I confessed in the previous post that I don't personally care for role-playing and therefore don't tend to use them in my language teaching. It occurred to me that I might elaborate more on that, and my preferred alternative.
My aversion to role-play transcends language. I am uncomfortable doing improv, and I don't relate very naturally in forced perspective taking, even with children (so if a child hands me a figure and wants me to engage in conversation with it and other figures, I basically panic). It just feels so awkward. Other people excel at improv and are great at that kind of interaction. I'm not, and that's in my first language. Trying that activity in a second language is layering on additional stress. There are probably extroverted language learners out there who would shine in that circumstance, and/or instructors who could manage the activity deftly (more power to them), but as it's not in my nature and in case anyone in the room is as uncomfortable or anxious about role-playing as I would be in their place, I usually steer clear. Aside from the affective filter, the other reason I might balk at role-plays is that they often prompt developmentally inappropriate/unrealistic output. In one textbook I'm familiar with, within the first few pages of the first chapter (mind you, this is Introductory Spanish), students are asked to role-play registering for classes at the university registrar's office in a Spanish-speaking country. As novice language learners, even the student role of that dyad is intimidating enough, but asking a college student to take the perspective and language production of a university official seems ludicrous. Neither in their L2 knowledge nor their life experience do they have the background to play that part. One might argue, "But the textbook isn't expecting the students to have a completely native-like conversation, just practice asking and answering personal information," to which I would respond, "Sure, so why the role-play?" Why create a fake context to have students ask/answer personal questions, when there's a perfectly legitimate real context of the classroom in which people might be interested in their classmates? Additional hypothetical arguments include "But role-plays are more fun than just asking each other questions!" to which I will refer back to my original point about anxiety. Also, while I'm sure there are fun and silly combinations for role-playing, being imaginary does not necessarily make it more fun. Who would argue that pretending to be a registrar office secretary is especially exciting just because it's fake? Getting to know people for real can also be nice (awwww...) Finally, role-playing advocates may counter, "But students need to know how to _____. How will they know how to _____ if they do not practice _____ing in a role-play?" Examples of _____ (based on my perusal of textbooks) include: ordering food at a restaurant, buying clothing at a store, buying a plane/train ticket, reserving a hotel, etc. I think BVP would argue (I seem to recall hearing this argument on an episode of Tea with BVP?) that role-play doesn't really prepare students to do those things in the first place, since the contexts (here we go again) of those actions are unpredictable. Hence, the students should prepare for language use in general, not practice performing a particular function, and that students with plenty of communicative input and interaction will be able to navigate their way through those situations equally well. I'm inclined (again, perhaps selfishly) to agree. BUT if there is situation-specific vocabulary or form of address or common chunks of language that just don't occur naturally in the classroom (drumroll...) I have an alternative: dialogue. I am perfectly comfortable building dialogue into a narrative. We really need to be exposed to buying train tickets? Ok, let's weave a story where a person needs a train ticket. Why does s/he need a ticket? For a daily commute or a vacation? Did s/he get to the station in plenty of time or in a rush because the alarm didn't go off at the right time? Is there a problem with the ticket machine, is someone ahead in the line making a scene, have the tickets just sold out? That, to me anyway, is more interesting (and certainly involves more substantial and elaborate input) than breaking into pairs for two minutes to ask personal questions while imagining, but not really, that one is supposed to act like they sell tickets at a train station (or work at a Spanish university registrar's office). We can sit and park for a few minutes on the conversation between the characters even, if it needs more exposure. How do you [student] ask for a train ticket? Answers ranging from: "Can I have a ticket to XYZ please" to "One to XYZ" [real answer: in NJ at least, from the machine, to avoid human contact] But there's a problem, at least according to BVP: stories do not have a clear communicative purpose that is either psychosocial or cognitive-informational (p.71). So is my narrative alternative not "communication" any more than a role-play is? I... have thoughts about that. That I'll have to get to in a separate post.
