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The Natural Way 1
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31 thoughts on “The Natural Way 1”
On the question of WHICH verbs to teach: What I have found to be true is that it doesn’t matter (if you have enough time–language takes a long time to acquire and school expectations are unrealistic).
Here’s how I know: I don’t teach a novel until the second semester. When the students open it, they can already read it–even though I have NOT specifically taught the verbs in the book. They are already familiar with most of the high-frequency verbs they encounter (in the Level 1 novels) and quickly become familiar with the few they don’t know.
I work exclusively in the past tenses with my kids in 5th-6th grade (3-4x/wk) but with present tense always present in conversation. The beginning novels are written in the present tense. The kids don’t balk at all when they see that. They understand everything even though they’ve never seen the actual word. Of course, they are responding to the root meaning of the verbs. It is a bit of a stretch for the first two chapters. We do a bit of concentrating on looking at the endings of the verbs to make sure we are translating the “true” meaning. Of course, my 4%ers are the first ones to NOTICE the difference in verb endings and bring it up right away. My spec ed/slow processors could give a “feather” and read for “basic” comprehension–just like they do in English. They get on board a little later, but they get on board. After that, it’s a piece of cake.
How can that be? Those high-frequency structures/words NATURALLY enter all interactions in the classroom EXACTLY BECAUSE they are high frequency structures/words. I’ve always been a bit surprised by that, but the logic of why that happens finally kabongs me in the head right now.
If I were wedded to a textbook and it’s exercises, those high-frequency structures would have a hard time getting to the ears and eyes of my students. With tprs/ci, it’s easy. Natural language (always comprehensible and slow enough to be comprehensible) is always present.
Do I work with sets of structures when I teach? Of course. I am convinced that because of that, there is likely a lot of “memory work” going on, masquerading as acquisition, making me feel like a decent teacher. Eventually, with or without my pounding on those structures, they will be acquired. Just got to have enough time and “compellingness”.
Jody, I’m so curious how you do past tense with your students. I feel strange doing PQA in the past tense. The way that makes most sense for me to use past tense is when we write the story after we create it. It feels weird to ask a story in the past tense because it’s happening before everyone’s eyes. I know this discussion has happened before on this blog, but I don’t know where.
Annemarie, Susie Gross has a great 3 part CD, where she PQA’s her heart out in the past. Maybe you can borrow it from someone.
I am conflicted about this, too. I find it so much more natural to do PQA in the present tense and then use a past tense for the reading. I also remember the discussion about doing it the other way around but it still never made sense to me.
Annemarie:
If the structure were “he/she/it/you (usted) ate quickly”, I might start out the pqa with “What did you eat this morning?”, “Did you eat quickly?”, “Did you eat slowly?”, etc. To class: What did she eat this morning?, “Did she eat ____ or ____?, etc. Feels very natural to me.
Another structure: “he/she/it/you (usted) went to school”. Questions: “How many people went to school yesterday?” “Did you go to this school or did you go to another school?”, “Did you go to school on the bus?” “Did you go to school with Justin Bieber or did you go to school with your mom?” “Did Sarah go to school on the bus?” blah, blah, blah.
Another structure: “he/she/it/you (usted) was/were absent”. “Who is absent from class today?” “Was anyone absent yesterday?” Were you absent yesterday?” “When was the last time you were absent?” “Was Jeremy absent yesterday?” “Why was Jeremy absent?” “Where did you go the day you were absent?”, blah, blah, blah
I find stories incredibly easy to do in the past. Pick name out of box. Child comes to front to sit on the chair. I say, “There was a boy.” And, we’re off. The PQA has provided a mountain of ideas. Dialogue within the story takes place in the present. We use lots of command forms in dialogue, also.
The conceptual internalization of the preterite and imperfect in Spanish is a long-term project for our students. 😀 I want them to hear them and see them continually from the very beginning.
This is very hard for most teachers to do if they, personally, don’t “own” the preterite and imperfect “feel” themselves. Lucky for me, Spanish television is free. I watch the news and at least one telenovela EVERY DAY. I credit my native-like fluency to watching comprehensible TV and reading for 30 years. Really.
I was, also, lucky enough to have a tprs co-worker at another grade level for several years. We met every week to discuss “everything”. We edited each other’s readings, discussed pqa questions, and resolved doubts about our own language “sticky points”. It was great! Of course, both of us are advanced, fluent Spanish speakers, so it’s time for precise fault finding and correction. With the internet, these kinds of relationships can now take place outside of school. What a blessing!
