90% Target Language: How to Work Toward This Core Practice

ACTFL recommends that teachers and learners aim for 90%+ of class time to be spent in the Target Language, and lists the facilitation of Target Language usage as one of its six Core Practices. Comprehensible Input is the sine non qua of language acquisition, of course, so in my view, Target Language usage is something we constantly need to be reflecting on as part of our teaching practice. Approaching that 90% has been a goal of mine for years (indeed, I made visiting as many sessions about 90%+ TL the focus of my attendance at ACTFL 2017 in Nashville), and I am finally getting to a place where I am feeling pretty good about my abilities to execute this Core Practice. Part of that is recognizing that 50% days, 70% days, 99% days, and 20% days are all okay, too, and part of the natural ebb and flow of working in a very human profession.

I have been reflecting a lot on how I have been working on this in my own classroom, and what I think are some key pieces in getting to 90%. I imagine this will be an evolving set of reflections, so let’s get started with where I am right now:

Trust

I really think one of the keys to getting to high levels of Target Language is building student’s trust that you will help them understand the TL at every step along the way.

This begins with an explicit commitment to students: “I want you to understand everything that is going on in our class, and I will do my best to make everything clear to you.” As an example, Cécile Lainé demonstrates this commitment with how she introduces the physical signal students give when they have not understood something: she asks students to make the audible signal (fist against open palm, snapping, tongue clicking, etc.) “when I say something and you don’t understand because I’m confusing you” so that she can “stop and help.” Students are also prompted to support their classmates by joining in making the designated sound – so if one student makes the noise because they don’t understand, everyone else also joins in to make sure that they can all get it.

This shows that she sees her primary goal as making sure every student understands, and that no student will be singled out for not understanding, no matter the reason. Students do have to show up and listen – and make the signal to show lack of comprehension – but their teacher is verbally committing to trying to be as clear as possible. If the teacher then celebrates the use of this signal, and clarifies spots where they confused students, that trusting relationship is built through words and actions. (Watch this video by Cécile to see the setup of these strategies in action – she is a master.)

You can also build trust by watching the eyes and faces of your students as you teach, and responding to blank or confused looks. If we explicitly verbalize, “I saw what looked like confusion to me, and I want to make sure everyone has got it so we can all learn together,” and then rephrase/restate/add a gesture or writing/etc., students will see that you are making good on your commitment to teaching them as clearly as you can. With a trusting relationship, teacher and learners can push each other to ever-higher levels of Target Language usage and skill.

Our Mindset

Sometimes, we as teachers don’t trust ourselves to make high levels of TL usage happen, and/or we don’t trust that our students will rise to the high expectation of 90%+ TL usage. On the Language Lounge podcast, guest Marnina Falk reminded listeners of an essential mindset for us while working towards this goal: everyone can learn an additional language, and with the right supports, everyone can thrive in a class with high levels of TL usage. I remember a presentation I went to at WAFLT with Paul Sandrock where he shared research showing that students expect high levels of TL usage in their classes, but the teachers are the ones who back away from it out of fear! Perhaps we need to make it into daily affirmations: I can maintain an atmosphere of high TL usage – my students will thrive hearing lots of TL!

“You are understanding”

Language classes are so different from content courses, and carry an air of mystique and difficulty (perhaps because of previous generations’ lack of success with older methods). It is essential that we give our students early confirmations of their success in a high TL usage environment. This can be Quick Quizzes where we confirm that students have been comprehending the content of the day and ending class on a positive note, or just being clear during frequent comprehension checks: yes, you are doing the work of acquiring a language! You ARE understanding! I don’t think it’s out of bounds to just tell this to our students directly, in L1. We want to develop an inner voice in our students that says: I can do this, I AM doing this. Frequent formative assessment helps us share with students the path of proficiency so they can continue walking it.

Having Communicative Goals

If your goal is to teach and assess student knowledge about the grammatical forms of your TL, it is likely that you will use a lot of L1 to talk about linguistic terms. At the end of the course, students may have heard TL, but they will mostly have learned about the language, rather than having used the language.

