“. This tells me we’re not over-intellectualizing or analyzing characters to read, but are connecting with meaning and enjoying a message.

    I always have to be aware of their comprehension, though, or it would decay to hard work, analysis, and memorization. Sometimes I forget which class knows what & throw in too much new stuff or a totally unfamiliar word. Total stop in the process right there. In a way, that makes me think what I’ve been doing in general is right for them. There is a pop-up kind of thing (a few seconds to note something about a character, like in pop-up grammar blurbs) sometimes AFTER getting comfortable with some words in reading for the first time. So there’s a little intellectualizing about the language, but it’s not required. It’s for those who like/want that.

    The offer still holds to do some kind of Chinese lesson, including a few minutes of reading at the end if you would, Ben. I have one week of school left & time after that (sort of! packing). I’d listen to complaints about it afterwards if you had them. I have started beginners in a variety of ways now — including once with a very simple SL which I did even then follow with reading (in a much simpler version). Usually it’s like 4X the auditory input for 1X time spent reading. It’s a teacher-led, highly supported reading process at that point, and that time with my attempt at SL it was really an experiment for me to see if any simple reading could be possible. I’m glad the 3 teachers I was Skyping with at the time let me try it out. They had quite positive feedback & it seemed to break down some anxiety about the language as well. Let me know! It’d be fun.

  2. See Diane all I am saying, and poorly apparently, is that I believe, and I have talked extensively with Tina and others about this, is that there seems to be a push to proclaim that in Mandarin circles that NT and Slow won’t work and so with Mandarin we have to re-invent the wheel because, very oddly in my opinion, Mandarin has all these special considerations bc it is the only language in the world in which basic CI ideas must be modified, for a litany of intensely intellectual reasons.

    However, whenever I observed Annick and Linda, which was a lot, they never made points like that, and as a CO TOY (Annick) and unmatched targeted practitioner (Linda), they kind of just shrugged when I brought this topic up. They clearly didn’t want to talk about it. They weren’t passionate about it.

    It was obvious to me that those two GREAT teachers had nothing nice to say about all this. They were and remain passionate about reaching the kids in the language, Annick in Denver and Linda now leaving New Delhi in a few weeks for Thailand. So it is all a bit confusing mess to me. Thankfully, I’m done trying to figure it all out. It’s not my field, so what do I know? I’m out. But even then, my spidey sense tells me something is off base in all this.

    My belief is that NT and Slow CAN work and work beautifully in Mandarin and all languages. All the dismissive talk is like, “Oh if you don’t know the culture and the language then you can’t really understand” is to me false. My belief is that NT and Slow can work. Voila, c’est tout.

    1. (Copied in from my reply on FB as well) Ah, then I understand you now, Ben. I had read you as saying, “You’re making Mandarin into an intellectual maze by expecting students to read Chinese characters.” I don’t think that, not if it’s done well. If the teacher knows the students, and moves at their pace, careful about their comfort and comprehension, seeking the students’ interests, there’s the goal, which can be met in many ways. I agree that not everything needs to be pre-planned, if that’s what NT and slow means. I think each teacher can determine how things work best for him or her & the students they teach, and each of us will look somewhat different as a result, even if working from essentially the same principles. It’s one of the fun things about teaching, isn’t it?

      1. I am sure part of the allure that students want are knowledge of the characters. Yet at the same time, it is important to step in and make it very clear that you have the knowledge as to how the process will work. Developing that trust by students in going slow with the characters is refreshing since there is also those tones to be familiarized with.

        I believe with what Ben is saying hold true in situations where you have teachers who are concerned more with the parts of the language or the forms like the characters instead of the actual students. This includes false ideas of mastery, targeting 1… truly patience and empathy is what is needed in our field.

        This morning while pumping gas, I thought about how students come to class already with their stigmas and traumas of reading in their L1. How they are forced to memorize sight words and are evaluated and are divided into groups of “low” and “high” students etc…

        The advantage with Chinese is that it is kinda like starting fresh with a different set of characters that look nothing like phonetic writing. So in a sense CI Chinese teachers can develop a warmer connection to literacy. It is a wonderful opportunity.

        1. Thank you Steven. As usual you point to true things. This discussion is appreciated. It feels real. All those cautions – years and years of cautions about Mandarin being different – I’m not so convinced any more that they carry much truth.

