Post on a post: My recent ACTFL talk on Story Structure, Culture, and teaching Social Justice11/21/2017 My co-presenter, Diane Neubauer, summarized our talk on her blog, here. The presentation slides are there to download as well.
One note on teaching social justice: I'm just now learning about how this is done in the field (in research and in classroom practice). This presentation only gives brief mention of how teachers can write socially critical ideas into their stories. I hope to learn more starting now, so my future presentations can do better to place social justice and critical perspectives at the center of my discussions.
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I was at a STARTALK conference a few years ago, where I sat at a table with teachers of several languages. The topic of student choice came up, and I said something like, "A lot of my students go right for Spongebob. Even my college students think he's funny." One older Hindi teacher sitting across from me gave a deep scowl, which I interpreted as "We need to teach about the culture of the target language, and nothing else." I've since then thought about roles for target culture instruction, in terms of a balance with what learners themselves want to talk about.
One benefit I've noticed in learning about culture is that I find it useful, interesting, and fun to gain insights on who speaks these languages. Where do they live? What do they eat? What do they do? This third question reminds me of my own time living in China, where a lot of my conversations revolved around things that were Chinese, like local events and geography, as well as things that were not Chinese, like foreign movies, books, and music. I remember having long discussion about Game of Thrones in Chinese with an MA classmate. I have also noticed a cost to doing target-culture-only activities, particularly when the information is new to many learners in a classroom. This has to do with who possesses the knowledge required to contribute to the conversation, and who does not. Implicitly, expert/non-expert roles emerge. Only the teacher, and possibly one or a few students who have spent time in the target language community, can be experts. Everyone else is left to be non-experts, without relevant knowledge to contribute. Non-experts are forced to either ask receptive questions ("what's that?"), or to remain passive as listeners. By contrast, in a whole-class story collaboration, the teacher can contribute cultural knowledge in the forms of locations, people, foods and other things from the target language community, and learners can contribute knowledge from their own experience and preferences. This also allows learners to use any language (words or longer utterances) they can at any given point in time. But a culture-only discussion requires participants to know the exact language for what the teacher has presented as relevant in each moment. This restricts the selection space in both language and content that participants can offer as relevant. Again learners are left as passive receivers of language and knowledge, prohibited from active contributions. Given more time, I did see my own college students begin to recycle Chinese historic people, places, and foods into our later discussions, after they had gotten to know these people from my recurring introductions. So I'm not arguing here for the abolition of culture-presentations. But I am advising that teachers consider both the benefits and costs of this practice, to find a balance. Yesterday evening I experienced a wonderful lesson in Lakota language taught by a grad student in the Linguistics department at the University of Hawai'i (I will add her name here if she wants me to). This was her second attempt at CI teaching, and she excelled at going slow, parsing, speaking clearly, presenting a clear word list with pictures, pausing and pointing, asking questions in the target language, integrating culture in popups, focusing on form in popups, engaging the audience with questions, fishing for audience contributions, and more fine-grained practices that I'm not noticing here. At one point, an audience member asked, "Can I get a popup? You keep saying 'The dog, the cat, likes. Does that mean the dog likes the cat or the cat likes the dog?'" Clearly, pointing to the pictures of the dog and the cat in the order spoken was not clear enough to many people in the room, to clarify "who likes whom". This was important information for our unfolding, co-created scene, and audience participation could not continue if people weren't clear on what we had all decided to be true. I jumped in and mentioned a relevant finding in Bill VanPatten's research on Input Processing (IP; VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993), showing that learners tend to assume that the first noun is the agent or subject of the sentence. But the audience still wanted a clear mention of the intended sentence meaning. Upon reflection after this lesson, I realized that the key word in research is "tend to."
Experimental researchers are rarely concerned with unanimous outcomes, that is, every member in one group coming out equal. Instead, researchers seek out tendencies in averages. So if a teacher is aiming for equity among learners, then it's important to understand that averages found in research only imply averages in our classrooms. Exceptions to the average should also be implied from the research. So, if a teacher's goal is success for everyone, then findings from research should only serve as a helpful starting point (the teacher can think, "Ok, many students will likely assume the first noun is the agent or subject in the sentence"), but then the teacher should differentiate by checking for which participants are similar to the non-average members in the research. In this example, a teacher can still help many people in the room to more clearly understand the unfamiliar language structure by asking, "What do you think this sentence means?". The teacher can then briefly clarify using a shared language, and then return to the discussion in the target language (this is standard practice in the TPRS literature). In addition to facilitating language acquisition (connecting form with meaning frequently), these extra clarifications should help audience members (the learners) contribute to the ongoing discussion as they are more clear on what is being discussed (the content of the discussion). These are some of my responses on the CI Fight Club group on Facebook, in a recent discussion with language teachers about "types" and "tokens".
