Greg is getting ready to hit his kids, and I mean like in splat, with their first jGR grades. They are earned each day this week as we speak. On Friday the kids will see a dispassionate, factual assessment of their observable non-verbal behaviors in Greg’s classroom. It will be a big moment for them as they realize that they will now have to completely change what they are doing in their French class at North High School in Durham, NC.
In that interest, I offer below a rationale for connecting assessment to the standards. Any other arguments, or if anyone can find places in the past where we have made comments here in support of this idea, are welcome as well. We all need to be able to instantly grab a piece of paper somewhere in our classroom or at home that allows us to defend ourselves against attacks from parents or clueless administrators who think that behavior cannot be connected to grades. It can and it will be in our field of language acquisition. We just need to be able to say why instantly. Here are my arguments:
We totally know that when we use jGR as a grade we are within our rights. We just spent a year talking about it and agreeing about it. At first, more than a few group members argued the old party line that we can’t grade “participation”. Robert and a few others kept pointing out, over months, that the standards, in fact, and the Three Modes of Communication, outline specific observable non-verbal behaviors that our students must exhibit if they are to learn the language. We’re not talking about “participation” and we never were.
If those observable behaviors are indeed necessary and intricately tied to our students’ academic success, and they most certainly are, then if follows that the behaviors outlined in the Standards and the Three Modes should absolutely be the primary grading tactic we use. This is because the standards describe necessary behaviors in language acquisition as opposed to what happens in our students’ other classes where processing information and memorization are the goals.
In fact, human beings can only learn languages in what Lev Vygotsky has called a “zone of proximal development” which is a zone of verbal and emotional give and take with another human being, and therefore is not something we can measure, quantify or test for, since it occurs unconsciously. In fact, teachers who test kids on their ability to remember verb conjugation charts come off looking, if Vygotsky is right, and he is, looking like dumb asses.
In addition, it is clear that many of Dr. Stephen Krashen’s hypotheses fully support the idea presented above linking communication between the teacher and the student in the TL in ways that require the negotiation of meaning. They imply that reaching, and not just teaching, kids, is a key factor in building fluency. Krashen’s five main hypotheses are:
1. Communicative Competence, for example, is defined in sociocultural terms, meaning that interacting in L2 is more than just a mental exercise, but a participatory, social one. Robots cannot converse.
2. The Affective Filter Hypothesis states there is a “filter” or “mental block” that keeps L2 from “getting in” – the lower the filter, the easier it is to learn L2. Thus, human contact of a relaxed nature, i.e. reaching kids in a way that is meaningful to them, increases acquistion of L2. 3. The Affective Hypothesis states that factors of motivation, interpersonal acceptance, and self-esteem deeply affect learning L2. Thus, we reach students by focusing on them and valuing them as human beings in our classes.
4. The Comprehensible Input Hypothesis states that the learner can only acquire language by connecting it to prior knowledge. Language that is not understood is just L2 noise. Thus, we cannot just teach students, we must reach them by making sure that we speak to them in a way that they can understand us.
5. The Monitor Hypothesis states that consciously learned language can only be used to monitor language output; it can never be the source of spontaneous speech. It is best used only to monitor writing, and contributes little, if at all, to actual language acquisition. And yet it remains a major approach to language instruction, in spite of being so worthless.
6. The Natural Order of Acquisition Hypothesis states that structures of L2 emerge in much the same order as they do in L1, an order that cannot be re-arranged. This implies that the mind is selective and learns what features of a language it wants to learn when it wants to learn it, as it hears L2 on a daily basis. This calls into question the “grammar syllabus.” Thus, we reach students by offering them the target language in forms that it can grasp, and not in ways that confuse them.
Krashen thus expresses the mantra set out by Susan Gross, that success in language teaching is really all about just reaching students. Maybe we should spend less time wrestling with learning how to create stories and just use a few storytelling techniques to just talk with the kids.
The technical aspects of asking stories are not unimportant, but they sometimes cloud our vision of what is truly important – reaching the kids. If a teacher were to use any simple combination of circling, slow, pausing and pointing, and teaching to the eyes, using just those TPRS techniques to engage the students in simple conversations about their interests, they might get unexpectedly fine results.
