Author: Ben Fisher-Rodriguez

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!

Volleyball / Ping-Pong Translation – Partner Reading for Scaffolded Success

To get our learners lots of input, we need to find ways to have them take texts and read, reread, and reread again! I love throwing a Volleyball Reading (which I call Tischtennis, or “table tennis” in German) to get me off the stage for a while, give students a chance to read the L2 aloud, and help their partners toward shared success. I use it enough that I can just tell students who to partner up with, say “Read the text Tischtennis!”, and they will hop to it without second thought. (I did it once during an observation, and the observer was impressed at the transition speed, and that the whole class was reading the L2 and working together!)

Why should you do it? Volleyball Translation is a great way to do a first, or second, or even third pass at reading a text, and allows students to do some partner work so you can make your next pedagogical decision. We all need that time off the “stage!”

When do I use Volleyball Reading?

Like I said above, you can use Volleyball Reading on any encounter with a text your class is reading. Maybe you’ve given a lot of auditory input on a topic, and students are ready to read the new language in text form for the first time. Maybe you’ve already read and discussed a text as a class, and want to give students some time to confirm their comprehension on a second pass with the text before moving on to extension activities. Maybe you’ve just co-created a Write and Discuss text as a class, and want students to reread the new text one more time. Or maybe – honestly – you want to buy yourself a couple minutes while you take care of whatever business comes across your Teacher Life / Human Person Life in the middle of a class. All you need is a text, and you can throw in a Volleyball Reading!

How do I do it? – Logistics

Students need access to a text (on the board or in hand), and to be partnered up in the manner of your choosing. Having one group of three sometimes happens, but everyone else should be in pairs. I like to display the instructions for the procedure to students as the activity is taking place, though they usually don’t need them the second or third time using it.

Here’s what my students see when we’re doing this activity!

How do I do it? – Procedure

  1. In the partnerships, designate who will begin – aka a “Partner 1.”
  2. Partner 1 reads the first sentence of the chosen text out loud in the Target Language.
  3. Partner 2 translates the sentence their partner just read out loud into English. Partner 2 then continues on by reading the next sentence in the text in the Target Language.
  4. Partner 1 translates the sentence Partner 2 just read out loud into English, and continues on by reading the next sentence in the Target Language.
  5. Students continue on, alternating reading aloud in the two languages, until they have finished reading the entire chosen text. (Or, just set a time limit, if you need/want!)

What do I do now that we’ve finished?

You can always follow a Volleyball Reading with asking questions about the text to confirm that students have understood the text well, to personalize the information in the text, or to extend student thinking about the topic.

You might also “park” on any new or troublesome vocabulary to give students more exposure to the new language by asking more personalized questions and/or comprehension questions related to the text.

Students have just finished reading a text, so you have the choice to assess, extend, or just plain move on!

Pro Tips!

  1. Model with a student first! As with any new procedure, we can help students do it more correctly the first time by modeling our expectations and what it looks like. Pick an outgoing student, and have them be Student 1 and read the first sentence of the text aloud. Model translating, and then reading the next sentence in the Target Language, and go back and forth until your class seems to get it. You could even model by having the entire class be Student 1, with you as Student 2! Seeing it in action helps students put it into motion quickly and accurately.
  2. Encourage partners to help each other out! Students are definitely encouraged to help each other when needed, whether it be pronouncing a word in the L2, or getting an accurate translation into English. If both partners can’t figure out a word or phrase, they can ask another partnership nearby for help! Students are encouraged to be resources for each other’s learning.
  3. Switch partners! For shorter texts, working with one partner is just fine. For longer texts, having students find a new partner using a procedure of your choosing can help give them a brief break and reengage with the text. One procedure I like is having the new partnerships show each other the spots on the text that they had read up to with their previous partner(s), and start reading the text at the spot closest to the beginning of the text, or the “earlier” stopping point. This means that any “slower” readers will still get to read the entire text, and the “faster” readers can provide confident support on text they have already read and processed before.
  4. Start from the top if you finish early! Some partnerships blaze through a text, while others need a little longer to work through a text. Have fast finishers start again from the top if they finish early, or maybe start writing comprehension questions about the text (you could say that you want to use them for a Quick Quiz!). Anything to keep students engaged with the language longer!
  5. Write common stumbling block words on the board! Because all students are working simultaneously and supporting each other, you have time to circulate through your classroom and listen for spots in the text where students are getting stuck. (Or just cheer students on if they are rocking it!) If I ever hear more than one pair stumble over the same section, I figure out the word/phrase that is tripping them up, and write that on the whiteboard with a translation or illustration to help the class.
  6. Review tough spots with the class using oral questioning! Any words that I write on the board to support struggling students can become quick targets for further questioning once we reconvene as a class. If many students struggled with a new word or phrase, I can give students more input with that vocabulary by asking comprehension and personalized questions using those words, making sure to point and pause at the words and their translations on my whiteboard to ensure comprehension.

What if I want to learn more?

Here is a blog post by the Comprehensible Classroom about Volleyball Translation. This post starts an interesting discussion about the use of translation in the language classroom, and how translation activities may move us away from the fabled 90%+ Target Language goal. I find that I use Volleyball Translation for brief enough periods that it doesn’t detract from my overall goal to use as much Target Language in class as possible – but it is always important to consider the When and Why of L1 use in our classes!

This is Chris Stolz’ take on the activity. I agree that we definitely don’t want to do it too frequently, and it loans itself best to reviewing to build confidence.