I, also, do readings in the past with my students. I know. It appears to run counter to others’ practices. All I can tell you is that it works for me. When we start the novels (which are in the present), I have been flabbergasted–truly–to note that the present tense is a total breeze for them at that point. They acquire it almost overnight AND they already have the dreaded imperfect and preterite in their “language gut”.
My coworker, who got my kids after they had me, will tell you that in all her years of teaching prior to working with my kids, she had NEVER before had students who had so naturally internalized the imperfect (and a lot of the preterite) and could use them without blinking or thinking. I have NEVER mentioned the words imperfect or preterite to my students, but they can still “do” them–recognizing subtle meaning and using them naturally. They quickly acquire the present tense so I don’t spend too much time pounding on it. It just gets added in. By the end of the time I see my students, the first person sing/plural (present) appears to be well on its way to being acquired. Third person sing/plural and Second/formal are easy for them. They respond to second/inf when I speak to them, but only a very few are producing it when they leave me. They use the “usted” form because that’s how I speak to them most of the time. I love it when a kid refers to me as “Usted”–for a million reasons.
The whole thing is so fluid (and keeps on happening after they leave me), it’s hard to say, “They are exactly HERE.”, on some sort of language continuum. They understand, speak, read and write at all different levels and breadths of acquisition from the very beginning. I just have to have faith that, if they keep going, they will acquire what they need–such a weird thought. Few of them will arrive at fluency because that will only be important to a few. All of them will acquire a great deal of structure and the ability to communicate in the TL. To what degree that will eventually happen is hard to predict since they leave me when they are still in the beginning stages of acquisition. So, I have faith and do my best.
I apologize for my long-winded blather. I hope it has explained my “how”. In the end, I don’t think there is any RIGHT way–except to understand that true acquisition is unconscious and to make sure our students receive enough repetitive, compelling (so they pay attention to it) input to make that happen.
Jody, Thank you for this thorough and very helpful response. The examples you gave were good ones. I often resort to Matava structures which are all in the present but I could easily put them in the past. I have exposed my 6,7, and 8th graders to 3 tenses (present, preterite and imperfect, and I suppose some subjunctive with commands.) I often PQA structures from a novel we’re reading, so I suppose I could put them in the past. Do you think it’s more important for students to hear the past tense first rather than see it written, therefore doing the aural in the past and written in the present?
This is embarrassing for me to say, being a Spanish teacher, but… I don’t find Univision or Gala to be that comprehensible. Sounds bad but…too fast for me, I have to turn closed captioning on but the captions don’t keep up with the talking. Only teaching lower levels, I can feel my Spanish slipping. I took my OPI when I came back from studying in Argentina for a summer and I got an advanced-low. I bet I would get intermediate-high now, maybe even mid. I’m planning on ordering some books in Spanish like Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code to help me keep my proficiency but I need to start getting some more auditory input on a regular basis as it’s embarrassing to be a Spanish teacher and to be afraid to speak to native speakers. I recently found out there’s a church in my area that has weekly service in Spanish, I’m thinking about going to help with my Spanish,
Chris, I think you address here something that we all too often forget when talking to people who have been out of school for a while: the “use-it=or-lose-it” factor.
No matter what method or approach we use, we shouldn’t be surprised that someone who took French/German/Spanish/Klingon or whatever in high school and has nothing to do with the language for twenty-five years would claim, “I took four years of Urdu in high school, and all I can say is ‘naan’ [bread].” That’s why attitude is so important to me. If our students enjoy the language and like it, they are more likely to continue to do something with it after high school.
I hope you are successful getting back into a Spanish-speaking environment. In addition, what about YouTube videos in Spanish? I imagine you can find them at all levels.
So true Robert. I’m always trying to find a balance between making sure things are enjoyable to them, and also requiring their participation. It’s a hard mix to master, perhaps impossible. Makes me think of Grant’s latest post about ‘unconditional teaching’. Also read a great Kohn article of that title this week, and it made me think about how I come off when a student disobeys the classroom rules.
It makes perfect sense. If language acquisition is about input, especially comprehensible input, when would you have had time to keep finding input for your own language development?