As we discover more and more ways to connect with our students, without worrying too much about how to create home run stories, we will give more and more life and energy to Krashen’s ideas, and thus become better teachers of fluency.
Of course, we must mention Alfie Kohn’s work in this context. Mr. Kohn has put forward a “Theory of Value” that states that students need instruction in how to be responsible and respectful – that such things are not necessarily naturally occurring phenomena in students.
Therefore, before focusing on teaching L2, teachers must teach by modeling the behaviors they wish to see in their students. When the emotional needs of the students are thus met, what I have called the Web of Connection can ccur in the classroom.
Kohn states that the goal of education is to enable students to realize that they can think, learn, act, and change things. Only after that is established can the students, together, create stories, scenes, etc. in L2.
Bill VanPatten’s research, although it is kind of fucked up in that it is packaged in a ton of academic jargon, why I don’t know, does state in his work that in order for input to be successful in teaching languages it must be of a communicative nature, which means that the focus must be on meaning. In this sense, he supports Krashen’s concept of comprehensible input.
Another major aspect of VanPatten’s message is that language acquisition is different from any other kind of learning. VanPatten suggests that the brain treats language differently from normal human cognition and therefore should not be studied cognitively, which is how it is typically taught. That means that building a curriculum map and shit like that is kind of stupid.
A great teacher of languages, our own beloved Berty Siegal, echoed this idea in simple terms when she said that “language learning is acoustical, not intellectual!”
To return to Vygotsky, the most badass of the badass researchers, his research most accurately reflects the values of what we do in comprehension based instruction. Vygotsky’s ideas and those of Georgi Lozanov (Suggestopedia), perhaps because they are from then-Soviet block countries, have largely been ignored in the West. To Vygotsky, speech and interaction with others represents the path through which knowledge is acquired. This means that we are learning when we negotiate shared meaning, and that, unless we interact with another person, we can’t really “get it.” To Vygotsky, learning is participatory.
Another relatively obscure idea in Vygotsky’s thought is the implication that the mind is not actually located entirely inside the head, that higher psychological functions are body as well as brain-based. This is a Jungian/Eastern idea, that perception is not limited to the mind. It implies that students need to be put in learning situations that unconsciously and effortlessly open up neural pathways that will eventually, when it is time, bring speech out of their brains and into their mouths and bodies.
This is what comprehension based instruction does, and it is done via stories, gesturing, acting, etc. TCI/TPRS teachers interact with their students. TCI/TPRS students learn because their minds are not trapped in the left hemispheres of their brains and their bodies are not trapped in their desks. They use their bodies. They gesture. They open up their mouths and play with the magical sounds of the words without having to worry about losing points for misspelling them. They enjoy learning. They want to learn more.
According to master teacher Susan Gross, “learning” has as its goal the “ability to edit” language. It has no real auditory piece, and is characterized by “study”, the “understanding of the mechanics of the language”, the “practice of structures”, and “rules”. That’s learning, and it is a pretty lame ass word when it comes to thinking about really gaining fluency in a language.
On the other hand, “acquisition” has as its goal “fluency”,and is based on the auditory piece, and is characterized by “effortlessness”, “easily understood messages”, a certain “unconscious absorption of L2”, during which it “feels like nothing is happening”, and L2 just “sounds right”.
Gross goes on to make the point that, according to recent research, the most ideal ratio of acquisition to learning, to get students performing at the highest possible level, is 95% acquisition to 5% learning. I think she was being charitable with that statement.
The fact is that we do not learn information in language classes, but must engage in certain observable behaviors to learn the language, and therefore are within our rights, and can be said to be required to by the standards, to grade children in terms of what we see them do in class. That observation of behaviors, coupled with a reasonable amount of assessment of what has been learned, up to 70% by most of us, can be said to be an extremely reasonable and balanced way to grade children in our comprehension based classes. Failure to grade a child in terms of their observable non-verbal behaviors would be a failure to align our instruction with the national standards.