Here is a post by Señorita Spanish about two ways to read with students, including Volleyball Reading. I love the clear examples, and reminding students “3 Before Me” – ask your neighboring peers for help before stopping to wait on help from the teacher!

Lance Piantaginni introduces a variant on Volleyball Reading called Silent Volleyball reading here. This can help lessen any anxieties about pronouncing the Target Language, although I find that Volleyball Translation is a great time for students to try out pronouncing more of the language for themselves in a low-stakes environment.

Here is Keith Toda’s post on Volleyball Reading. He discusses a variation on grouping / partner-finding that I found neat!

What do you think? Do you feel ready to use Volleyball Reading? Comment below and send me any questions you might have!

Introducing Our New Podcast: “SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone”

Hi all! My colleagues Bill Langley (he/him), Bryan Smith (he/they), and I have decided to start a new podcast, and that podcast is called “SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone”.

Join us for our first episode Monday, July 29, 2025 as we gaslight (reflect on our teaching successes and failures), gatekeep (read and interpret SLA research), and girlboss (share successes) in our language teaching.

I respect Bill and Bryan as teachers and leaders so so much, and am so excited to talk to them in this format about the stuff we’re thinking about all the time! We are hoping to release regular episodes throughout the school year, so wish us luck in our new endeavor. And please, send us messages about the pod! We’d be happy to hear from you.

Check us out! Click here to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Partner Speaking Game / Q+A Game / Interpersonal Speaking Game – Just Talking, plus Points

Fundamental for our learners’ language proficiency is access to boatload of Comprehensible Input, and so I spend most of my class time facilitating interesting reading and listening input in the L2 for my students. But some theorists argue that opportunities for negotiated output help learners gain easier access to the growing linguistic system, and are essential for building communicative competence. Additionally, most kids come to L2 courses expecting to themselves speak the L2 in class! If we don’t at the very least speak to their expectations, teenagers can get…restless.

But: how do we most efficiently facilitate this without raising their hackles, or having to take time as the teacher to try to talk to each individual kid? (FishRod is heard gently crying in the distance, reflecting on his class sizes of 30+) Enter: a “game” with many names that I learned from Tina Hargaden! You pose questions to the whole class, and in pairs, students alternate answering the questions, and recording the quality/quantity of their partner’s responses. Bam!

Why should you play the Partner Speaking Game / Q+A Game / Interpersonal Speaking Game? This can be a great way to build student awareness of the fact that all the input they receive is doing something, boost confidence, and give you a bit of a break! My students always come away from this game proud of what they are able to produce, and reflective on how they can increase their output for the future!

When do I use the Partner Speaking Game?

The Partner Speaking Game is a great game to put at the end of a sequence of lots of auditory/reading exposure on a topic or story. Students need to be comfortable with the language you will be using to pose the questions during the game, and if your questions will be about a specific text, they need to be very, very familiar with it.

If I were doing a Movie Talk, for example, I would give loads of auditory input by describing stills from the video, then have students read one or more texts narrating what happens in the video, and make sure that they have had plenty more interaction with any new language (through Personalized Questions) before setting them up to play the Partner Speaking Game. We want our learners to be full-to-bursting with language so the “game” feels like a breeze!

Sidebar, I keep calling it a “game” (with the quotes) because it is basically a Retell or Interpersonal Speaking Assessment, with the addition of a “points” element so that students can push themselves for more “points” (aka – more output!). The game is just talking, plus points! Yippee!

How do I do it? – Logistics

  1. You can definitely improvise your questions about recent content, but I always prepare my question sets ahead of time. The page I provide below has spaces for 8 responses, but because only one student will be answering at a time, I would need to prepare 16 questions to cover both partners’ papers.
  2. Partner students up using your preferred method. A group of 3 could work, but only if you have an uneven amount of students. Designate a “Partner A” and “Partner B” in each partnership, as well. (Either let the kids decide, or say that Partner A is the person closest to the door, with the longer hair, etc.)
  3. Give each individual student a copy of a sheet something like this. If you don’t teach German, feel free to copy and modify to your needs! Have students write their partner’s name at the top, then their name and what Partner (A/B) they are, and the date.
  4. Depending on how comfortable your students are with the language/content of the questions, you might have key vocabulary posted for all to see, or any visuals created by the class (maybe a drawing of an OWI story, a cooperative mural, etc.).

How do I do it? – Procedure

  1. Explain to your students (in L1 or L2) that they will be talking about [the topic that we have been discussing recently]. One partner will talk at a time, and the other partner will listen.
  2. Explain that you, the teacher, will be posing a question in L2, and giving students a certain amount of time for their answer, also in L2. (I do somewhere between 20 and 45 seconds – 20 seconds would mirror the timing of the AP Simulated Conversation task. You might also just let students talk until they fizzle out talking in the L2 – follow your heart – but I find that the limits keep things moving and keep things more in the L2.)
  3. While one partner is talking, the other is listening and “giving points” to their partner about the quality of their response. For example, if the speaker hears the question, understands it, and responds in L1, their partner can still give them a point! But if they hear the question, understand it, and say even a single simple sentence in the L2, BAM. 4 points! The “scoring rubric” I use is pictured above, and I try to give quick examples of what each level might sound like before we play the first time.
  4. After each question, students switch roles, so now the speaker is the listener, and vice versa. During the game, I keep track of this by saying: “Okay, now Partner B speaks, question 4: [the question].”
  5. Begin! Ask the first question you have prepared, set a timer for the responses, if you’d like, and listen for half the class to be answering at a time.
  6. Continue asking questions, with students alternating roles between each question, until you run out of time or reach the end of your prepared questions (or whatever sheet you end up using).

