If you are struggling with getting high energy at the start of class, this is definitely something you should look into. I have settled on starting my classes with this and it definitely works because it gets the kids thinking in their bodies. I am suggesting it for Lance for his new Spanish gig.
Strategy #1 – Word Associations:
Making associations with words by working with word walls is a powerful way to help beginning students dive into a foreign language. It also gives both teacher and students confidence, which is what both need most as they start their new year together.
The word wall I use is a mix of verbs and other parts of speech, anything I can use to create language with my students. The word wall helps me and my students interact at this crucial time of year in the simplest and most human way possible; its purpose is not to teach certain words in a certain order but to give us a format to interact in the target language using a little English before that option disappears later.
Some teachers, who are locked into a pacing guide with vocabulary lists that are connected to thematic units, put those words up. But those words, because they are grouped thematically, don’t carry much interest. The only benefit I can see from a student memorizing a list of the colors out of context is that when they go to the country they may be able to recite them to people who already know what they mean.
On that topic, Dr. Stephen Krashen has said:
“How’s this? Don’t worry about number of repetitions. Don’t worry about vocabulary. Worry only about presenting comprehensible and compelling input. The vocabulary will take care of itself. For crucial vocabulary, there will be plenty of repetitions, and they will be “distributed,” not “massed,” exactly the optimal way of presenting items for optimal retention.
“Study ten TPRS classes – none of them with a specific focus on vocabulary. Give students a vocabulary test at the end of the semester or year. See what words they know. Compare this to lists of words that are on typical curricula. Compare to performance of students in classes that focus on vocabulary. That’s it.
“In general, CI-based approaches (including sustained silent reading) produce superior results on VOCABULARY acquisition (as well as reading comprehension, heavily based on vocabulary knowledge) than skill-based approaches.
“Will this be proof? No, no study ever provides proof. Research can only support or fail to support hypotheses.”
The real purpose of the strategies described in this book is to foster communication and shoulder-to-shoulder work between the student and the teacher toward the common goal of sharing language with extremely limited use of English in our classrooms. When that happens, learning will occur in a more powerful and natural way than when big lists of similar words drive the curriculum.
Here is an interesting mix of words that I use as a word wall for word association work all year in level 1. I find that it carries energy and makes for good classes. I know that my own students have enjoyed working with this list over the years because I have enjoyed teaching them to my students over the years.
Spanish Word Wall
levántate
siéntate
rápido
despácio
camina
salta
parate
da una vuelta
adelante
atrás
levanta
baja
mano
pierna
grita
suave
fuerte
toca
señala
pega
cabeza
boca
ojos
mesa
nariz
chico
muchacho
chica
muchacha
silla
piso
techo
puerta
ventana
come
pescado
llora
ríe
escribe
dibuja
oreja
rodilla
carro
tira la pelota
corta
le da, dale
a la derecha
a la izquierda
pelo
pecho
pie
reloj
toma
casa
brazo
lápiz
pluma
grande
pequeño
pone
hermosa
sonríe
una vez
me gusta
French Word Wall
on se lève
on s’assied
rapidement
lentement
marche
saute
arrête
on se tourne
devant
derrière
lève
baisse
main
jambe
crie
doucement
fort
touche
montre (v.)
frappe
tête
bouche
les yeux
table
nez
garçon
fille
chaise
plafond
plancher
porte
fenêtre
mange
poisson
pleure
rit
écrit
dessine
oreille
genou
voiture
lance
coupe
lui donne
English Word Wall
stand up
sit down
rapidement
lentement
marche
saute
stop
turn around
in front of
behind
raise
lower
hand
leg
yells
quietly
loudly
touches
shows
hits, knocks
head
mouth
eyes
table
nose
boy
girl
chair
ceiling
floor
door
window
eats
fish
cries
laughs
writes
draws
ear
knee
car
throws
cuts
gives to him/to her
Here is the process I use in my own CI classroom. Basically it’s just TPR. I go over a few words to start level one classes in the beginning of the year. This simple training wheel exercise starts class on a fun, physical note. We put the words into our physical bodies via gestures, sounds or images that enable us to remember the meaning of the word. We play with the words and make weird sounds and gesture them and just have fun. It’s just establishing meaning, but we make it fun.
