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TPRS – Hebrew – 2
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11 thoughts on “TPRS – Hebrew – 2”
Thank you so much Alisa. This is exactly what we need. I fear I have left the kids behind a bit because I am at a much more advanced level than they. I haven’t been as sensitive as I should to the lack of comprehension going on around me. I think we need to take a step back and either go back to some stepping stones exercise, or just simplify the Ask a Story template to guard against going out of bounds with too many new things.
4. We have not been able to teach reading Hebrew letters and words yet. We’re just swamped for time. I hope to get this in this summer. I just didn’t want to wait to start language acquisition until they knew this. I am open to all suggestions on best practices for teaching beginners to read Hebrew. We have started using Harris Winitz’s Learnables for this, but we were not consistent.
5. I have noticed that when we teach a scripted story, we stay in bounds better and the kids stay more engaged. My previous video was from a scripted story that I made up beforehand. For now that may be a better route for their level? Thoughts?
Joe said:
… I think we need to take a step back and either go back to some stepping stones exercise, or just simplify the Ask a Story template to guard against going out of bounds with too many new things….
Agreed. I have a hard time with stepping stone activities at this time of year – they seem kind of a first few months kind of thing. So your simplify idea Joe is EXACTLY what I need to do in my own classes right now. We have talked a lot about the highly desired 25 min. story. It remains a perfect goal and a fine response to Joe’s point above. (IF the kids/teachers aren’t too burned out right now on stories, which I suspect they are.)
(If the kids/teachers ARE burned out on stories, we have the April bail out moves of course, and all the other bail out moves. But I’m thinking of doing what I describe below if the kids are rude during stories w/ excessive English, lack of focus, etc. I’m going to try it tomorrow:
The moment I feel they lack focus, I’m going to pull out a yellow card and hold it up to the class. One yellow card = one grammar translation sentence, ex. “He doesn’t want to give the windows to the birds.” Any random sentence that comes to my mind in an instant that I say and then write on the board so that I instantaneously leave the story and the next thing they hear me saying is something ridiculous in L1.
This gets their attention. So does the yellow card. We translate the sentence on the board into L2 and the story then continues where it left off. Then if/when they get foolish again, out comes the red card for a TWO translations penalty. Then back to the story. The third time I say, “End of game!” and go sit down. Then they have to sit quietly for the rest of the period.
Never tried it before. It has potential, though. I do know that weak refs in football get eaten alive. So do we, unless we hold the card out WHENEVER WE FEEL THAT THE CLASS IS BEING ABUSIVE. To do that we have to recognize their abuse of us in the moment it is occurring.
Classroom Abuse, Ben? Really? Yup! It’s real. It happens when the teacher lacks the personal power to confront a class in, if necessary, a very stern – not angry but lovingly stern – voice, pull the card and make the class show up with the grammar.
I’ll report back tomorrow. I have just the class to try this out on. My biggest sixth grade class. Can’t wait to see what happens. But I have decided that just because it’s April I am not going to not do stories, because they are the cream of all our strategies.
Have you guys tried it with no targets? Just seeing what emerges? I don’t think you can ask others because we all have what works for us. What would happen if you tried working off of say, any image and just start talking about it in a comprehensible way, using Point and Pause very very rarely? If you try that, just try to keep the conversation not around any scripted target but instead on their general knowledge level and their expressed interest. If they take you somewhere, honor that invitation. Go where the kids want to go, but stay in bounds. Sounds like a contradiction but you are the ones who know them since you teach them every day and know what they can handle. It’s very delicate. Your goal when you do this is to make it so interesting that they forget that you are using another language. Bring them to mirth. Then, while you are doing that, you have to be acutely sensitive to not taking them out of bounds. In other words, YOU keep them inbounds because they are YOUR students and you know them, not because of the kind but squeezing effect of any targets that you may be using to keep them from getting confused. In the one plan, with targets, you depend on the targets to provide the train tracks. In the targetless plan, you have to be the rails and the train. So is that a possibility?
And all the while in the back of your mind is a refutation of the idea that you are a teacher teaching, but rather a person who wants to know what they think in the real way.
And while doing that you have to avoid covering the board with new vocabulary, as Alisa says in (3) above.
