Myth #3...
Saying a word or phrase over and over and over again is the surest way to learn it.
I'd like to share a story from 2000 ( I think....) when I attended my first workshop with Susie Gross. It was the end of day two and we had been working with a select group of words for about 16 hours. For whatever reason, the group could NOT produce the phrase le vert d'eau (the glass of water ...please excuse any sp/agreement errors...I haven't used the phrase since...).
How hard could it be???????!!!!!!!!!!! We were ALL experienced language teachers. We had heard Susie use it over and over and over and over again. Someone suggested that we had not "acquired" the word because we really hadn't had to use it. We needed to say it. Over and over and over and over.
Susie said, "NO." The room got very quiet. "I don't believe in that any longer. I haven't used it often enough, comprehensibly enough for you all. That's all." I didn't believe her. I don't know if anyone in the room believed her.
And she began another story...which I don't remember at all...except that I do remember her somehow inserting "le vert d'eau" in there a bazillion times. Finally.......it clicked. And le vert d'eau was in our lexicon. Just like that. And it was still there the next morning. And it's still there a decade later. And I definitely don't go around saying it out loud. At all.
Then there is the word "escaparate" (shop window). I learned it in grade 9. I never said it out loud once in high school (although I really wanted to tee hee it's a fun word...escaparate! like pamplemousse!! ). I never used it in college. Then, when I was in Spain for a semester....there it was..in my brain...totally ready to use!!! Too bad I couldn't remember a single one of the question words.....which I KNOW I had to use over and over again in high school and college. In context. Still couldn't remember them....
Still....I spent many years creating activities which gave students plenty of opportunities to say things in Spanish. Games and role-plays and projects and skits and all kinds of well-conceived, well-written, well-rubricked, totally ineffective activities.....that did not help students to acquire any kind of language for the long run.
with love,
Laurie
I'd like to share a story from 2000 ( I think....) when I attended my first workshop with Susie Gross. It was the end of day two and we had been working with a select group of words for about 16 hours. For whatever reason, the group could NOT produce the phrase le vert d'eau (the glass of water ...please excuse any sp/agreement errors...I haven't used the phrase since...).
How hard could it be???????!!!!!!!!!!! We were ALL experienced language teachers. We had heard Susie use it over and over and over and over again. Someone suggested that we had not "acquired" the word because we really hadn't had to use it. We needed to say it. Over and over and over and over.
Susie said, "NO." The room got very quiet. "I don't believe in that any longer. I haven't used it often enough, comprehensibly enough for you all. That's all." I didn't believe her. I don't know if anyone in the room believed her.
And she began another story...which I don't remember at all...except that I do remember her somehow inserting "le vert d'eau" in there a bazillion times. Finally.......it clicked. And le vert d'eau was in our lexicon. Just like that. And it was still there the next morning. And it's still there a decade later. And I definitely don't go around saying it out loud. At all.
Then there is the word "escaparate" (shop window). I learned it in grade 9. I never said it out loud once in high school (although I really wanted to tee hee it's a fun word...escaparate! like pamplemousse!! ). I never used it in college. Then, when I was in Spain for a semester....there it was..in my brain...totally ready to use!!! Too bad I couldn't remember a single one of the question words.....which I KNOW I had to use over and over again in high school and college. In context. Still couldn't remember them....
Still....I spent many years creating activities which gave students plenty of opportunities to say things in Spanish. Games and role-plays and projects and skits and all kinds of well-conceived, well-written, well-rubricked, totally ineffective activities.....that did not help students to acquire any kind of language for the long run.
with love,
Laurie
I got this again today. I wrote about our final on Ben's blog today--the kids held a ten-year reunion in my room, telling their peers about their lives after high school. Two things struck me: first, how much they could say. I'm afraid that if I base it on how much they can say, and how fast, they're all going to get A's. (Afraid only because there is suspicion of teachers whose kids get A's on the finals...) They really went to town on details about everything they've been doing and what they have accomplished. The other thing that struck me was that I introduced a few time expressions ("X amount of time after I had y'd") over the last two weeks. With those up on the board and inserted into all the readings and my PQA and our stories, I was really expecting them to use the expressions correctly today. But only a few of the kids had had the opportunity to comprehend them more than a handful of times. And only a few of the kids therefore got the expressions right. They missed the genitive part of the structure, and they missed a weird little question word that is part of the structure. But they totally got the part about using perfective verbs in the past tense. So what I realize again is that no, they can't study in order to be able to use this fluently. They can only hear it hundreds of times, and when they have acquired it, they will use it correctly. Duh. I'm so glad I forgot to add it to the rubric as I'd intended.
Reply to this
I love the reunion idea and I will definitely be borrowing that!!! What a perfect example with those time expressions. The idea that "if we presented it, then they should get it" is so pervasive in our minds that we aren't even aware of how deep it has settled into our pedagogical bones. Hopefully in the six years I have left in the classroom I'll excavate more and more of it!!
with love,
Laurie
Reply to this