What do I do with it now that we’ve finished?

Have students tally the points their partner received at the bottom, and then give their partner the points paper. Students then flip their sheets over, and answer some reflection questions about how their speaking experience went today. This is more or less optional, but I find it helps drive home the fact that the students were speaking a lot of the L2 just now!

I like to have students turn these sheets in so I can see how they did, as well as what their reflections on the process were. If students confess to not feeling confident, you can adjust your instruction to support them better by more frequently calling on them for comprehension checks (or checking more with the people around them, so that the student is hearing a neighbor with the correct answer frequently). Sometimes, the student might just need a pep talk from you about how they can do it, even if it feels hard at times!

I keep portfolios of my students’ “major works,” and I like to throw these sheets into those portfolios as mile markers of their progress and comfort with speaking the L2. Otherwise, you can return them to students with jubilations and compliments about how great they did! If I do assign a grade to these, it is typically a very small amount of points, just because it wasn’t actually me assessing the quality of student responses.

Pro Tips!

  1. Start from the familiar and move away! When I’m drafting my questions, I typically start with about 2 slam-dunk questions for each partner right at the beginning of the game, typically easy questions about the opening moments of the text we’ve been working with. This builds confidences and greases the wheels for more speaking, I find. My next questions typically than follow the narrative order of whatever we had been reading or viewing. Then, I end with about 2 or more questions for each partner that are more personalized! If the previous questions were all about the narrative of a Movie Talk, for example, the final questions might be about what the student might have done in the same situation, or questions related to the themes/topics of the Movie Talk, for example. If the Movie Talk was about a middle school crush, I might ask, “What were you like in middle school?” or, “Did you have a crush in middle school?” At this point, they have already been using the language of the video context quite a bit, and can try to extend it to talking about themselves!
  2. Circulate! While students are answering questions, move about your classroom to hear the things they are saying. This can give you a quick formative assessment of where students are confident, and where they are struggling. It also gives you space to encourage any shy students, maybe providing a key word or idea to help them start answering the question.
  3. Teach students to be supportive listeners! I always demonstrate to my students that it is intimidating to talk your L2 to someone who is staring at you in stoney-faced silence. Model how one might nod and smile at their partner, and maybe even gestures or facial expressions that could indicate, “Yes, keep going!”
  4. Try a simpler version! An alternative to using the scoring sheet I linked above might be to just have partnerships count the number of words in their partner’s responses, with each word being a point. This can save you on setup time, and if you felt comfortable improvising, you could just ask questions about the day’s Card Talk, Special Person Interview, or other daily content. Students could tally on scrap paper, or just count with their fingers!
  5. STICKERS! If you are overflowing with stickers, have students mark the quality of their partner’s responses by placing stickers in those boxes. That would require each partnership having a sheet of stickers to themselves, but boy do kids (even high schoolers! even adults!) love stickers!

What if I want to learn more?

Because this game can go by many names, I haven’t been able to locate any other blog posts / videos about it – if you find any, let me know! I’d be happy to link them here for further reading.

What do you think? Do you feel ready to use the Partner Speaking Game? Comment below and send me any questions you might have!

Focus Writes: Growing in the Ability to Talk About the Most Important Subject

My units are different every year because the people who come to my classes every year are different! I try to build in ample time into my year for “wandering” with my classes – following the interesting things that come up in conversations – but I have also found it helpful to have certain topics/themes that I “do” (which really means start discussing, because topics spiral up over time) at certain levels to give me some anchors for planning. I try to tackle these set topics/themes using all of the Foundational Strategies I list here on my site, including Card Talk, One Word Image, Small Talk, and Special Person Interviews, with just a bit of steering towards each given topic.

This also helps me in speaking to the proficiencies my students are building at each level. After a few weeks of Card Talk toward the beginning of level 1, I can discuss with students their growing capacity to talk about hobbies and interests. Every student is going to be in a different place with the acquisition of the various necessary structures, but having the set topics/themes helps connect to one very compelling Why for many students: growing in their capacity to talk about the most important subject – themselves! (Of course, there are many Whys in language learning, such as building global community, learning from and with other cultures, and wanting to learn the world’s most beautiful language, German, but if our young people are in the identity formation stage of their development, it’s nice to nod to it!)

A tweet by Profe Camacho led me to the idea of essentially using the same prompt all year long as a way to demonstrate student growth. And thus, the Focus Write was born into my practice!

Why should you do a Focus Write, then? A Focus Write can be a quick, simple tool to demonstrate student growth both to outside stakeholders (read: families, administrators, evaluators), as well as to our learners!

When do I use Focus Writes?

Focus Writes are a lot like Free Writes, which many CCLT teachers have written about. Here is Elicia Cárdenas’ post about Free Writes that covers what they are, and when/how to use them. Generally, you want to start using Focus Writes (and Free Writes) after students have had time to get lots of language input into their heads. I would do one no earlier than 6 weeks into the school year, preferably closer to 9.

It also helps if you can look back on language input that students have been receiving and group it into “topics” so that you can space out the Focus Writes over the course of the school year, and select the spiraling prompts for them (this will make sense later). I aim for five total Focus Writes on the “major” topics I cover in level 1, for example: Introducing Myself, Hobbies and Interests, Important People in My Life, Our School Life, and My Food and Drink Culture. These align with the expectations of the community college through which I offer my third year dual-credit course.