If we want students to use the language, and we want to use it ourselves, we need to set communicative goals. These can be psychosocial (building relationships), cognitive-informational (obtaining information for some purpose), or entertainment.

We can learn about our classmates, their families and cultures and experiences, and the target culture(s), and also share how we are doing, what our preferences and opinions are, and also just have fun. I think the ACTFL Can Do Statements do a good job at reminding us that language is for DOING things, so having clarity about what function(s) we are trying to elicit helps make planning for target language usage – modeling, selecting useful vocabulary, questioning, etc. – much more effective and targeted.

Don’t be afraid of English

Some ACTFL publications take a hardline stance on English usage and basically tell you “don’t do it unless the building is on fire and you have to evacuate quickly.” I disagree with a hardline stance like that. (Obviously, uh, use L1 if the building is on fire, of course.) I read research somewhere (and am of course not finding it while I’m writing this, so thanks in advance to anyone who can send it my way!) that regardless of how hard we try to get learners to associate an L2 word with a wordless concept (vs. a related word in L1), they are still going to internally link new words to L1 meanings, anyways.

What this means to me is that sometimes, I can draw a picture on the board or do a gesture that makes an L2 word’s meaning clear, and sometimes, I’m just going to write the word on the board in L2 and L1 (usually in different colors to be clear what belongs to which language). I’m not afraid of that! If I am committed to using that new word in the service of some sort of communicative goal, I’m going to use it in the L2, and the time spent establishing the meaning of the word in L1 will not have dragged at my 90%+ TL goal too much.

I feel the same way about comprehension checks. Especially early in lower levels, I want to give the feeling of accomplishment and being-in-the-right-place to my students early, and often. Asking “what did I just say?” in L1 and hearing a confident choral response gives me the feedback that students are with me, and when I affirm that to my students, they know it for themselves, too. I find I use this sort of comprehension check less frequently as students move up in levels, but that’s because they have confidently acquired enough language to be more functional in the TL.

Instructions can be the same way. If a quick explanation serves to get us all back into the TL to do a new activity or procedure, then giving it briefly in L1 works for me.

We have to be practical in our use of time in class, because we don’t have much of it, so we are mostly going to be in L2. But! Sometimes the quickest way to get to more L2 is through a little detour into L1. Reading Justin’s post about the role of the L1 in a class really clarified this for me.

Model everything!

If you want students to do something, you can show them how to do it by narrating your own actions in the Target Language. If you have a movement prompt, model thinking about how you would respond to it, and then moving around your classroom to indicate your answer. If you have a new game or partner activity, either have the class be your partner to model, or pick a student you suspect will catch on quickly. You can play with this and just do classic TPR, too, modeling commands and then fading the modeling. Then: you can review any instructions with text on the board as a review before setting students to the task.

Rejoinders

Learners want to feel connected to others and not feel isolated in class. This can express itself with verbal outbursts in the L1 that have the power to derail class, but can actually be a positive sign: they WANT to be a part of the classroom community and contribute their thoughts! But how can we get them to do that without opening a floodgate of L1?

Using rejoinders in the L2 – short phrases that indicate your reaction to something happening – can give students tools to participate and share that connectedness, while also keeping it in the TL. You can teach students maybe 2-3 at a time, perhaps with accompanying gestures that get the meanings of the rejoinders across, and make a point to find situations to use them in your class for about a week or so. Any time a student uses one, I always try to respond with positivity and excitement – because “using these phrases really makes you sound like an [L2] speaker!” I sometimes also prompt students by asking: “What would be a logical reaction to what Soandso just said / what just happened?”

When students are shouting out “What a bummer!” and “How cute!” and “Awesome!” in the TL, it really does feel like you’re helping grow their abilities as L2 speakers, and makes it a sort of a game – in the Target Language! My students in particular like to use them ironically while staring me dead in the eye, and I mock outrage at their callousness. “Soandso has mountains of homework, and your reaction is ‘How lovely!’??! You monsters!” Boom: play, in the Target Language.

