I’ve been reflecting on what helps me feel focused and calm when it feels like the world is accelerating around me and my head is spinning. What I’ve found is that reminding myself of my fundamental beliefs helps me do the harder stuff better, and make more confident decisions for “what’s next” in my teaching life. (Typing this makes me realize that this also applies to my life outside of school, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.)
So, I’ve figured out that my overall goal is teaching for intercultural communicative competence, teaching so that students become proficient, thoughtful users of the language. How do we go about that?
Input is indispensable
Learners need loads of communicatively-embedded comprehensible input in the language before they can be expected to produce the language themselves. This means multiple exposures to useful, relevant language, and that we, as instructors, have verified comprehension in some way regularly throughout each lesson. Constant formative assessment via talking with learners, rather than at them, is how we achieve this.
The sources of that input is where proficiency-oriented language teachers can diverge. Do we use exclusively authentic resources from the Target Cultures (or what we might think of as found media) to give the broadest possible view into other cultures during our classes, or do we use exclusively resources oriented towards language learners to ensure maximum comprehension of the input, and the best chances at acquisition (or what we might think of as created media)? I, personally lean towards texts created for and with language learners to try to most efficiently use the limited time I have with students over the course of our language program. Authentic resources provide access to cultural perspectives, so they are also very present, but explored with guidance and scaffolding to get the most out of the language.
Interaction, too!
Accessing the linguistic system built via comprehended input builds communicative skill and fluency, and interaction with learners about their lives and the world builds interest and attention to input, furthering acquisition. We can provide interact to students as a whole class, in pairs, and in teacher-student conversations.
We need to be prepared, as instructors, for students to interact at their own levels. Knowing that communication is not just achieved via language, this might mean that students begin by communicating using gestures, nods, or movements, graduate to using words and phrases, and move on to sentences and more complexly structured discourse over time. We can adjust our expectations and demands of students again through formative assessment, gently guiding our learners towards more extensive language use.
We are teaching communication, not “The Language.”
Using the language to express and interpret meaning in different contexts for different purposes is both our goal for learners, and the means to achieve that goal. Knowledge of abstract grammatical principles does not necessarily contribute to “accurate” language usage, and is a less useful investment of our limited time with students than just using the language in ways that students understand to accomplish nonlinguistic goals.
If we wanted to teach our students about linguistics, we could teach them that. But if our goal is to teach students how to communicate, then we are going to practice by actually communicating. One doesn’t learn to ride a bike by reading a description of how the legs work in conjunction with our balancing skills to propel the bike forward: one learns by simply riding, maybe first with training wheels, but actually riding.
Goals: Language Functions
What follows from the last point is that our goals for our programs, units, and lessons are oriented towards language functions. These include understanding audio and texts (often conspicuously absent from the goals of more traditional programs), asking and answering questions about topics (not “conjugating regular verbs”), expressing opinions, thoughts, and experiences (not using “gustar” and “gern” correctly), narrating stories (not using the preterite, imperfect, and perfect tenses), and so on. If we want our students to be able to use these functions about various topics, we need to show them the language being used for those purposes, and use these functions in our classrooms. You might draw student attention to how grammatical forms contain meaning, while also keeping in mind that this won’t mean that students will reproduce forms correctly, or soon. The focus should be on expression and interpretation of meaning in a given context for a given purpose (the definition of communication provided by Bill Van Patten).
Many who use a Comprehension-Based Communicative Language Teaching (CCLT) approach have found that stories, both fiction and nonfiction, model a lot of these functions very naturally in context. Added to the fact that narrative helps any learning be “stickier,” you might reflect on the role that stories play in your curriculum and choose to insert more narratives into your teaching. These can be novels, short stories, personal stories shared in class by either the students or the teacher, narratives the class co-creates with the teacher – there are lots of possibilities here.
Understand the Proficiency Levels: Realistic Expectations
If we are going to teach for proficiency (vs. for grammatical accuracy), then we need to have concrete look-fors when it comes to students’ developing proficiency. What are the differences between Novice and Intermediate language? What about in the low-, mid- and high- sub-levels? Any SLAyyy listener will know that Bill and I are huge fans of the Avant ADVANCE training offered by the creators of the STAMP test, which helped both of us develop a more granular understanding of the proficiency levels and sub-levels.
Once you have that foundational understanding, learning how long it typically takes for students to achieve specific proficiency levels will help you set realistic expectations for student production and comprehension. We can relax the grammar perfectionists living inside us, and live in the knowledge that language proficiency just takes time. Let’s celebrate when students exceed our more realistic standards, and celebrate when they meet those standards, too!
Understand the Proficiency Levels: Use Performance Assessments and Grade Accordingly
Once you’ve set realistic expectations for where students will get in their language proficiency throughout their time with you, you start creating performance assessments based on the topics you explore in class that ask students to use the language at the appropriate level. Your students won’t necessarily be set up for success on exams about specific grammatical phenomena because that is not what they are learning. They are learning to communicate – so assess their ability to communicate: to use the functions described above.
The grades we assign to these assessments should hopefully reflect holistic assessments of students’ language proficiency (vs. their work habits or classroom behavior). I work off the idea that students meeting the proficiency target for a course should be at a solid, low A, with A+s for students who exceed the target, B for a sub-level below the standard, etc. You might listen to our episode about Standards-Based Grading to hear more considerations about grades and proficiency.
Comprehension Is A Goal
It bears repeating that students need lots of comprehensible input to acquire and then use a language, so our goals for our programs, units, and lessons also need to include lots and lots of comprehension of Target Language input. These goals often get left out of discussions that are focused on only what students are producing, but it will be impossible for our students to go out into the Target Cultures and engage with others if they don’t comprehend what is being communicated to them.
We also need to take our students beyond just literal comprehension and into interpretation, which is to say that we want our students to be able to read texts deeply. This means making inferences and predictions about the text, making hypotheses about cultural perspectives, and using any text as a springboard to learn more (nuanced) information about a topic. We have the opportunity to reinforce the vital reading skills our students need across their lives, but only if we can let go of the feeling of control we feel when teaching the tiny elements of grammatical accuracy. Let’s embrace the big possibilities available to us when we embrace and teach to the humanity of our students, and the humanity living in our Target Cultures.
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