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I was graciously loaned a copy of Bill VanPatten's While we're on the topic: BVP on language, acquiition, and classroom practice, which describes and advocates for communicative language teaching. I read it straight through, but I'm working through it again to take down my thoughts, reflecting on it piece by piece. CLT Principle 1: Teaching communicatively implies a definition of communicationI agree with the desirability of having a definition of communication, though I'm not quite convinced of the necessity of all of the parts provided in the book: "Communication is the expression, interpretation, and sometimes negotiation of meaning with a purpose in a given context. What's more, communication is also purposeful" (p.3 and over and over throughout the book in slightly varying iterations) It seems to me that it could be shortened to "the purposeful exchange of meaning." Exchange, to me anyway, can cover all the same bases. It implies multiple interlocutors, one who provides (expression) and one who receives (interpretation) meaning. If the exchange isn't successful, then negotiation would be required, but that is still part of the exchange process.
I'm not yet convinced on the necessity of "context." It may be an important determiner of appropriate communication, but I'm not sure it needs to be in the definition itself. Does language cease to be communication in a different context? Maybe ceases to be appropriate. BVP mentions role-plays, and argues that they are not communicative, because they ignore the real context of the classroom. So it seems that, to him, language does cease to be communication if not in its actual context. As someone personally uncomfortable engaging in (and therefore instructing students to do) role-plays, I appreciate the idea that we don't have to force ourselves to pretend the language classroom is something (somewhere? grocery store, train station, admissions office, etc) it's not. So, perhaps self-servingly, I am inclined to agree. Put another way, is the language produced between the actors during a play "communication"? I specifically say "between the actors," because it may be communicating meaning to the audience, but that's not what I mean. For one, it's scripted, so if anything it's pretending to be communication, but isn't really. But a play would be more akin to students reading dialogues (I have no qualms saying that is not communication). How about improv? That also creates fake contexts. Are the improv actors communicating or not during a sketch? They're reacting to each other, so there must be an exchange of meaning. But the purpose is different, I suppose--to entertain an audience, while role-plays are often just between the students (and if the instructor is watching, it's not to derive entertainment but to evaluate). So if the purpose of the role-play is just to practice the language of a situation (and/or be evaluated by an instructor), that is not sufficient to be communication? BVP brings up self-talk (p.11), but doesn't come to any conclusions on whether it counts as communication. I'm talking to myself quite a bit as I write this. Am I or am I not communicating with myself? He says self-talk isn't language "practice," but what if I rehearse what I might say before making a phone call (which I may sometimes be known to do)? I'd love to say I've made up my mind one way or the other, but maybe I have to let it simmer a bit more... I haven't yet delved into my thoughts on "purpose." I agree that purpose is necessary, but I'm still working out how I feel about the definition. More on that in a separate post. My Researchgate account notified me of a new article I might be interested in, and boy howdy was it right.
Basically, they measured how much participants' pupils dilated when they read neutral vs. negatively charged sentences in either the native language (Spanish) or the L2 (English). Unsurprisingly, but still interesting, they found that the magnitude of difference between neutral and negative sentences was larger for those read in the native language, i.e. the emotional impact was greater. This is not a literature I am familiar with, but how interesting and what potential for replication and exploration. The authors propose a possible explanation being the distanced, formal, academic learning experience of acquiring an L2. My immediate thought goes to testing this with students who've done extensive study abroad. Is the L2 doomed (ok, that might be a bit much) to be more emotionally distant, or does further experience in a more naturalistic context make up the difference? How about heritage languages? Does an L2 learned in a majority language context have more emotional connection? Can the heritage L1 in an L2-dominant bilingual lose emotional connection?The study looked at neutral vs. emotionally negative sentences, but is there a difference for positively charged sentences? The introduction also mentions "taboo words." I'd love to see the differential impact of swearing (hearing and/or saying) in the L1 vs. L2. This would also be a great addition to a course comparing first- and second-language learning or bilingualism more generally. The topic is accessible and makes for an easy hook into discussion incorporating personal experience. Though the specific methodology (eyetracking) would be beyond the capabilities of student pilot projects, it would be relatively straightforward to modify, and the participant groups and stimuli are open to myriad combinations. Reference: Iacozza, S., Costa, A., and Duñabeitia, J.A. (2017). What do your eyes reveal about your foreign language? Reading emotional sentences in a native and foreign language. PLoS ONE, 12(10), 1-10. I don't remember the first time I came across the TED Talk on power poses, but I admit to having thought about it recurrently in relevant life situations ever since, prepping before exams or interviews or presentations by striking an expansive stance. I even directed my students in Expository Writing to stand up before their high-stakes in-class writing exam and pose confidently before sitting down to begin. The claims seemed a little flashy, but I figured there was no harm done. And maybe even if the effect itself is overstated, the placebo effect of doing the poses for the purposes of confidence building might increase confidence through self-determination. So the special issue of Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology let the wind out of my sails a bit. Interestingly, the issue is composed of preregistered contributions (which I hadn't heard of before), where the authors proposed a study to be included and were peer-reviewed before ever beginning the research. Being committed to the journal before the experiment meant that null results wouldn't go in the file drawer. And null results were a lot of what was found. Womp womp...