Check out any movies that you have at home on DVD. Many of them have Spanish audio tracks..that has really helped me!
with love,
Laurie
Chris I can set you up for some light reading in Spanish right now. Send me (benslavic@yahoo.com) your regular mail address and I will send it to Stephen Krashen who will send you some “crappy science fiction novels” right away. (He’s sending me some in French and offered some in Spanish but I can’t handle them yet). Then you send them or give them to someone. This is part of the bookmooch thing, but I don’t really get how it works yet. It’s not important right now. Let’s just start sending these books around in the group and see what happens. I realize now that I haven’t read a single French novel since graduate school because of my 35 years in teaching. In other words, I’ve been denied the pleasure of holding a real book and reading it in French, which is one of the main things that brought me into teaching in the first place, because of all the crap I had to do in schools during my career. Let’s cultivate this. Maybe we can learn to just sit at our desks and “Rock and Read”.
I only buy movies now that come with Spanish audio and have a nice collection–it really does help! I use the Disney/Pixar ones as a treat in class a few times a month and have the kids write down words they hear and know or can figure out.
I can’t believe that I used to read grammar books and dictionaries to help my proficiency.
If you have a NOOK or Kindle, etc. there are a lot of free books at Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/). Also check out public domain site like http://www.feedbooks.com/books/top?lang=es. Most of those titles are free too.
Someone said it already, but YouTube has all kinds of things, nature shows, Discovery Channel en español, etc.
I hadn’t realized how many resources there are out there until I started searching for things for my IB students to watch that they could mostly understand.
Good luck!
Hi Chris,
To add to the ideas shared already, I use an online site to practice my Chinese. (I find Chinese TV broadcasts often over my complete understanding, too, and I tested Advanced-Mid on the OPI.) The site I use is http://www.chinesepod.com. They have topically-specific, up-to-date, real-life stuff that keeps me up with culture and news as well as expanding my language comprehension. The lessons are graded for ability level too. I tell you this because the same company has spanishpod.com. I presume it’s as good a service as the Chinese site. I download audio & listen in the car on the way home from school.
Jody you made the point about having enough time and that does concern me with my admittedly ultra free form approach to targeting certain vocabulary, mainly verbs. But having enough time for what? Proving to some fool that we taught them that year and not in some other year?
I have to believe that what you say here is true:
…those high-frequency structures/words NATURALLY enter all interactions in the classroom EXACTLY BECAUSE they are high frequency structures/words. I’ve always been a bit surprised by that, but the logic of why that happens finally kabongs me in the head right now….
If that is not true, and if we really do need to make lists and align our target vocabulary objectives with a curriculum, then we can no longer call ourselves people who base our instruction on Dr. Krashen’s work. And if we don’t, nobody can. Echoing something Dr. Krashen said a few years ago, “What don’t they get about the word unconsious?”
Is it too much to suggest that we relax in our classrooms and let the natural order take over? Is that something that we could actually do? I don’t think so. The reaction to this post makes me doubt that there is any real buy in to Krashen’s message even among us. We remain teachers, planning, controlling, reacting to fearful top down orders that fly in the face of everything Krashen says.
And that in spite of what you say here, Jody:
…f I were wedded to a textbook and it’s exercises, those high-frequency structures would have a hard time getting to the ears and eyes of my students. With TPRS/CI, it’s easy….
I agree with you 100%. We are always in PROVE mode. I believe it actually shoves us into bad practices and fooling ourselves about what is truly happening in our classrooms. What we believe, and should do for best long-term language acquisition results, runs completely counter to most of what schools are about: not a pleasant battle for most teachers.
You have me doing some serious thinking now. I’m trying to figure out what direction to take in my Spanish I class. They’re expected to know a certain amount of “stuff” for next year.
I’ve noticed that the Matava scripts, if I were to use those exclusively, seem to contain a lot of out of bounds vocabulary and structures in the scripts, on top of the structures and student answers. What have you done to get around this?
PQA is whatever tense you happen to need. It’s very wide that way on tenses, but it is mostly in the present. Here is the link for stories and readings in terms of what tense to use, in my own opinion:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/11/on-use-of-tenses-in-stories-and-readings/
Going out of bounds is rare in Matava and Tripp scripts, which are very tight. I wouldn’t be promoting them if they caused problems with going out of bounds. People go out of bounds because they forget to include one of the target questions in every question they ask and when they forget to stay on script. Here is more on that topic, Chris:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/12/14/scripts-must-be-simple/
What I mean by I think they sometimes go out of bounds, is at least for my classes, the scripts include vocabulary or structures that aren’t part of the target structures that haven’t been taught yet.
For example, looking at the first script in Anne’s Vol. 1 scripts “An Important Test”, the target structures are:
-thinks
-an important script
-stay home
But on top of those structures, we also have:
-comes into her room
-you have to go to school
-I can’t. I am ____
-she is not really ____.
