My Experience as a Second Language Learner

Hola:

Lately, I have been thinking and talking a lot about other teachers. We teachers can be so rough on each other, and I say "we" because I am including myself in this. It almost reminds me of middle school sometimes when we find backhanded ways of knocking each other down to bring ourselves up or make ourselves feel better. We ALL have insecurities with regard to our teaching, and we always will. We are not perfect. However, I think we need to spend less time thinking about what other teachers are going to think about our students and more about what's best for our students.

When discussing communicative language teaching, one of the biggest questions I always hear (and ask myself) is "but am I preparing them for so-and-so's class?" or "are we preparing them for college?" This question is very valid, but how can our profession move toward communicative language teaching if everyone says that they're not going to do it because many other teachers do not? How are we going to get colleges on board with a communicative approach to language teaching (with the lower levels) and stop giving grammar entrance exams if we keep teaching that way because "the colleges expect it"?

The truth of the matter is that we are preparing our students for college and for other courses. When we teach communicatively, we are using the language for a purpose, and the students acquire more. There is no doubt in my mind about that. When we teach using paradigms that have no meaning, maybe it's cool for the students to see it, but we have to attach meaning to what we do if we want the students to actually be able to do something with the language.

I can say with full confidence that we are preparing students for college because I, myself, am an example of it. I was not lucky enough to start learning Spanish in middle school, so I really started formally learning the language in 9th grade.

Throughout the majority of my high school career, I was taught communicatively. I say majority because I can think of a few things that I was taught explicitly, but for the most part, any grammar practice was either done at home, done as a warm-up for the class, or not done at all. And I can say with great confidence that I did not acquire those structures like double object pronouns, the subjunctive, etc. until I started needing to use them for a purpose. That's just how language acquisition goes! We can be taught something explicitly and pass a test, but I can almost guarantee that those structures will not show up in our speech until we have had enough input on them/interaction with them.

Anyway, when I was in high school, we were almost always using the language for a purpose. We studied art, music, films, different foods, legends, etc. I rarely felt like I was learning language, but rather learning content in the language. I can still talk a lot about legends like "El callejón del beso," art that we studied, animals like "el colibrí abeja," films we studied, etc. from high school. There was so much meaning in all that we were doing that I will never forget it--nor will I forget the vocabulary and grammar that I acquired during that time.

When it came time for me to start applying for college, I chose Worcester State University, and I had to take a placement exam. The exam was pretty standard: grammar questions and a writing assignment. Even though I did not have a lot of explicit teaching, I did very well on that exam. As a freshman in college, I started in a 300 level course "Advanced Spanish Composition II." I was in a class with only one other freshman; the rest were juniors and seniors. I know I am a special case because I became a language teacher, but many of my friends placed out of a language at their colleges/universities, too, and they did not decide to become language teachers. All of this happened after 4 years. I cannot even begin to imagine where students would be if they were taught communicatively in every course from middle school to high school--or better yet, elementary school to high school.

Once I started college, by no means did I always have perfect grammar, but what I did have was the confidence to speak the language, and I learned so much as a result. Many of my classmates were afraid to speak in our conversation courses because they were insecure in their grammar (there were other factors for some people, of course). I truly believe this to be a result of grammar-focused classrooms. I also had a lot of knowledge of products, practices, and perspectives. I remember briefly studying "Las Meninas" in college and feeling like an expert because I had already studied it in high school. Knowing that I came from an amazing, communicative language program gave me the confidence and skills to be the Spanish speaker that I am today.

When we teach communicatively and focus on proficiency, it does not mean that we are not teaching grammar. Of course our students are picking up on grammar all the time; it just means that our focus is communication, not grammar practice. I, personally, want my students to have memories like I do of their language classrooms. I don't want them to be like "oh, remember how boring it was learning grammar and now we can't speak at all?" I have so many friends who can recite "o, as, a, amos, áis, an" or recite a dialogue that they memorized from high school, but they have no idea what any of it means. Language just doesn't work that way. We can have explicit knowledge of grammar rules, but until we really start using them for real communication, those structures really will not become part of our mental representation of language. I know that when I speak Spanish and English, I do not see a conjugation chart in my head; that's what I want for my students too.

I am so grateful for my experience as a language learner; I got so lucky in having language teachers who were knowledgeable about language acquisition in high school and college. Those teachers/professors truly changed my life, and I am now able to see that change in my students.

Timothy