Tasks

Hola amig@s:

One thing I learned this week--thanks to Tea with BVP again--is that it is possible for something to be partially communicative. It turns out that a lot of what I had been doing in my classroom was only partially communicative. This is not bad, but it's definitely not as great as being fully communicative.

According to Bill Van Patten, in order for something to be fully communicative, there must be a task. Sometimes, I thought things like "oh, the task is to better get to know each other," but I am not convinced that my students really bought into that. They were simply asking and answering questions to complete the activity.

So, I have been trying my hardest to create realistic tasks for my students to show them that we are using the language for a purpose. With my 7th graders, I showed them a video in which people in Spain were asked "What do you want to do with your life?" Since my students just learned how to express their age, this video was awesome because they listed the age of all the people interviewed.  First, I asked the students to watch the video and just look for the people's ages. Then, we watched the video, and I asked them to try to get as much as they could out of the responses the people gave.

Then, I asked the students--in Spanish--if the question seemed difficult for the children, then for the teens and then for the adults. Most of the children in the video answered quickly with their job that they wanted. The teens had a more difficult time choosing what they wanted to do. The adults had a very difficult time. One guy called the question "complicado" and another woman said "What do I want to do with my life?.....I want to know what I want to do with my life." She couldn't answer it.

The students picked up on this very easily. We then discussed why the question was easier for the younger kids versus the adults. The conversation was awesome, and it was all in Spanish! Booyah! I then asked them to answer "is the question difficult for you?" We looked at the percent who said yes versus those who said no, and compared that to the ages of the people in the video.

With my sixth graders, they are learning about important people and places in Mexico City, so I had them go around and interview each other about the place/person that they would want to see most. The students took tallies of the responses their classmates said. I then had them report how many people wanted to see each place, and then we calculated the percentage of students who wanted to see each place. (Ex. 14% of the students want to see El Zócalo, etc.) So, essentially, the task for the students isn't practicing the phrase "I want to see" but rather finding out how many people want to see each place/person so that we can see the most popular place/person. When we develop tasks like this, the students see a real purpose for the language as opposed to "I am asking people what they want to see and then doing nothing with it because my teacher really only wants me to practice the language."

Keep your fingers crossed for me that I can keep developing new tasks because I don't want it to always be the percentage! Otherwise, I worry that will start to lose its meaning too.

Timothy

IPAs

I have a huge gap in my assessments because I am lacking in interpersonal assessments (transferring information with another person or people). This is probably the most important skill when acquiring another language. After all, if you cant interact with someone, then what's the point of the language?!

In world language, we have what are called IPAs (don't get excited; there's no alcohol involved). Basically this means that you do an interpretive assignment (reading, listening), which leads to an interpersonal and then a presentational (speaking or writing but not interacting). I figured it was time for me to get my act together and start making more of these kinds of assessments, but a huge question has been raised for me, and I am hoping that my world language educators can help me out with this!

Based on feedback from students, the IPAs drive them crazy in the sense that they don't like doing the interpretive, interpersonal and then presentational back-to-back. They say it's tiring and it's just too much. Is it ridiculous to do the interpretive, teach a little, do the interpersonal, teach a bit more, and then do the presentational? I'm really not sure. I am trying it both ways. What do you think?

Although these assessments are super time consuming, I think that they are so much better than a test with a bunch of questions on it, which I used to give last year. And just giving a quiz on one concept isn't enough. As teachers, it's easy to think "I don't have time to do all these things in the classroom." However, it's so important for us to do what is best for our students, and take the time necessary to do so. Even though I have had to take a lot of time developing new stuff, I actually feel like it has made my classroom move much faster and more smoothly than last year. And, these assessments take about the same time--if not less time--to evaluate than the tests I used to give. I hope that, years from now, I am still able to reflect on my teaching and am willing to improve or replace old materials.

These assessments have also made me reflect a lot more on my teaching. When I give quizzes on one concept, the students often do very well and it looks like they are "getting it." But that is not really an accurate evaluation of a student's language acquisition. It just isn't. Unless we are giving them the opportunity to speak/write using open-ended assignments, how can we truly say that they can communicate in the target language? And how can we truly reflect on our own teaching if we aren't seeing the students use the language realistically?

Please let me know what you think about all this!

Timothy

Assessments

I have truly fallen in love with my job. I have spent so much time in the past few months trying to gather as much information as I can about language acquisition, assessments, etc. The great thing is that it doesn't feel like work. It's truly fascinating to me, and I love putting what I learn into practice.

I am very proud of the assessments that I give. I have worked very hard to make them as communicative as possible. For those of you who have taken a language, I am sure that you have seen the conjugation chart. (I dance, you dance, she dances, etc.) I have gotten rid of that on my assessments because it isn't very useful. I don't remember learning English that way. We acquire language through input--that is, interaction with the language; we do not acquire a language through explicit grammatical instruction. Teachers get frustrated that their students--after years of explicit instruction--are still not conjugating correctly. Why is that? Well, I think that there are many factors, and it depends on the student. It may have to do with that students' willingness to actively participate in the course, of course. But I think a huge part of it is that these "conjugations" have not become a part of the students' inner language. What I mean by inner language--which I got from Bill VanPatten--is what is in the students' heads and is natural to them. It is not just explicit grammatical knowledge, which is what that conjugation chart pretty much represents.  With explicit grammar instruction, students start to learn about the language as opposed to acquiring it. That's not really the point of a class unless you're teaching a linguistics course, which most of us are not.