The one that especially caught my eye was Keller, Johnson, and Harder (2017, pp.107-122) on whether knowing the purpose of power poses (as I did when attempting them and as my Expos students did, because I told them why I was making them stand funny before their writing test) changes the outcome--either for the worse or the better. And they found it did neither. And none of the poses (power or otherwise) impacted the results either. Posing confidently didn't significantly impact behavior, and even being told "this pose will make you more confident" didn't make a difference relative to the people who weren't told the purpose of the poses. Placebo fail. I wonder if more journals will move to the preregistration special issue format. There are some areas within bilingualism research that could probably benefit from this approach. In the meantime, I guess I won't bother advising my students to strike a power pose before exams. But for myself (long before learning of the null literature), the act of standing or sitting expansively has made me chuckle, enough to ease my nerves, which might be benefit enough not to scrap the practice entirely. I came across this article on dual-language education in D.C. a few weeks ago, and it reminded me of a presentation by Amelia Tseng I saw at a conference this past Spring, the 4th Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language. The article brought up some of the same issues as the talk, including the changing demographics of neighborhoods with dual-language or Spanish immersion schools, and how the Hispanic populations are being displaced, therefore losing access to the programs.
Both the talk and the article make me think of other dual-language programs I've heard or read about. I remember learning about the HoLa dual-language charter school in Hoboken, NJ from Jennifer Austin, who is also a trustee on their board. Though Hoboken has an ample population of Hispanic immigrants who could benefit from enrollment in the program, the school struggles to get them to apply, so they fall short of the 50/50 split of native English/native Spanish that dual-immersion schools (like Oyster-Adams in the article) maintain. I've looked at some of the websites for dual-language programs in Minnesota, of which there are a pleasantly surprising amount. Windom in Minneapolis tries to keep a balance, though I couldn't track down a mention of how. The website for Northfield's Compañeros program specifically mentions creating a lottery if necessary to "ensure a balance of native English and native Spanish speakers." On the other hand, the Moorhead Spanish Immersion program specifically excludes native Spanish speaking students, though for the life of me I can't figure out why. There seem to be a couple not necessarily opposing aims, but aims that don't entirely align with each other. On the one hand, dual-language education allows non-native English speaking students to learn important academic content in their native language while they also learn English. On the other hand, dual-language programs provide the opportunity for native English speaking children to become bilingual in a way that formal L2 middle and high school classes cannot. I am in support of both of these outcomes. I identify with the latter from my own upbringing, and I understand the importance of the former, both for academic and cultural reasons. A problem arises, of course, when dual-language education loses touch with heritage language maintenance goals and becomes primarily a driver of middle class white economic opportunity. Therefore, I feel conflicted. I'd love for my kids some day to be able to attend any kind of immersion school. My preference would be Spanish, for obvious reasons, and dual-immersion, for the diversity in cultural and linguistic exposure. But articles like the one above, and my anecdotal knowledge of other schools, activate a sense of preemptive guilt that I'd then be contributing to the displacement problem. Ideally, we continue to extend and grow these programs, so that everyone interested in or benefiting from bilingual ed (which c'mon, would be everyone, right? we need a lot more multiculturalism and multilingualism in the U.S.) would have the space and resources to pursue it. A science piece from the New York Times a week ago describes research recently published (yay, open access!) by PLOS One on how exercise improves L2 learning, so of course it caught my eye.