How do I do it? – Logistics

To help with word counting, I like to use special lined paper that has the number of words at the end of each line! I print out enough copies of this paper, modified for each unit to include the unit number and complete prompt, as well as a goal that I think will be attainable for most students. (I lifted the template from the inimitable Meredith White!)

The prompts spiral across the year to include everything that came before, as well as the most recent topic. Here are my level 1 topics as an example:

End of unit 1: Introduce yourself
Unit 2: Introduce yourself and your hobbies
Unit 3: Introduce yourself, your hobbies, and your important people
Unit 4: Introduce yourself, your hobbies, your important people, and your school life
Unit 5: Introduce yourself, your hobbies, your important people, your school life, and your food/drink preferences

My lesson plans are my slideshows, so I always have a slide prepared that looks something like the one below that I use after the fourth unit in my level 1 course:

Now, by the third or fourth unit, five minutes does not feel like enough time to answer all the prompts, and I’m actually okay with that! If my students feel like they have enough to write and talk about for five minutes, then I am content, and they will be able to see their own growth.

I have only been doing this in level 1 as students develop language, but this could easily be transferred to other levels for the purpose of building student writing portfolios.

How do I do it? – Procedure

  1. The first time I do it, I tell students that we are going to be writing as much as we can in L2 for five minutes. The first topic is to just introduce yourself, saying as much about yourself as you can in the L2!
  2. Students usually have a question at this point about the grading. I tell students that we are going to do this 5 times total throughout the year, and they will get an A if they increase their word count of logical German writing over the course of the year. (Which hopefully prevents students from just writing “My name is my name is my name is” over and over again.) If you have to take grades with certain frequencies, you can just set a very low goal for students to reach and then give them a good grade if they reach it, with gradations below that goal.
  3. At this point, I distribute the ~special paper and tell students not to start yet, but to put their name, the period, and the date on the paper.
  4. For the first Focus Write, I reread the prompt in L1, and then think aloud about how I might answer the prompt myself. As in, “(L1) Hmm, introduce yourself in German…(L2) My name is Herr Fisher-Rodriguez, I’m 33 years old, I am from California but I live in Washington… (etc etc).” In input-focused classrooms, students can sometimes get nervous about output, and might just need reminders of the kinds of things they certainly already feel comfortable writing about.
  5. Then, I set the timer…and let them have at it! I usually just observe students as they write, prompting slow starters with ideas or inspiration, if needed.
  6. After the five minutes are up, I compliment my students about how smart and awesome they are! I usually say something to the effect of, “I was reading what y’all were writing, and it looked really great and right on target!”
  7. For the 2nd-5th Focus Writes, I just remind students that they have done this (successfully!) before, and that this is just a chance to show off what they’ve learned since the last time we did this. My encouragement is to just beat their own previous records!

What do I do with it now that we’ve finished?

As mentioned above, I usually grade these fairly gently, mostly looking for growth over time. Follow your heart (read: the specific context of your job) for how to grade these, but remember that output grows so much more slowly than comprehension, and be realistic with your expectations.

Reading student writing (made simpler by only having them write for 5 minutes, HELLO) can also reveal what structures have really “stuck,” and which might need some more input. For example, maybe your students need more exposure to numbers and talking about age, so you can just make sure that any future input also includes ages, as appropriate. Marking things up with a red pen won’t do as much for their writing proficiency as just reading more, so provide lots of opportunities to read rich, comprehensible texts!

I keep a portfolio of my students’ “major works” from their entire time with me (Free Writes, Focus Writes, tests, reflections, etc.), so each Focus Write gets filed into their portfolio. What’s fun is later pulling them out, and calculating their percentage growth. Getting to tell a kid that they’ve increased their 5 minute writing output by 200% is a great feeling for everyone.

Pro Tips!

  1. Decide on your topics! These may be determined by your district’s curriculum, or alignment with some outside source. Then, no matter what you do throughout the year, you can remind yourself to orient class conversations toward those topics as you move along. Maybe you add in some breakfast/lunch/dinner conversations to your opening routines, or characters in your stories just so happen to extensively describe their friends and family. There is flexibility in the “how” in working towards the “what” here.
  2. Model! Write and Discuss is a great way to model the skills of writing, and guide students towards greater success while writing on a specific prompt. Slipping in a lesson similar to an upcoming Focus Write, and modeling the writing process can really help students be more successful.
  3. Keep them! Even if you don’t have portfolios for each student, demonstrating student growth back to students increases feelings of competence, which can increase student motivation. Make sure they get tucked away for future celebration.
  4. Use them! I used this one year as part of a Student Growth Goal during my evaluation cycle, and my evaluator was blown away by the data I was able to provide. Admin love to hear informed statements like, “these students I chose to focus on increased their 5 minute writing fluency by 100%, while also growing from using mostly Phrases (NM) to mostly using Simple Sentences (NH) with some Strings of Sentences (IL)!” Focus Writes provided both qualitative and quantitative data for these conversations. Check!
  5. Do other types of writing! This is just one way to elicit output from students – building diverse portfolios of student writing is essential for us to know what students have acquired, and what needs more input. I mostly focus on input for the first two years I have my students, so there is not a crazy amount of additional writing for them beyond Free Writes and Focus Writes, but variety is the spice of life!

What if I want to learn more?

This original tweet by Profe Jackie Camacho is what inspired me to write this post, so check that out!

What do you think? Do you feel ready to use Focus Writes? Comment below and send me any questions you might have!

Reflections from the 2023-2024 School Year

I feel like I get a little bit better at teaching every year, and part of that has been through the process of reflection. I did a reflection at semester, so here are my end-of-year reflections!