So, back to my assessments. When I assess the students, even when I am giving a short quiz, I make it as communicative as possible. They have to answer questions about themselves, their classmates, me, etc. Why would I have them do a conjugation chart when I can see what they can do with the language by actually using it?

However, these quizzes are usually on one concept. That is SO unrealistic with language because none of us wake up in the morning and think "oh, I am only going to have to state what I have to do today." So, I always give the students an assessment that requires them to use multiple aspects of the language in a real way. This is where errors come in. Obviously, a quiz on one concept is much easier than a speaking assessment that requires them to use a lot of what they have (hopefully) acquired. However, I love these assessments because it really gives me a true understanding of what the students can communicate.

The truth of the matter is that I think we all--myself included--expect our students to do more with the language than their language proficiency really allows. If we are expecting first-year students to use a complete sentence accurately on everything, then we are expecting too much. And I am not saying that we should stop giving them tasks that require full sentences, but I am saying that we should adjust our expectations and assess their ability to communicate--not their ability to use full sentences.

I gave my sixth graders a writing assignment a few days ago, and it was amazing to see how willing they were to take risks. They were trying to form questions (many did it successfully!) and communicate using the little exposure they have had to the language. When I graded this, if they wrote something like "my family and I from Massachusetts," obviously they missed a verb, but I understood what they said, and I emphasized the importance of that. When I gave feedback, I did not criticize them for grammatical mistakes (because THAT is why students stop being willing to take risks in the language). Instead, I praised them for making their writing comprehensible, and I gave them tools to improve by suggesting phrases like "I am very funny" as opposed to just "I am funny." When there was something I could not understand, I underlined it, and I just said "I had trouble understanding this sentence. Could you clarify for me?" I don't want students to have the expectation that they speak perfectly because they will start to be afraid to speak the language, and that is what I believe teaching for accuracy does.

That's all fine and dandy. However, my problem this year has been with my quizzes. I was giving them these quizzes and giving them half a point for communication and half a point for accuracy. Okay, but then I'm contradicting myself. On my big assessments, I tell them to focus on communication, but then on these quizzes I grade partly for accuracy? That's stupid. I talked to my boss about it, and he put it in perspective when he said this: "you have to ask yourself what you are assessing. Are you assessing their ability to use the proper conjugations or are you assessing their ability to communicate?" That did it for me. I cannot be doing both if I want them to feel comfortable using the language. At the proficiency academy, I learned that a goal must contain a language function. My goal for the students should not and will not be "I can conjugate verbs." So, if my goal is "I can express such and such a thing," then shouldn't that also be my goal for the assessments I give? The answer is yes. No more grading for accuracy in my classroom. If they have had the right amount of input, and I don't force them into output before they are ready, they will communicate successfully. That is the sole purpose for language.

Communication Versus Accuracy

Hello, everyone!

We just got back from Costa Rica (which was an absolutely incredible experience), and one thing I took away from that is the true value of teaching for communication as opposed to teaching for grammatical perfection. Our students made many mistakes when they were speaking Spanish on the trip, but they made themselves understood. Isn't that the whole purpose of language? 

I've been listening to the podcast Tea with BVP--Tea with Bill Van Patten--and one thing that he has pointed out is that explicit grammar instruction is not what the students remember. They remember the language that they have TRULY used and acquired. When they are speaking, they don't think "oh, I just used the conditional tense, so now I have to use the imperfect subjunctive after my 'if clause.'" I think that that is so true. Our students use what has been real for them. He has also said that sometimes explicit grammar instruction can even hinder the students' language acquisition. I'm only six episodes in, but I am sure he will give me a lot more to talk about soon. 

The grammarian in me has a tough time with this, but it makes sense. If we are constantly correcting our students mid-sentence or expecting them to speak perfectly and remember every single detail of what we have taught them, then we won't be developing speakers of the language. Students are afraid to speak and take risks because they are afraid to make mistakes. Why are they afraid to make mistakes? Well, I have to say that I think it is because teachers focus on the grammar and not on the communication. Why are teachers giving quizzes on using the correct form of "the" (el, la, los, or las)? It just doesn't make sense to me. 

Last year, I remember marking students off when they would say "¿Ustedes salen de la escuela a las 2:05? Are you guys leaving school at 2:05?" instead of "¿Salen ustedes de la escuela..." I marked them off because they didn't put the subject after the verb when forming a question. Even native speakers say the first option, and the communicative goal WAS met. Another example: teachers--my former self included--grow so obsessed with teaching time the way it is in the textbook. We make them say "8 minus twenty" instead of "seven forty." I, personally, have never heard a native speaker use this (not saying that some don't), and if they say "seven forty," it's not wrong and it is MORE COMMON. Why do we do this to them? So sorry to my students from last year! 

I find myself struggling at times with certain things that are in the curriculum. I am finishing up talking about chores in preparation for a party with my 8th graders, but the students even keep saying "I don't do any of these things." It has been so hard to relate it to their lives. We have basically made a joke out of it by trying to guess who does what chore. It was successful, but I don't feel that there was much meaning behind it. One thing that I have found, though, is that many of the mistakes that I saw last year when I was a bit more traditional haven't happened this year. I have focused a lot on providing enough input before I ask the students to produce the language. I think this has caused their minds to just know what sounds right and what sounds wrong, and they have just naturally begun to produce the language based on what they've heard. 

I have so much more I want to say and discuss, so please comment! I just don't want the post to be too long. 

See ya next time, amigos. 

Timothy