I made a new card-grid page for CI teachers to hold and look at, for reference when asking actors and audience members questions during 'story-asking'. I imagine it could be used or adapted for other CI activities as well (PQA, Special Person, etc.). If teachers want students to ask more questions, they can also project this for learners to see. More is explained on the first page in the document for download, below.
One of the central appeals of CI/TPRS classrooms is the mutual negotiation between teachers and students over what to talk about, and the details within those discussions. Stories details, like who a class talks about and how to describe those people, are usually chosen by the students. This gives the students agency over their own learning experience, and it promotes motivation and engagement with the lesson.
One drawback to giving students too much control was pointed out by Rachelle Adams and Anna Gilcher, discussed at this years NTPRS conference: learners often bring to these discussions ideas that reinforce social stereotypes and ideas which work against diversity. So here is where a teacher can add content that promotes values of diversity and inclusion. Eric Herman posted a very useful video showing how collaborative storytelling can work it classrooms. It also gives us a glance at the kinds of ideas that students bring into our classrooms: "fat girls," "eating hamburgers at McDonalds." These are the regular kinds of ideas we see students contribute in CI classrooms, toward which the other students often respond with laughter because the ideas are funny to them. I want to be clear that my intention here is not to take away from what Eric posted, but to add to it. In the kinds of stories that develop in classrooms (note: though not in Eric's video), letting students propose that a man wants a "fat girl" because it makes everyone laugh, or that a woman likes a "short man" because the idea is so ludicrous, puts teachers in a important societal role. A teacher can decide between: (1) reinforcing these prejudices, or (2) teaching diversity-positive values. In their presentation, Rachelle and Anna recommended using such descriptor words as "short" and "tall" to describe buildings and other physical objects, instead of people. "Fat" and "skinny" can describe animals in the story, instead of the women and men. When students propose that non-normative events occurred, like, "The man wore women's clothing, hahahaha," the teacher can choose to say, "Ok sure, but it's not funny. Many men do that. It's really normal, and not funny. But we can include him in our story because he might be interesting." Rachelle and Anna advocate that teachers work with students to generate a new word list. This list will contain the words that students use to describe the people they admire. After thinking and discussing (5 min. max), each student calls out who they want to be like (e.g. Mother Theresa, Lady Gaga, their grandmother), and what one attribute made that person so model-worthy (e.g. compassionate, brave, smart). These then become the words the teacher and students use to describe the people in their stories. This allows them to promote diversity-positive thinking while also using the language necessary to do that. It's normal for teachers new to CI (and experienced ones as well) to hear an internal voice saying: "That's too much repetition! The students are bored for sure! Move on!" In response, I want to illustrate a difference between repeating language forms and repeating situated meaning.
FIRST, JUST START READING: FROM WIKIPIEDIA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_dog_story) Archetypal story A shaggy dog, the archetypical subject of long-winded, pointless stories The commonly believed archetype of the shaggy dog story is a story that concerns a shaggy dog. The story builds up, repeatedly emphasizing how shaggy the dog is. At the climax of the story, someone in the story reacts with, "That dog's not so shaggy." The expectations of the audience that have been built up by the presentation of the story, that the story will end with a punchline, are thus disappointed. Ted Cohen gives the following example of this story:[1] AT THIS POINT IN THE READING, THE WORD "OF" HAS APPEARED 8 TIMES (INCLUDING IN THIS SENTENCE), AND THE WORD "THE" HAS APPEARED 21 TIMES. THAT'S PROBABLY ENOUGH, AND I'M AFRAID YOU WILL FEEL BORED, SO I REMOVED THESE TWO WORDS FROM NOW ON. A boy owned a dog that was uncommonly shaggy. Many people remarked upon its considerable shagginess. When boy learned that there are contests for shaggy dogs, he entered his dog. dog won first prize for shagginess in both local and regional competitions. boy entered dog in ever-larger contests, until finally he entered it in world championship for shaggy dogs. When judges had inspected all competing dogs, they remarked about boy's dog: "He's not that shaggy." THE WORD "SHAGGY" HAS APPEARED 11 TIMES, AND "STORY" 10 TIMES. PROBABLY ENOUGH. ALSO "IS" (8 TIMES ALREADY). I'LL STOP USING THEM SO THEY DON'T BOTHER YOU. However, authorities disagree as to whether this particular archetype after which category named. Eric Partridge, for example, provides a very different story, as do William and Mary Morrin Morris Dictionary Word and Phrase Origins. NOW LET'S STOP WITH "A", "AN", AND "TO". YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THEM, I THINK. According Partridge and Morrises, archetypical dog involves advertisement placed in Times announcing search for dog. In Partridge story, aristocratic family living in Park Lane searching for lost dog, and American answers advertisement with dog that he has found and personally brought across Atlantic, only tbe received by butler at end who takes one look at dog and shuts door in his face, saying, "But not so as that, sir!" In Morris, advertiser organizing competition find dog in world, and after lengthy exposition search for such dog, winner presented aristocratic instigator competition, who says, "I don't think he's so."