In short, students learned new L2 vocabulary words in one of two conditions: sitting at a desk (control) or pedaling on a stationary bike (experimental). There may have been some methodological details lost in translation to news report. The NYT write-up makes it seem like the participants biked for 20 minutes before the lessons and then through the lesson itself. But in reading the methods section of the article itself, the authors say participants "pedaled... for two minutes... as a warm up activity" 20 minutes before the learning phase, which doesn't sound like as much pre-learning exercise. In discussing the results, the NYT article correctly points out the exercising group "performed better" on vocabulary recognition ("does this picture match the L2 word?") and semantic judgment ("does this L2 sentence make sense?") tasks, but they didn't mention that they were better on both accuracy and response time, which is interesting. Also of note, specifically for the semantic judgment task, the response times shrank more over time for the exercise than the sedentary group, which to me suggests an improvement in automaticity. In addition to the discussion section, where the authors consider the effects of exercise on brain plasticity or increase certain brain chemicals that facilitate learning, the NYT comments section provides some insightful thoughts as to the mechanism of this effect. Perhaps exercise provides desirable stress, which prompts deeper memory traces. Interestingly, there were competing theories that the exercise (1) allows one to focus more, or (2) distracts the conscious focus from the lesson, allowing subconscious processes to take over. This kind of study of course prompts many more questions than it answers. Is it necessary to be exercising during the learning, or would it be as effective to be active adjacent to the learning (e.g. would the walk across campus to class count)? What's the requisite intensity to see benefits? How does the effect change if the activity is repetitive (biking/walking) vs. something that would require more attention (e.g. a dance class, yoga)? Does the benefit extend from receptive to productive skills? Should we start having class meetings at the gym? Additionally, especially given the shortcomings of the NYT write-up in relation to the full article, the teacher in me thinks this would be a fitting component to a course on scientific literacy in regards to language learning. I've already developed a sample syllabus for a prospective course on Bilingualism in the News, which looks at the way bilingualism is presented in popular media, comparing the news coverage of research to the research articles themselves. This article would make a great addition to a companion course: SLA in the News. Are these findings a reason to acquiesce to student pleas to "have class outside"? Would they still be interested if the stipulation was they'd have to walk laps or do aerobics instead of lounging in the grass? Who's up for bootcamp language learning? Burn calories and learn Spanish, win-win! I'm so conflicted about this post shared by AATSP recently. I agree with much of what Kauffman is saying here by way of reasoning (reading over flashcards for language learning) but I disagree w/the conclusion ("memory is not that big a factor in language acquisition"). I'm all for encouraging pleasure reading/listening and forgetting (or at least downplaying) flashcards, but rejecting "memory," and by extension spaced repetition, seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I've written before about my opinion that language is spaced repetition and how that can translate into the language classroom. Reading/listening is in itself providing spaced repetition, as words reoccur within and across texts--that's spacing--and every time words are correctly processed and comprehended in context, that's a repetition. Restricting the interpretation of spaced repetition to essentially flashcards organized with a computer algorithm (as fancy as the algorithm may be, for instance the half-life regression Duolingo designed to improve their content cycling) and then rejecting it because flashcards are boring or overwhelming seems a bit straw-man. Something about the headline and subheading of the piece rubbed me the wrong way, and it wasn't until the last paragraph that I understood why. Kauffman ends the piece by saying reading/listening will serve him better in learning new languages "than any deliberate memorization." Perhaps in an attempt to find a pithy tag-line, there is a conflation of memory with memorization. My sense of the argument greatly improves if I imagine the latter in place of the former, e.g. "I feel increasingly that memorization is not that big a factor in language acquisition." That's an argument I can get behind. Cool short video about simultaneous interpretation and how complex a task it is. It reminds me of a question I remember getting (that I imagine other people get) when telling friends/relatives I was majoring in a foreign language: "So what are you going to do with that, interpret?" No, well-meaning friends and relatives, interpretation is a whole separate skill set from knowing more than one language. The only (sporadic) interpreting work I've ever done was all for parent/teacher conferences when I worked in the bilingual literacy program of a Minneapolis elementary/middle school. With little to no training, each semester (I think) for one afternoon and the next full day, all the bilingual teachers and associate educators in the building ran around with walkie talkies. I noticed that teachers would rattle off for over a minute if given a chance, then turn to me expectantly like I was supposed to remember everything that was said. So I started (pseudo)interrupting every time they took a breath to break what they were saying into phrases instead of paragraphs. That's the closest to simultaneous interpretation I've gotten. I always ended those days with a headache; any kind of interpretation is mentally exhausting work.
