In our school, we have a class before school officially starts one day a week that is supposed to be all touchy feely. It's the class where we talk about bullying and feelings... I have a group of girls that I don't teach and only see for 15 minutes maybe once a week. Hard to get really close to them under those circumstances, but I digress...
Today, we were having a book talk and a girl who is taking French from another teacher asked me for help. She said that she's just not getting it and her word order is always messed up and she just feels like a failure because she has an 80%. I can certainly feel for her! I was exactly that way in high school. French was my favorite class, but my lowest grade.
Our conversation spread throughout the room as other students joined in in their hatred of language. It made me so sad. I tried to tell them that they've only had the language for maybe 2 years. And of those two years, they were only exposed to the language for maybe 50 minutes a day. I tried to tell them that there's no way they can be fluent at this point and the best they can do is communicate using whatever vocabulary they have and using gestures to help them get their point across. They are so afraid! Especially those Type A students who are used to being perfect. I really think that this is where TPRS comes in. We don't expect them to be perfect. We don't grade them on being perfect. We focus on how much they DO know instead of what they don't. How do I share my feelings with these students or my colleagues without alienating them? It all goes back to the standards we're trying to teach. Are we teaching for grammar or are we teaching for communication? If we're teaching for communication...should we count them off if they make a mistake, but they were able to communicate their thoughts and feelings?? It's a whole can of worms... and I don't have the balls that Ben Slavic does (literally and figuratively) to step out in front of the firing squad.
I would say, "No," we should not count off if they communicate but make a mistake. Real life encourages this in language learning, so why shouldn't we reward it too?
ReplyDeleteIf I go to a restaurant in Buenos Aires and say, "Yo quiaro comir [should be quiero comer] una empanda [should be empanada]," the server will understand and reward me with a delicious empanada. He may ask me to repeat it once for him, but the message will be received. Why should I not reward my students with grades for communication, the same way?
I took some time focusing on some verbs and their opposites about a month ago, and on a quiz I asked for the opposite of "Se va" [He leaves]. I was looking for "Se queda" [He stays] but a few kids wrote, cleverly, "No se va." And I just could not justify telling them that this was incorrect. In real life, being creative like this is a great skill in a second language, and is rewarded. I want to reward communication in my classroom just the same.
Imagine a child asking daddy for a foon to eat her breakfast with. Dad gets pissed because the child can't say spoon and lets the child know that she will be given a spoon when she damn well can say spoon and not before! That is what we do with these kids when we find fault with their language production. In the first case, they don't get the cereal; in the second, they don't get the grade they want. Kids who starve give up, either way.
ReplyDeleteI agree! So much! But I just can't get through to some of those teachers. I mean, it comes down to a difference in language learning philosophy. What are we preparing them for? Are we preparing them to be able to travel and communicate and be worldly?? Or are we preparing them to be able to write long essays in perfect French?
ReplyDeleteWhat are we preparing them for? If the suicide and binge drinking statistics of 18 year old kids in the United States is any indication, we're preparing them for lives in which they want to avoid how badly they feel about not measuring up in high school.
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