[3][4] My point here is that in order to combat that irrational voice in our heads, we should recognize that language forms can be repeated infinite times if its users (listeners, readers, speakers, writers) are focused on the meaning in each situation. This situated meaning keeps changing and progressing logically as we work through our stories, personal info, opinions, experiences, etc., and so everyone can remain engaged in the discussion. When reading, we just wanted to know if Oprah will get the Sriracha, if the worms in my backpack were bloody or not, and if Dan's house had rats or not. Other people would want to talk about other things, and that's the challenge for the teacher: keep offering learners topics to talk about until we show interest. Then talk about that. One discussion that comes up from time to time among CI teachers is how to choose the language chunks, or "items", or "structures", that we teach. Martina Bex has a very useful description of "language chunks" on her blog here. In addition, for extra perspective, I would like to describe here what Usage-based Linguistics researchers call "constructions".
Constructions are not simply language written on a page, but are a psychological construct, measured in the human mind through corpus research. A construction is defined as any linguistic symbol of any length that the mind connects with meaning. A word is a construction because it is a sound (or written string of writing, or sign language signs) that represents meaning. A morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that represents meaning, and so it is also a construction. The more interesting constructions in the Usage-based Linguistics literature are those that help explain grammar in the mind. As VanPatten often says on his podcast, Tea with BVP, language is shaped by Universal Grammar and general learning architecture. Usage-based linguists seeks to better understand this general learning architecture, holding to what we call the "cognitive commitment". This means assuming that Universal Grammar is not real, and instead looking to exhaust all possible other learning mechanisms before allowing for which parts of language may indeed be shaped by Universal Grammar. Usage-based linguists seek to explain grammar as general pattern recognition and human categorization processes, which will be explained below as we look at phrase-length constructions. To be clear, both Usage-based AND Universal Grammar models of language view input as central to language development. Neither of these research camps argue that learners should learn an explicit rule, and then practice that rule, nor should they use problem solving abilities to master a rule. Input as raw language data (hearing and reading the language itself) is still necessary and central to acquisition in Usage-based models. So what is a multi-word construction? A multi-word construction consists of multiple slots in a particular order, that together represent meaning. Each slot can be either fixed, or open but limited to certain categories. For example, "wants to X" is a construction with two fixed words and an open slot. The open slot in this construction is limited to the verbs category. Another example is "put X Loc", where "put" is a fixed word, the X slot is limited to grammatical objects (the cat, the car, a fork), and Loc = locative phrase, is composed of a preposition (on, into, under) and a location (the table, the cave, the bed). So a construction contains not only the known words, but also the open slots for a limited selection of other words. Corpus research has shown that some words are more common in each construction than are other words, but that's for another post. Does it make much difference whether teachers plan to input only fixed "language chunks" or we plan for the fixed words plus open slots together in constructions? Maybe not, because teachers will fill in those open slots anyways when giving input to students. But human categorization needs exposure to a limited number of different examples in those slots before a category unconsciously develops in the mind. So if we are going to teach "sees a movie", the acquirer's mind is more likely to unconsciously build a category of "things we can see" in the construction's X slot (in a "sees X" construction), compared to if they only hear "sees a movie" (all words fixed) hundreds of times. This is one of the beautiful features of Circling, in which the slot openness is automatically built into the input. There is a lot more to be said about Cognitive Science, Cognitive Linguistics, Usage-based Linguistics, and Construction Grammar. I recognize that I have done them all very little justice in writing such a short post, but I hope this basic concept might offer a new perspective on the language we choose to offer our learners in their input. In my post on Leveling Heritage with Non-Heritage Learners, I argued that continuously talking about new people, places, things, and events allowed for repeated language without asking Circling questions, and why. Here I illustrate how I finish making a set of PictureTalk slides quickly. What I've learned from making Bottomless PictureTalk files (mine are now often 30 to 40 slides) is to design with speed in mind; I don't want to spend 3 hours making just one file.