I learned a lot of what I know about rejoinders from Grant Boulanger, and offer you some rejoinders in German, if you should need them. I print rejoinders on card stock, two to a sheet, and hang them with magnets on an awkwardly-shaped portion of whiteboard. When students have a good grasp on them, I “retire” them, pinning them above our smartboard, where they become a visual reminder of our growing linguistic repertoire.

Non-verbal or single-word responses

Sometimes, we don’t need students to respond with words. They can respond with their movements! The “I don’t understand” signal from above comes first to mind. Students can also point at an option they prefer, or at an object (or sometimes person) in the room. They can stand up and move to Four Corners to share their opinions and experiences, or form a continuum. They can clap to agree, snap to disagree – or any variation on that idea. They can stand up to indicate “Me too!” All the while, we as the instructors are providing lots of rich input, interaction, and guided conversation.

Sometimes, it is also totally okay for students to give single-word responses. These could be choral responses to circling questions, making a choice after you provide a this-or-that question, or saying the name of a brand or place that they are familiar with in response to your prompting. These all require us to plan ahead to provide logical choices, and the more couched they are in TL sentences (“I like to eat chocolate/vanilla/strawberry ice cream” vs. just “chocolate/vanilla/strawberry”), the more input we can facilitate in the TL while also getting more information about and personalizing to our students.

“May I speak English?”

Above my whiteboard, I have the phrase “May I speak English?” in the TL on a small poster. I teach students what it means in English, and then use it myself whenever I need to tell the students something in English. This establishes an environment where we are working to have class mostly in L2, and will show deference to others’ goals of using class time to really practice the L2 by asking permission to speak L1. The more I do this, the more students ask for permission!

Sometimes they forcefully say “no” to my requests – and I go okay! And try to convey what I needed to convey in L2. Sometimes I gently say “no” to my students – but mostly if I suspect they are trying to tell a derailing anecdote in L1. And sometimes, when I “allow” students to use L1, I also give them a guideline for how much. “Yes, but just one word.” “Yes, but just one sentence.” “Yes, but you have five seconds.” This makes it a fun game, and I can see if there needs to be further questioning afterward beyond the imposed limit.

Go slow

Here’s some research I found forever ago: the average high school student processes their native language at about 140-145 words per minute. On the other hand, the average adult speaks at about 170 words per minute. There seems to be a mismatch here – we’re talking faster than our students’ brains are ready for, and that’s just in the L1!

If we want our students to understand what they hear in the L2, which empowers us to use even more of it in class, we need to be modulating our rate of speech. This certainly does not mean talking comically slow, but slowER, with more pauses between chunks and ideas. This can really make the difference between students understanding and not understanding what you are trying to communicate. We might also emphasize certain new words or sounds with our voices to draw attention to them and help students make more form-meaning connections. (This can be especially true in languages where endings indicate who is being talked about, and/or when.)

This also doesn’t mean speaking slowly…forever. As students are more familiar with the language, they can process it faster and faster. Part of the fun for us, then, becomes slowly increasing our rate of speech over time (sometimes within the same class period), and watching students come more confidently along for the ride. Then, when they encounter audio or video texts where the speakers are not worried about slowing their rate of speech, they feel more confident to tackle them – because they had slow listening “practice” to start.

Other resources

So many have had thoughts on this, and I will gather more resources here over time. That said, a huge influence for me (and an absolute gold mine of ideas) has been this post from the Comprehensible Classroom: How to Teach So That They Understand. Check it out!

Celebrate!

If using a lot of TL in your class goes well: great! If it goes less well: return to your principles and skills of L2 usage and see what moments in class you fell out of L2 use. Collaborate with a colleague on ideas! You might also film yourself and check your rate of speech, use of visuals, questioning, etc., while also keeping an eye on how your class reacts to you.

But overall: celebrate. You’re working towards a core practice in our field. It’s going to be tough at times, but it will most certainly pay off for you and your students.

What other reflections do you have about Target Language usage in language classes? Share in a comment below!