          In fact, where in all of those discussions has there ever been a mention of the kids? Where does what they experience fit into the discussion? Apparently they aren’t that important, because I have never see them mentioned in the entire Mandarin drama of recent years.

          Doesn’t what the students experience count the most? Indeed, I would ask the experts, “What is the expression on the kids’ faces when they are learning Mandarin?” “Are they excited to know what is going to happen?”, “What makes them happiest in class?”, “What is their favorite CI activity?”

          Then when I hear those answers I will be able to report that I will have finally heard something real about teaching Mandarin. It is the children’s observable non-verbal behaviors that bring honesty and truth into any discussion of language instruction, in my opinion.

      2. Sean M Lawler

        I couldn’t agree more, Diane, that the dynamic we have with our students various tremendously from teacher to teacher and school to school. But it makes sense to me that no matter what classroom culture we walk into and/or develop as teachers, our goal is to create a dynamic where we can talk to students for an extended amount of time (i.e., StoryListening, right?) with their full engagement.

        1. Yes, full engagement, lots of heard language. A colleague of mine sat in on my classes in January (which included when I first tried Story Listening). Not knowing anything about what I was trying to do, she said that it was such a nice flow of language that she really loved it.

          I do like interacting with them, too. I surveyed my students this week about what they perceive helped their Chinese most (and least), and which of those they enjoyed most (and least). One student all these months later said his favorite & most helpful thing we did was the story of the zodiac animals. Others said any extended listening was hard — same kids who need more breaks & physical activity.

  3. You’re on to something. All that is needed is CI. Slow helps. Caring helps. Nt makes it organic and natural. Intelectualizing perpetuates the divides of the educational system be it economic or dare i say, racial. At my middle school, all languages affect high school GPA and i have a colleague who fails kids because they become mute during an oral final exam. It’s sad. He’ll be retiring real soon. That said, NT plus SLA fundamentals are the equalizer and that is dangerous to schools.

  4. Alisa Shapiro

    I agree that Mandarin can/should be treated like other languages, but that we also have to consider that Mandarin employs characters (not letters w/sounds) in reading/writing.

    I spoke w/Terry W about CCR regarding Hebrew as I was getting my own project experiment off the ground. As I understand it, she is definitely not for sacrificing or trading out auditory input for a focus on reading. She is adamant that no one read until the sounds and meaning are firmly rooted in their head. Tons of rich copious auditory input – she talks about the ‘sound in their head’ quite a bit in her book on CCR. This need for sounds first before writing is part of her reasoning for the reading closely matching the oral work – there can’t be room for much straying since the Ss cant improvise, guess, use context clues or ‘fill in missing information’ when they cannot decode in Mandarin….

    Hebrew is different than both the Romance languages and Mandarin in that the non-Romanized alphabet is written from right to left , but the letters are phonetic (not characters). This year, I really almost exclusively provided auditory input at the supplementary school where I was working evenings. We didn’t have enough weekly classes to follow up with much writing, but I did write words, phrases and sometimes sentences on the board (step 1 – as needed). Most of the kids knew at least the symbol/sound correspondences, having learned the ALEF-BET previously. I imagine that having no way to visually reinforce the sounds of the words weakens the overall CI strategies, or at least fails to optimize them, which is Terry’s point.

    She created her tones (TOP?) and CCR systems to allow Mandarin teachers and their Ss to benefit from the contributions of reading, just like in the Romance languages, not because there’s an obsession with reading or a need to distinguish Mandarin as different; I see it as a way to also benefit from reading without having kids memorize the characters (legacy Mandarin instruction methods).
    Could Mandarin Ts provide oodles of auditory CI for a while without incorporating any literacy work? Yes but that’s exhausting for the T and the kids, no? The literacy work helps balance the work and the experience.
    If I were teaching Mandarin to lil kids, perhaps I’d work on the auditory input (almost) exclusively, as I do with my young 1st graders en español. Same if I only had them for 30 min twice a week, like I did in Hebrew. But if it’s a decent number of contact minutes and the kids already have solid L1 literacy skills, and the new Mandarin strategies work….it’s a way IN to Mandarin literacy!!

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