I love the roundabout ways I come across language learning articles. This blog post was shared by the Linguist List facebook page, which normally posts more formal information like conference calls and job listings. The blog itself is about the gap in difficulty between having a conversation with a native speaker of the L2 one is studying and being able to understand native speakers of the L2 speaking amongst themselves. The site appears to be created by someone whose primary background is in math, so the author takes a numerical approach. These were the passages I thought were really interesting (emphasis added): It doesn’t matter if you’re looking at English or French or Japanese — every natural language follows a power law distribution, which means that the frequency of every word is inversely proportional to its rank in the frequency table. In other words, the 1000th most common word appears twice as often as the 2000th most common word, and four times as often as the 4000th most common word, and so on. This is the hard part about focusing strictly on the frequency of the word when creating a curriculum or assessing how many words to teach to reach a certain level of fluency. Function words compose so much of our language but convey relatively little content, so to say that with a few hundred words a person can understand "the majority" of words in use doesn't necessarily mean they could understand whole passages.
I still advocate emphasizing high-frequency words at beginning stages of learning, especially common verbs, at least in a language like Spanish where verbs communicate so much meaning and cognates and proper nouns work to fill in the blanks. But this post is good to share with intermediate level students who may get discouraged or not understand the paradox of continuing to progress while feeling like they've plateaued. I also think it underscores the importance of literacy and encouraging copious amounts of reading and listening--as words get rarer, only by increasing the exposure to input will students accumulate the repetitions necessary to acquire more advanced vocabulary. It may be tempting to suggest targeted vocabulary practice, but without contextualized presentation, we lose out on the collocations and subtle shades of meaning that would go further in increasing comprehension of natural conversation. It's rare that I read an article on language acquisition/learning/teaching where I agree with it so completely that I don't think something has been misinterpreted or misrepresented. This short article is one of those occasions.
The "little kids are natural language learners" trope is so immediately accepted that we don't stop to consider that there are different ways of being exposed to or taught a language. Early exposure is great if it's natural and immersive. "Traditional" language classes trying to teach isolated vocabulary aren't going to get very far at that age, and the students don't have the metacognitive maturity to handle grammatical explanations. If the latter is all that's available, then older children will pick up the formal lessons more efficiently than elementary-age. Which isn't to say that early formal lessons are worthless, but their worth might be more in exposure to positive multilingual representations rather than in acquired linguistic competence. The flipside of this, in my opinion (something the article doesn't get into), is that total immersion is primarily appropriate with very young learners, who are more accustomed to and unfazed by incomprehensible input. With the development of cognitive maturity and megacognitive awareness, in older children and adult learners, an insistence on complete immersion with no concrete establishment of meaning or comprehension checking can be intensely stressful. As I discuss in an earlier post, this is another reason I believe in the (minimal but) strategic use of the L1 in the classroom. What works with some age groups and in some contexts doesn't necessarily translate (no pun intended) to other age groups and contexts, so in the same way that a formal language lesson has little place with kindergarteners, it may not be optimal to try to recreate an immersive environment with adults. |
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June 2019
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