HOW TO: Here's how I do it: 1) if you have a unit theme, search Google Images for things, people, and places within that theme. Add them to your slides in Powerpoint, Keynote, or Google Slides (links to examples below). 2) Always download or copy 3 to 4 variations of each images of a person, thing, or place you find. That saves time from searching again. Place these images in randomly in your slide set (or place then in the order you found them and randomize later). 3) Consider your age group, and search the internet for "top celebrities now" (for high school and college) or "best cartoons for children now" (for K-6 through middle school). This is the "own culture" portion needed for your students to talk about what they know and like in the target language. If you do invisibles (cartoon creatures drawn by the students in your class, then step 5 is useful). If you trust that the cartoon/celebrity list is really appropriate for your age group, choose images that you've never heard of, so the students can really teach you new information, 4) Again, download 3 to 4 images of each person or cartoon or thing or place you find. This fills your slides and saves time. 5) In your populated slide set, duplicate some of the slides, and obscure the version of the image that occurs first. This introduces variation in the discussion, where some of the slides allow for discussion of what might appear next (for example, two ear tips might be Bugs Bunny's ears, and the next slide reveals that it is indeed him). 6) On the final slide, include many pictures that have appeared on previous slides. You can use this as an assessment, or if you just like giving students opportunities to talk, this slide is for that. 7) Finally, if you want to include the written versions of the words you are targeting (and if you are targeting), make a small text box with a white background in the first slide. Copy this, and quickly paste it into all of the slides. Again, the goal here is speed, as PictureTalks can normally take 2 to 3 hours to create if speed is not your goal. I use these steps to cut that time down to about 20 minutes. To end, here is a link to a sample I made for Day 2 with elementary schoolers so they could hear how to ask people's names, and who they like. Here is one for Mother's Day, where I asked elementary schoolers if they would buy each set of flowers for their mother, and who would like them (the children themselves and/or their mothers). In each of these class discussions, non-targeted words and structures come up naturally as well, as the students show interest in what they want to talk about. At first I wanted to title this post "Differentiating for Heritage & Non-heritage Learners", but my idea is really the opposite, as I will explain.
In my CI/TPRS teaching, I design my instruction to promote language proficiency by providing input in the context of communication ("The interpretation, expression, and (sometimes) negotiation of meaning in a given context", to borrow Bill VanPatten's most recent definition of communication). One central way I do this is by ensuring that the language learners hear and read contain words and structures (the input) which are repeated a lot (a "high frequency in the input" to use the SLA/Usage-based research term I like). The standard TPRS practice is to get this repetition by Circling, where the teacher asks lots of similar questions slowly, so our beginning learners have opportunities to process the same words in a variety of target-like sentence contexts. When I hear Vietnamese and more advanced French, Spanish, and German in teaching demos, I am usually eager to hear even the same sentence a few more times. It's at my current ability to process and my current level of challenge. When teaching Mandarin to undergrads at the University of Hawai‘i, and to 2nd, 3rd, & 4th graders at Punahou School's after-school immersion program, I'm always teaching heritage learners (often half to 3/4 of my class) who already understood me the first time I ask a question. Circling questions are confusing to them. They understood me the first time, so move on. But the non-heritage learners want to hear it again. My solution for balancing everyone out, and keeping us all in the class discussion during the listening part of the lesson is what I'm calling "Bottomless PictureTalk" (basic PictureTalk is described here, and please message me if this idea has already been described elsewhere). If I can ask two questions about each picture and three about how the students' own lives relate to each picture, and I do this for 20 separate pictures, then that's already (5 x 20) 100 times learners hear and process a target construction (or an otherwise emergent construction generated by the students when I'm doing non-targeted CI teaching). "But wouldn't many students feel annoyed by 100 similar questions?" To answer to this question we can simply do a web page search. I recommend trying this now: 1) open a long web page, maybe the Wikipedia page for "China", 2) search the page for the word "the", 3) search for "of". My search found over 1000 matches for "the" and another 1000 matches for "of". But shouldn't I have felt annoyed at so many uses of "the" and "of"? Probably not, because language naturally repeats when we keep talking about different things. If you go shopping with someone, you might ask each other "What about this one?" as many times as you need until you find what you needed. Neither person is likely to say, "Okay already!! Please use a different phrase. I'm so tired of this one." We use language to focus on meaning, and if the referent keeps changing, we don't notice the repeated use of language. My thinking now is that when we are all talking about new things, new people, new places, and new events, we don't have to differentiate for heritage and non-heritage learners. Everyone can continue being engaged in, and contributing to, our discussion in the target language. The non-heritage learners get the repeating language as we talk briefly about each picture, and no one suffers from repeated content. See how I make my long PictureTalk files as speedily as possible at this post here. |
Reed Riggs (Author)
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