Anchor Everything to a Text

I came to a realization this year that sometimes, my class conversations were just floating in the air as sound. We would talk about something for a little while, and move on. I trained with teachers who did non-targeted CI, so I’m used to “discovering” new language as its need comes up, and writing it on the board, or conveying it using all my other skills. But that language sometimes would get that one use, and then it was gone. In reading the blog of Lance Piantaggini, I really had an “oh!” moment when he wrote to “always anchor to a text.”

Students need to be exposed to all that same language that came up in the conversation in a written text. This way, they can see spellings, writing conventions, grammar in context, everything – and get double the input. The texts can come from Write and Discuss (which I always tell myself to do more of), Embedded Readings, class novels, whatever – but I need to be writing more text on the board and getting more texts into student hands. Because reading is what? Fundamental!

Work the Language Even More – Gestures, New Readings, Parallel Texts

This reflection kind of comes from the previous one, which is that I could tell that sometimes, students just needed more meaningful reps on new language. I can work it more by incorporating more gestures (which I used to do more of and students would list as something they loved!), creating parallel texts of readings we’re doing, and trying to generate more cultural readings using the language we’ve been using in class recently. I’m really inspired by how SOMOS does this throughout its curriculum, and hope to create similar readings for my German classes as I continue to tinker with my homemade curriculum.

Changing IPA-Like Tasks to Be More Input-Heavy/Contextualized

I’ve been trying to find a good balance between teacher-created materials and unadapted materials to build students’ reading skills. The couple “IPA-style” tasks I did this year had mixed results, with some students totally shutting down. I think they need lots and lots of guidance and modeling, especially at the Novice level, to perform the tasks without my support. This means using more “authres” as Picture Talks, the final levels of Embedded Readings, etc. instead of being like “I know you can do it, here’s a thing!” (Sometimes, this happened this year because I was unexpectedly way more absent than anticipated and just had to throw something in front of my kids.)

Homework…?

I gave homework for the first time in my career this year (audience gasps). Results were mixed. I only gave it to my third/fourth year College in the High School class because It’s College and We Love Rigor, etc etc. As expected, some kids struggled to complete it and needed to stay in during our remediation period to do so. It was never worth tons of points relative to our in-class assessments, but it could still affect a student’s grade.

I’m toying with the idea of assigning homework in a zero-point category, and telling students that completed homework will help you get points back on assessments. (While secretly not actually giving extra points, but the students just earning them because the homework would hopefully help them just do better on assessments anyways?) Not sure how I want to handle this yet. Kids appreciated being pushed to engage with German outside of class times, but I need to do more reflection with them about what they actually find motivating and helpful to do.

For what it’s worth, they LOVED this Real World Homework assignment. They learned a ton from it, and I got linked up to some cool stuff I may not have found on my own!

Energizing Brain Breaks vs. Centering Brain Breaks

I managed to do more Brain Breaks this year, which was nice! It’s important to keep an eye on students’ energy and focus, and use Brain Breaks to get them back in the game, as necessary. And like…hopefully do it as a preventative measure instead of as a bail-out.

There is a big difference, I’ve found, between Energizing Brain Breaks and Centering Brain Breaks. My first period needed Energizing Brain Breaks to break out of the soporific morning doldrums. These are things like giving a certain number of high fives to other classmates, Rock Paper Scissors variations, spelling German words with their bodies, Peluche – anything that required quicker movement.

My after-lunch classes required Centering Brain Breaks. These could include mindful breathing, body percussion, TPR with body parts, trying to count as high as possible without two people saying the same number at the same time, etc. They had a LOT of energy that needed reining in, or a recommitment to focus at the end of the day. I’m going to continue to experiment with how different groups at different times of day respond to various Brain Breaks to see what works best for the mood!

More Knowledge of the World!

I just read an interesting book called The Knowledge Deficit, which was about how a focus on reading strategies has left students without many of the resources they actually need to read successfully: broad knowledge of the world! I want German class to contribute to my students knowing tons more about how the world works, so I’m recommitting to teaching my students more about geography, history, art, music, important people, politics in other countries, etc. through the language so that they can be more successful in all their other classes. (And in life, as well!)

…Less Spreading Myself Paper-Thin

This year kicked me in the butt. I missed more days of school this year than any other year in my career (including the year I got married and had a week of jury duty!). Part of the problem is my tendency to Do Everything. I want to continue to say yes to exciting opportunities, but also…say no to more.

I have dropped a couple things from my plate after this school year, and my current plan is to not attend any state, regional, or national conferences this school year. (Something that will help is that due to budget constraints, my district has paused our PD fund for one year, so there will be no money to go anywhere, anyways.) This is going to be a huge change for me, but I’m hoping to use the time to reflect more, have a more balanced life outside of school, and get healthier. Again, this year was a lot.

ATTENTION.

I saw a great video by Elicia Cárdenas recently where she threw a stuffed animal to a student and said, “Look! Because you were paying attention to me and the things I was saying, you could catch the stuffed animal. The stuffed animal is the new language. Now, if you’re not paying attention, you’re not going to be able to catch the stuffed animal, or the new language.” (And then she had a student pretend to not pay attention, and the stuffed animal bounced off of them as she threw it, and the class [and I] giggled.)

You only learn what you pay attention to. I have gotten better with time at channeling my students’ focus towards new language, and want to keep focusing on that as a goal for the coming year. This will mean better follow-through on my cell phone policy (one warning, then it goes into the German Cowboy Hat for safekeeping), more Brain Breaks as described above, and more discussion of how people learn languages successfully. All this, plus a healthy dose of modeling, should hopefully get us up to lots of attention in German class. (I also tell my students, hey, we don’t have homework because I want your complete attention here, so let’s make the most of it!)

