In the Hawaiian classes I've been observing (and learning Hawaiian from), there are about six to ten undergrads who already speak some Hawaiian. Most of them picked it up from childhood school activities (like learning numbers), and some had more immersive school experiences. Our kumu (teacher) has been using comprehension-based approaches in our Hawaiian 101 course this semester. He added some element for everyone (I don't believe he did this for the heritage speakers specifically): he wrote on the board new rejoinders, numbers, qualifiers like "(very/somewhat) warm/cold", and other responses for us to shout out at any time during class discussions and tournaments (like our card game, "War" played in front of the class). When he calls for volunteers to play Lono-Mauli-Pau (rock-paper-scissors), he asks for volunteers, and it's usually the heritage speakers who run up first. The contestants introduce themselves to each other in Hawaiian, the whole class counts, shouts Lono-Mauli-Pau, and the winner shouts "[my neighborhood] is the best!!" The kumu glosses any new words or phrases on the board, and the activity generally keeps vocab sheltered and repeating. I see how the whole class benefits from this: (1) the heritage speakers self-select to serve as secondary discussion and activity leaders (and input-providers for everyone else), (2) the class learns their names, home neighborhoods, and other local culture tied directly to them, and (3) the fun energy and discussion content are coming from more than just the teacher; student buy-in is coming from a reliable portion of the class. There's more going on, but these are the top three observations I find most relevant here. It appears to be at least somewhat empowering for the heritage speakers themselves to have a space where their voice is important and useful for everyone in the room.
0 Comments
Heritage and native speakers are fequently placed into novice-level language classes. This can be motivated by administrators' expectations of lock-step textbook learning of linguistic rules as revealed in a discreet-item placement exam--showing the learner doesn't yet know the program's grade-level sounds, grammar, and specific vocabulary. Intro-level placement can also be motivated by particular aspects of proficiency, like the person can understand daily conversation just fine but they can't read or write, or speak on topics covered in the program's classes. Intro-level teachers who teach for proficiency often point out that when they speak at the levels of their true-beginning-level learners in the target language, for example, "What (pause and point to the board) do you (pause and point) like (pause and point) to do (pause and point) on Saturday (pause and point) mornings (pause and point)?" the heritage/native speaking students start to show an attitude. What is this attitude, we might wonder. I'm going to share a story about when I found myself in similar shoes. I hope as you read this, a certain heritage perspective will become obvious and clear. I'll end with notes for a solution, from a Hawaiian class where I've seen heritage learners integrated very well into novice-level discussions and activities.
Quick story about me. I finished my Masters degree at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, in 2011. At the start of my third semester there, I, along with a classmate from New Zealand and another from Canada (English was our first and primary language), were called into the International Students Office. The office secretary informed us: "All international students are required to complete an ESL course." We protested: "That requirement is for students who don't already speak English...our classmates from Thailand, Japan, and Korea." She was firm, repeated the rule about ALL international students needing to finish the ESL requirement, and she told us the room and time to attend. The class would be around two hours long (it may have been three, but it's been years since already, so I'm going to play it safe and say it was two hours). So we went. A local Chinese teacher (there is nothing wrong with a non-native teacher, in my opinion, but I believe her being non-native did influence our interaction in this particular story) presented English listening activities and discussion topics around the ACTFL Intermediate-mid to Advanced-low levels. Besides us three, everyone else in the class was was from East and Southeast Asia. I remember sitting for a while, and feeling very bored. I remember the teacher looking around the room, but avoiding eye contact with us native speakers. About half-way through the class, the teacher passed out a question sheet, and then played a recording. We were asked to listen three times to the recording and use the information to answer the questions. The recording was confusing, and went something like this, an elderly British man saying: "For this holiday, we are going to need to bring an umbrella, a jacket, and other warm clothes. We plan to visit [place X], [place Y], and [place Z]." And it ended a woman saying something like, "Nothing leaves a person more tired than a vacation!" The teacher read aloud to some of the higher-order thinking questions, asking us to infer from the details why the woman at the end said that. The other students seemed like a shy bunch, so I raised my hand. The teacher showed a sudden combination of surprise and disappointment--she made a kind of slouching down movement--as she called on me. I answered in an American-college-style, higher-order thinking-style, musing on hypotheticals-style (so intentionally asinine-style) exploration of the woman's attitude toward travel and the relevance and irrelevance of the details offered by the man. I talked for two to three minutes (it may have been five). The teacher nodded and said, "Oh. Thank you," and then moved on to another activity. At the end of the class, the three of us spoke with her. She said, "You don't need to be here. Write your names here, and I'll mark you as present for the semester." And that was the end of that. So I've been a native speaker in a room full of "learners" (I put that in quotes because everyone is a learner throughout their lifetime, but everyone is also many identities), and I understand the frustration and boredom of misplaced students. But what about our first question about heritage learners placed in intro-level classes? I'll write that up on this post, here. A question about how to organize whole-class discussions, tasks, & activities in preparation for IPAs/performance-based assessments came up in an intermediate teaching Facebook group. I will put my thoughts here, for posterity (Facebook posts get buried fast):
In my experience with university students using performance-based assessments, the classroom experience leading up to the assessment should treat the assessment goals as a "pole" to keep coming back to, and extending from, instead of a "container" to always stay within and never stray from. Straying is good. So if my performance-based assessment requires that learners use the target language to request food in a restaurant, then we whole-class discussions like PictureTalk, PQA, Story-asking, Read & Discuss, etc. should all contain many reps of the phrases needed for the assessment. However, these whole-class discussions also contain whatever else the students find interesting that can remotely tie to the general topic of restaurants. This way, they (1) get the input reps needed to have the backward-designed patterns in their heads (phrases for requesting food in a restaurant), and (2) the whole-class discussions included language for whatever else they wanted to talk about. Over time, these non-targeted linguistic bits provide enough input-data to allow the learner to creatively talk about whatever they want on a broader range of topics. |
Reed Riggs (Author)
Archives
April 2022
Categories
All
|