So it becomes a feel thing. Oops. Wrong word. We’re not supposed to feel, are we? Too hippy. Why should I feel a lesson I teach? That’s a ridiculous idea.
“In the one plan, with targets, you depend on the targets to provide the train tracks. In the targetless plan, you have to be the rails and the train.”
I think that sounds really right. It feels like that to me to a fair degree since I almost never use a story script (even though I chose some of the language to include).
Alisa, I will be very interested in what you come up with along the lines of cold character reading for a phonetically-written language (Hebrew). Michele Whaley did something like it in a Russian demo not too long ago. I think transitioning to reading would be smoother and faster with a phonetic writing system; you all would probably only need a few weeks (?) of time before they read fluently on their own.
I would also be really happy to have your perspective at iFLT, if you will be there (I feel like you said you would be?). I’m presenting about cold character reading, and while it’s listed as a Chinese language topic, I’m hoping other languages not written in (approximately) the same alphabet as English might also be there. I think there is potential for a smoother process of early reading for those languages.
Diane, I’ll be at iFLT and at your session on CCR if I can!!
Terry W says that according to her work, we shouldn’t need to provide any phonetic information when we teach w/ CCR!! Hebrew has 2 alphabets – manuscript and cursive; there’s also a vowel system comprised of dots and dashes above/below/in the letters that beginners often use. However, I plan to go straight to cursive and vowel-less (on Terry’s advice) – since the aural input ought to take care of miscues before we get to the reading. Some posters and typed materials will appear in manuscript – we should expose to both as they’d find ‘in the wild.’
Know that at the temple where I’m training the teachers this summer, the kids do get Hebrew alphabet instruction starting in 1st grade (brutal), so that when they start Modern Hebrew in 3rd grade, ideally they are familiar with and ‘know’ the letters and soundsand basic decoding…so ideally I wouldn’t have to take a few weeks of intensive “break the code” training.
I remember the issue of what to put on the board came up once at a meeting at your Mandarin classroom here in Chicagoland. I think that in Joseph’s situation, the Hebrew script prolly ought not be on the board unless they are actively trying to use or ‘teach’ it.
Cool, Alisa, I am glad to get to see you & talk about this stuff! I distinctly remember that discussion in my former classroom (and I miss that group of people, badly). That was my tipping point for dropping use of new characters during auditory input, that very day, with beginning students. 4%ers would want them & do fine with them, but the majority end up with too much going on at the same time: new sounds, new meaning, new pinyin, and new characters… whew. I have a few exceptions for false beginners & for intermediate (true intermediates not a class title) Chinese, like my highest level class this year.
Vowel markings aren’t a normal part of modern Hebrew either? Somehow I thought they were a modern preferred way to write. If you use cursive for reading, perhaps those 3rd graders would still have a new system of writing to acquire despite having memorized letters prior years — assuming they always saw block print-style letters before.
I think Terry means no phonetic indictors needed when they’re reading, correct? She uses pinyin (standard phonetic system for transliterating Mandarin sounds) to introduce words & work orally with them. Then reading has none of it. Reading aloud guidance from the teacher, plus context & the language already in the kids from auditory input, help them read. How long they’d need that phonetic transliteration during an auditory step is the question I would have about languages like Hebrew & Russian — when is it that they’ve “caught” the letters & sounds they’ll need.
I tried Berlitz Hebrew. They used the vowel pointing for the first ten lessons. And then went vowel-less. I felt very lost at that point even those they have a “self-pronouncing” form below the Hebrew. What I was lacking was spoken speech. I had no aural vocabulary. It was sight and sound out and they took away my training wheels too soon…just when I was feeling comfortable and just as it was getting more difficult. And I did not have the time to continue.
The power of TPRS is developing the aural vocabulary to the point that reading is just seeing what we hear.
When native speakers learn Hebrew literacy, they’ll learn the vowels at the very beginning (which says AHH, and which says OOO, for example) but then as they mast reading no more vowels. I don’t think they learn to write w/vowels at all!
For ‘nonstandard’ words like proper names and products, vowels are helpful do decode an otherwise un-recognizable word (like “email”).
As they master reading.
Children’s picture books do have vowels, but as they get up into chapter books, those disappear.
I prolly will not write w/vowels when i record stories from class.