Also important is What We Put Our Attention On. This is going to be learning things about our classmates, about the German-speaking world, and about the world in general. I, as the teacher, am going to try to limit how much attention I put into grading (because I hate it and it doesn’t help my students acquire anything), and comparing myself to other teachers. No time for that! Only time to be with my awesome teenagers and bask together in the beauty of the German language.

And you? What are your reflections from this school year?

Look Back, and Rest – A Reflection on Going Slowly

I was watching a video reflection by another teacher recently, and the teacher remarked that they had recently made changes in their instruction to go even slower than they had been going. The payoff had been that all his students were showing incredible gains, just from the single change of going so much slower.

Going slower required the teacher to provide even more repetition of the language and content to be learned, and to check in with each individual student and have them describe what was happening in the Target Language. The contention of the teacher was that before, by just developing strong responses to whole-class questions, he had been going too fast, and leaving students behind. That even though he had been implementing a Comprehension-Based Communicative Approach, he had been achieving the same level of student frustration and skill stratification within his classes as he had seen with a traditional approach. I shuddered.

For some reason, I flashed to a German class I had taught to other teachers as part of a conference. The class was fun, upbeat, and developed its own in-jokes (in German!) pretty quickly. They were all language teachers, so they just seemed to understand how things “should” work.

And there was one participant who wasn’t quite on the same ride as the rest of the class. She indicated that she didn’t understand as much of the language as she would like, and that some things were going over her head. She was more reserved than her classmates, and didn’t seem quite convinced that what we were doing was the right way for language teaching and acquisition.

I found myself overlooking her, even somewhat consciously, and just enjoying the laughter and creativity of her classmates. The class moved right along, and we generated tons of content from all the various activities I know how to do that made some great memories for us all. I convinced myself that the choral responses of her classmates would help surround her with the information she needed to be successful, that it would all click into place, eventually. She was trying – surely she would get it!

I look back now and feel sad that in a way, I gave up on her feeling successful in my German class. I had tried to repeat that “just getting the gist” was okay and totally where we all should be, but how much can one enjoy always just grasping at getting the gist? Especially while everyone else seems to “get it”? I can’t imagine how defeating, maybe embarrassing that felt. I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t turn around and start a Comprehension-Based Communicative Approach in her own classes, if she wasn’t already. I hadn’t really sold it to her. Success breeds confidence, and I had, in some part, withheld success from someone who was really trying.

I flashed forward, then, to my own classes now. I was embarrassed to realize that I could quickly name students in each class that I give a similar “overlook” treatment. Their classes are moving along, we are “covering content,” some of their peers are outputting in alignment with my goals for them. But what about their goals? What about truly everyone being along for the ride so there are not clear “strugglers” in each class, ones that come to mind quickly?

The video I watched was a reminder to go slow, slower, even slower. I want to:

  • check comprehension even more to ensure that everyone is along for the ride.
  • look into the faces of all my students as we engage in whole-class discussion.
  • ask more processing questions to make the language deeply part of each student, so they can enjoy it the same way that I do, that their peers do.

“Just holding on by the skin of their teeth” for some of my students just doesn’t work for me, for the inclusive vision I have built for my entire German program. I am on a weeklong midwinter break as I write this, and will return with a plan to go slow, painfully slow, stick with students, try my hardest to make sure that every student is experiencing success. I know that it will be hard, but that these adjustments will end up making all my students feel stronger, more confident, more like the German speakers they want to be.

Another set of images flashed into my mind:

For five summers in my twenties, I was the program director of an outdoors summer camp.  Every year, our staff included new counselors who, like me, had once been young campers at the same camp.

Reliably, these young staff members were thrilled at the speed at which they could hike with other adults, and would blaze ahead on the trail at grown-up speed.  But that also meant that they were leaving slower hikers behind, hikers who were inexperienced rock hoppers or who just needed an extra bit of time to get to the destination.  When they would eventually catch up, the fastest hikers were finished resting and would power on, leaving the slower hikers out of breath and scrambling to follow.

Eventually, frustrated by how these trailblazers were burning up the stamina of their peers, and that they were missing out on opportunities to slow down and connect with their peers on a personal level, I decided to be the voice in their head that would encourage them to keep track of their slower peers.  At intervals, I would shout up the trail: “look back!”  Those in the front would turn to check that they could still see the furthest hiker back, and would adjust their pace to keep the group together.

When we would stop to drink water or catch our breath, I reminded everyone, fast and slow, to rest.  The idea was not for everyone to just stop breathing hard and double up protection against blisters, but to really be ready to conquer the next stretch of trail with confidence, connection, and enjoyment.

We saw so much more, hiking together. The mood was so much brighter, even if it took us longer to get to our destination. And the young staff members were so much better prepared for the real-world task of being able to accept whatever skills and speed their young campers brought to camp during the actual weeklong camping session.

Maybe this is a good metaphor for what we must seek to do with our learners.  Look back, and rest.  If not, we run the risk of turning something as beautiful as the slow hike of language acquisition into a blur of exhaustion, isolation, and pain.

Go slow, colleague.  Slower than you think.  Look back, and rest.

Upcoming Webinar: The Personalization Mindset: Using Card Talk to Build Proficiency and Community

I’m super excited to announce that I will be presenting a webinar for ACTFL on using Card Talk to personalize language learning, and build the skills of creating comprehensible input and interactions in your language classes!