If the first word for that class is voiture (car, pronounced vwature in French), first, as always in this way of teaching, I establish meaning by saying to the class that voiture means car. Then I ask if anyone can think of some way to remember that voiture means car. I allow the word association suggestions from the students in English, but only in this beginning of the year activity.
Different suggestions come up. Some are very outlandish but are often the most remembered ones. If you ever doubt your students’ creativity, you won’t after using this strategy word association strategy with them. Someone may suggest that we can remember that voiture means car by making an association with the phrase, “What year (sounds like voiture) is your Toyota?”
Another example, mentioned in the previous chapter, is les yeux in French. The students almost always associate that sound with either laser eye surgery or lazy eye.
If we are working with a verb, of course, we use basic TPR. We put the verb “into our bodies” and then try throughout the year to gesture it whenever we say it, keeping in mind that thousands of repetitions and gestures of a verb is still often not enough.
I once asked a student who scored a perfect score on the National French Exam one year what part of the instruction he felt most contributed to his score, and he immediately replied, “…those word activities we did at the beginning of the year…”
Anyone who has done this kind of gesturing and association knows how oddly powerful and compelling it is as a teaching tool. A few details:
- If no one can come up with an association, we just go on to the next word.
- We never do more than three words in one class period, usually only two, and end after five minutes.
- The process has a predictable sequence each day. First I tell the students what the word means, and then I ask them how they can remember what it means. Doing this creates a pleasant sharing of ideas in English as we get to know each other in the first weeks of the year before we go to all-L2 classes.
Let’s take a closer look at the word association sequence. As stated, each time we introduce a new word from the word wall, we say what it means (there is no need to write it on the board) and then we ask the class how we can remember what it means, as in:
Class, the next word that we want to learn today from the wall is les yeux. Les yeux means eyes. How can we remember what les yeux means?
When the class as a group chooses to remember that les yeux means eyes by making associations in their own minds and by expressing those associations out loud in the group in their own voices, they create a problem solving community.
When a student makes his suggestion, the instructor says:
Oh, class, Bryan said that we can remember that les yeux means eyes because of lazy eye!
By reacting in this way, she acknowledges Bryan and his immediate contribution to the group at the beginning of the class. The student is more important than the subject matter. This is part of the all-important process of personalizing the classroom every day by recognizing the child as a human being first before trying to teach him anything. Bryan is acknowledged for his intelligent and creative suggestion, expressed in his own voice, in linking les yeux to lazy eye.
Also, as soon as I accept Brian’s suggestion, I tell the class in L2 to applaud him. How many times would we ourselves have liked to come into class and receive a round of applause for something we thought of in the first week of school?
The teacher, like Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol, sends this message to her class when starting class:
I’m going to like this class! I like the ideas these kids are giving me!
All the ideas can’t be accepted, of course, so we reject some of the ideas, but always with lots of good will, a smile, and sometimes even that process of rejecting ideas can become pretty funny.
Starting a class with plenty of personal acknowledgement of how smart and creative kids are is good politics. Asking kids for help is always a good idea – it gets them involved. That is why the Jobs for Kids piece mentioned elsewhere in this book has such enormous power. When we say how funny their ideas are, we flatter them. Flattery gets us everywhere in comprehension based instruction.
The phrase “how can we remember” is of key importance when we work with our word walls. How can we remember it? We are becoming a team working together. Here we are all together, about to embark, after this brief period of word association work, into L2 for the rest of the class period, and the inquisitive messages from the instructor are:
How can we all work together?
What can I learn from you?
How smart you kids are!
Man, I could never have thought of that!
and the kids’ messages to the class and to the instructor are:
Look how smart we are!
You can learn from me!
I’m smart!
I can think of weird and crazy things to help the class!
There is a tonal difference here. This inclusion of the individual in the group, this attention to how they can help the larger group, this attention to the student as a person changes many of our students’ perceptions of what our classes are all about.
Of course, if we can remember to do it, we glance briefly with a knowing smile at the student who came up with the gesture or the word association each time it occurs in class. A further bond is built with that student when we remember to do that.
The revolutionary nature of this work CI can be seen in the Word Association activity, which is about forging bonds primarily. Before trying to connect with our kids in the language, we first connect with our students in a social way before we get into the harder challenges of connecting solely in the language after the first few weeks of the year,