-I want to go to ____
-sees her mother. My mother is here. Her mother sees her.
Plus there would be all of the additional vocabulary from student responses. This is where I would run into problems, especially in my Exploratory classes, if I wanted to use some of these scripts. Any way around this?
Chris, That has also been my experience. Way too much unknown vocab/structures for my students–.5 and Level 1.
I have tried writing pre-stories (Matava style) with a few of the structures they need to do the stories: a whole lot of work just to get to the story, but it can be done.
Mostly, I just kind of gave up and searched for an easier story or simplified the heck out of one I wanted originally. If they aren’t ready for it, they’re not ready for it. Find something else or modify.
I just rewrite the stories (in my head, not in a plan book, which I admit I don’t keep) so that the structures they use are in bounds. I’ve found that almost all stories can be completely simplified. Here’s that story rewritten for the first week of school.
Maggie has a test. Her mother says, “School, Maggie!” Maggie says, “Oh, no! My stomach!” Mom says, “Stay home.” Maggie doesn’t want to stay home. She goes to Six Flags. Mom goes to Six Flags. Mom says, “And your stomach?” Maggie says, “No. I have a test.” Mom…
Kids can do a lot of acting and gesturing to fill in what’s not written, and you can accept the ideas that work with your level.
(Actually, this particular script works better later in the semester, partly because midterm tests are later, and partly because it doesn’t have the three locations or repetitions. It’s still a fun one though, and you can interview the student about which subject the test is in.)
Chris, if I could give a piece of advice, ditch the 3 location story idea for your exploratory classes. Go with one structure/verb, one student, for each day. Just PQA/PMS, create a little mini-scene with each student around that structure, and then type up a reading of it for the next class while adding details and doing all the other fun CI stuff. That’s pretty much what I do with 8 weeks, with maybe a really simple story or two like “Phone Call” thrown in there. Just an idea. But I really like Michele’s simplification idea above, nice way to pare it down.
https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/09/25/spanish-one-one-kid-one-structure-one-location-one-day/
More detail to what I’m talking about above, with some nice input by Nathan Black too.
Bingo, Jim. That’s it. I have done exploratory classes for 12 weeks with only the Word Wall up there as a source of PQA and Extended PQA in the form of little scenes. Keep it simple. Excellent. We don’t have to do stories with three locations. We never do anyway, right?
Thanks to all of you for the advice about the story scripts. I need to put up a word wall to start PQAing. I bought a nerf gun on Black Friday but haven’t put up a word wall yet.
I’m not sure you will get to this post at the very end of this long discussion. I was just wondering if I did anything wrong, because we are not supposed to do lists. I asked the students which animals they would like to draw (in the foreign language, which is English in our case) and they each picked an animal that we translated. Then I did some PQA about who would draw which animal. Then they drew them and cut them out and we stuck them on the wall for a big zoo. Next lesson I’m going to curcle questions about the zoo. “Does the polar bear live in Alaska or in Afrika? Does the shark eat the penguin? Does the giraffe live with the fish? Do you like frogs?” Etc. So far the kids (ten-year-olds) had lots and lots of fun, but essentially we were doing a list. I thought it was ok, because from now on, we’re going to use the animal words in stories. I don’t expect them to know them all perfectly, but I tried to expand their vocab by a list all in one go. Bad?
Oh and we might jump into a story about two of them at the zoo.
Not bad. Fantastic. You are doing comprehensible input and that is all that counts. You are not really making a list. You are using their naturally high interest in animals as a base for CI. That was a great move and great choice with the wall zoo – just brilliant! I bet any middle and elementary school teachers reading this will be doing a wall zoo next week. This is compelling to kids. First of all, their own animal is up there. They are just waiting for you to get to their animal! They may not say it but it is true. Somehow we have to make a category for this Wall Zoo idea. It really could be a curriculum for an entire year of TPRS. It could be as powerful for younger kids as CWB to start the year. Compelling input is key to what Krashen has been thinking about and talking about for the past five years at least. And this takes the kids right there. If you want, write up any details for us. I will just make a category for Wall Zoo, credit you, and tag it in the Beginning of the Year category. Note clearly here that, once those animals are in the zoo, you can ask anything about them, make up any stories about them – the possibilities for CI in your idea here are endless. Congratulations!
Oh, thanks. It feels good to hear that! I’ll let you know how it goes.
This Wall Zoo of yours is a total winner! May I add it to my list of beginning-the-year activities, along with CWB and OWI, that we use to PQA our way into their hearts (and set rules) before doing stories at the beginning of the year?