Who: The CCLT SIG and the German SIG (join for free if you are an ACTFL member!)
What: The Personalization Mindset: Using Card Talk to Build Proficiency and Community
When: March 4, 2024 from 4-5pm PST
Where: Online! Register for the webinar here.

As for why?
– Maybe you want to learn how to do the activity Card Talk because you’ve never done it before.
– Maybe you’ve done it before, but want to work through some trouble spots you encountered.
– Maybe you want to learn different ways to utilize Card Talk in your class.
– Maybe you’re looking to build more skills of creating comprehensible interactions with your students.
– Maybe you’re brand new to “teaching with CI” and just want to soak up as much information and perspective as you can!

If you’re looking for somewhere to get started, I have blog posts about Card Talk, as well as doing Card Talk online that can be a good place to start.

Looking forward to seeing y’all then!

Are you going to be there? Let me know in the comments below!

Reflecting on Fall Semester 2023

Inspired by the reflections of Bill Langley, I wanted to take a moment to look back at fall semester 2023 and reflect on what I learned and experienced.

Questioning

My goal for this year has been simple: more questions! Asking lots of what Mike Peto calls “Artful Questions” allow students to hear more language in context as students get repetitions on vocabulary and grammatical form. I think I’ve upped my “artful questioning” this year so that students feel very comfortable with new language pretty quickly. I was also super interested in this research article by Gardner and Lichtman, which showed that contingent questions (aka either/or questions) helped students be more confident and accurate in their own output – I’ve upped the volume of either/or questions in my classes and am looking forward to more confident student output!

What has also gone well for me this year has been adding more personalized questions with new vocabulary. I’m always trying to find ways to connect what we’re learning with the lives of my students, and I feel like I know my students better this year than any other year. When I’m unsure what to ask next, leaning into the use of Sweet 16 verbs and question words helps me find the next logical (and engaging) thing to ask.

Leaning Into Card Talk

I used to do Card Talk for a week or two at the beginning of the unit, and then sort of abandon it after interest had run out or I wanted to move onto something else. A lot of “cards” went unused, even with students asking if one day we would look at theirs.

What has been really nice this year has been returning to the “cards” from the beginning of the year throughout the semester. Honestly, any time I was struggling with planning and needed a quick “filler” that still felt worthwhile, displaying a new card and chatting about it with the class turned out to be super engaging for students. There has been lots of personalization in my class because of this foundational activity, and it’s been fun to see how much language growth we’ve achieved in one semester when we pick up and talk about a new card.

New Activities

Overall, I try to limit the amount of different things I do just to make my own planning easier and not have to teach new activities to my students all the time. It saves time and we can go deeper with language if we’re not constantly explaining new activity formats. But! I do love trying stuff out, and these three activities have been huge winners for me, so I’ll be keeping them in the rotation:

  • Quick Draw (AnneMarie Chase)
    This is a great, fun game to review a text that students are familiar with that takes the teacher off the stage and engages students’ competitive spirits. Students love drawing, and half of the fun is the images they create! But they’re also secretly reading and rereading a ton…! (AnneMarie is a master of secret input!)
  • Input-Based Vocabulary Quizzes (AnneMarie Chase)
    This is the first year of a dual-credit “college in the high school class” for upper level German, and I am beholden to a textbook for the first time since I started at this school. As such, I have wanted to make sure kids are getting lots of exposure to each textbook chapter’s vocab, and these input-based quizzes have been really great to meet the textbook’s goals while also meeting my goal of getting students lots and lots of contextualized input.
  • Hatschi Patschi (Cécile Lainé)
    I had heard of this activity before, but never saw how to implement it in my own classes until I read Cécile’s blog post linked above. Though it got a bit, uh, physical, my students LOVED this game. A great way to practice answering questions about familiar topics, and also have FUN.

TPR

I have used gestures in the past to help students remember specific target structures, but never done just classic TPR. I think part of what stopped me was not knowing what to start with and how to build up with it over time.

I got a copy of Berty Segal Cook’s Teaching English Through Action and everything clicked into place. By following (but also modifying for my own needs) the lesson plans provided, I was able to inject some movement into my students’ days, which really has helped with focus. Having someone else’s structure made it easy to modify for my needs (most specifically for my deskless classroom).

But it also helps with listening and vocabulary! TPR gives immediate feedback to both student and teacher, so it’s easy to see what needs more repetitions and practice before moving on. I’m a fan – I think 7-10 minutes of TPR most days will remain especially for my lower level students to build listening stamina and vocabulary.

Warm Ups

I’m still pondering on this one: I find that the same students aren’t doing my Warm Ups every day. Many are able to answer questions I ask while we are checking the warm ups, but my wish would be that they write down German at the start of class to get their minds into German mode while I have time to take attendance and check in with students.

I had contemplated handing each student a quarter sheet of paper every day with the warmup on it that they return to me at the end of class (the other blank side could even be used for the end-of-class Quick Quiz), but that feels wasteful. Having a warmup sheet with 2 weeks of spaces on it, like I do now, is more environmentally-friendly, and gives space for notes, new vocab they learn during the warmup, writing down our weekly Classroom Passwords…

Still thinking about this one. I’m thinking I just need to make clear that doing the warm up is part of our opening routines, and warmly insist that students follow the routine with greater fidelity.

Setting Up for Absences

I went from being almost-always at work to feeling like I was missing tons of days this year. Between ACTFL, family events, illness, and PD opportunities, I’m missing a lot of time this year.

Luckily, I knew about many of these things ahead of time and could plan for learning to happen, even if I wasn’t there. Part of the success I’ve had was training students on my expectations of where to find assignments if I wasn’t there, and part of it was setting up students with specific jobs for my absences that help the class function very well. Sub notes have been very complementary and kind, and work completion is up over other years, even on days where I was unexpectedly absent. Even in years where I am anticipating being in school most of the time, I will continue to train students to adjust to my absences without missing a beat.

Writing

I just purchased Eric Richards’ book Grafted Writing a couple weeks ago and have already implemented three of the activities into my own classes. I highly recommend it as a way to scaffold student writing in class in an input-focused way!

German Club Planning

This has felt really great: since I put out the call on social media that I was soliciting ideas for a German Club Ideas Master Document, so many teachers have shared their amazing resources with me, which I have been able to share back to other German teachers who are spread too thin. (A special thanks to Amanda Beck, whose Central States presentation on German Club activities formed the backbone for a lot of the list.)

The result of this is that German Club has gone from something that really weighed on me to something that is not at all stressful. My officers have resources to plan with so it’s not always on me, and we’ve tried tons of new activities this year that members have loved. Win win win!

What have been your reflections from fall semester 2023? Comment below!

ACTFL Policy Speech

Dear Reader – in November of 2023, I was a finalist for ACTFL National Language Teacher of the Year. Though I didn’t end up winning, it was an incredible honor to be nominated and to share the stage with four colleagues I now consider friends. And Alicia is a really incredible teacher and advocate, so really, everyone wins!

As part of the application process, I had to write and deliver a 3-5 minute policy speech, like one might give to a political group. This is not exactly my wheelhouse, but I did the best I could, with LOTS of help from JJ Melgar, my BHS colleagues, and my husband. I am posting it below in all its imperfection so that maybe you might learn something from my experience, too. I have tried as best I can to link all citations and sources, and get the wording as close to how it was when I actually delivered it. (The draft I printed got a lot of marking up, even in the final hours before I had to deliver it!)

So…here it is! Enjoy…? 🙂

Prompt: THREE-to-FIVE-MINUTE PLATFORM/TOPIC OF INTEREST SPEECH GIVEN TO A CIVIC GROUP OR OTHER OUTSIDE ORGANIZATIONS, MAKING THE CASE FOR WORLD LANGUAGES. (as taken from the ACTFL TOY Selection Rubric)

Do you remember where you were when you found the words for what you believe in?  Do you remember where you were when you realized how you will thrive, connect, and contribute in society?

For countless young people, these moments of discovery happen, as they did for me, in world language classes.

But we are at a moment in which we have an important decision to make: do we accelerate a trend of condemning K-12 and university language programs to wither and die, as is happening at West Virginia University and across our country, making the lives of our countrymen smaller, teaching our young people to cast a wary eye toward difference?  

Or do we champion a bolder vision, do we set our hands to the creation of a more prosperous society that can mediate those differences, do we amplify our collective pursuit of happiness through intelligent investments in multilingualism for all?

Consider: At present, the Census Bureau reports that 79% of US residents speak only English, and the American Councils for International Education estimate that less than 20% of K-12 students are studying a language other than English at their school.

At the same time, the demand for multilingual employees is rising across the skill spectrum, including in healthcare, trade, and technical services.  A survey by Ipsos Public Affairs indicates that “nearly one in four employers surveyed acknowledged losing or being unable to pursue a business opportunity over the singular lack of foreign language skills.”  Businesses across our nation are pleading for investments in a more multilingual workforce, and why wouldn’t they?

Studies show that multilingual people have better reading abilities than monolinguals.  Multilingual people have better overall academic performance.  Multilingual people even show more rational decision making in their additional languages, and craft more creative scientific hypotheses.  But these skills, these societal gains are lost with every program that gets abandoned.

I see the growth of these important skills in my own classroom across years of study.  My first year learners initially encounter cultural differences as strange and off-putting, but with time, they are more able to observe other cultures from a stance of suspended judgment.  Students move from using evaluative terms to more relative or descriptive terms for other cultures.  Not bad, not strange, but different.

Our profession has evolved from fill-in-the-blank teaching toward engagement with the authentic voices of other cultures.  Learners of German, Spanish, Japanese, are learning not only about, but with and from members of diverse cultural groups through multimedia documents on a wide variety of topics.  They are reading magazine articles about futuristic technologies, watching video essays about intercultural identities, and analyzing infographics for trends, all in their new languages. 

And instead of taking for granted what others might try to convince them about a given culture or group, they are listening deeply into these cultures and experiencing them through their own words.  This is what we stand to lose if we turn our back on multilingual education.

We turn our back on international connection and business, on reconnections with family and heritage, on opportunities to find shared belief and shared humanity.  Charlamagne is quoted as saying that “To have another language is to possess a second soul.”  A soul is something that you must nurture and care for.

We must nurture and care for multilingual education, and invest in its sustained growth.  We must nurture and restore funding to Title VI and Fulbright-Hays, which changed my life forever.  We must take care to pass the World LEAP Act into law.  We must invest in the protection of language departments like that of West Virginia University, so that our countrymen can thrive.

These programs are not in competition with initiatives in STEM, the trades, and vocational education: these are complementary and supportive initiatives.  They are pennies on the dollar investments in a more innovative, connected, and peaceful future.  I found the words for what I believe, and found humanity in myself and in others in a language classroom.  Let us be champions of that future of possibilities: multilingualism for all.

Thank you.