Category: Reading

Horizontal Conjugation: Re-Reading and Grammar in Context

Rereading a text is a powerful way to increase students’ acquisition, so we have to get clever about giving students meaningful tasks that help them reengage with texts, giving their brains more chances to acquire different aspects of the language. In addition, any discussion of “grammar” or “language structures” needs to be contextualized and connected to the meaning that those structures convey. I love Horizontal Conjugation for hitting these two goals!

Why should you do it? Because Horizontal Conjugation gives an opportunity for another meaningful engagement with a text, while also contextualizing discussions what the “forms” of grammar actually mean. Once you have taught students how to do it, Horizontal Conjugation can go into your rotation for whenever you need a rereading activity that gets you off the “stage” for a while.

When do I use Horizontal Conjugation?

You will want to use Horizontal Conjugation with a text that students are very familiar with, and a narrative works best. These could be stories co-created out of an OWI character, or perhaps scripted stories. You could also conceivably do Horizontal Conjugation with information learned about students in class via Special Person Interviews, or Card Talk. In short, you need a text that is about a person or people, not a general informational text about a topic.

Student familiarity with the language is also key. I would use Horizontal Conjugation during a second or third “pass” at a text, so that the difficulty lies not in interpreting the text (as for a first time), but rather changing the perspective of the text.

How do I do it? – Logistics

Make sure students have a copy of the base text. You might project the text, but having a copy in hand is best. You can also provide a second sheet of paper onto which students can write the Horizontal Conjugation text, but they can always use the bottom half of the page, or the back of a page, if there is room.

How do I do it? – Procedure

  1. Tell students that we will be rewriting the text we have been reading from a different perspective. (Do this in L1 or L2, depending on the level of your students.) Use this to review perspective, which will maybe win you love points from their ELA instructors. “What perspective is this text written from? Hint: it’s ___ person…” Once they have identified the perspective (1st person, 3rd person, etc.), provide lots of examples of that perspective in L1 and L2. “Ah, this is 3rd person perspective because we’re saying HE does this, HE does that. ER geht in die Schule und ER sieht seinen Deutschlehrer Karaoke singen.”
  2. Tell students that we are going to pretend that we are now the character/real person in question, and will be retelling it from our own perspective. Instead of retelling events as if some 3rd person did them, we will be saying “I do this, I do that. I go to school and I see my German teacher singing karaoke.”
  3. Model this for a few sentences for your student. I typically have them translate a line into the L1, ask what that same line would sound like in the other perspective (still in L1), and then ask what that would be in the L2. I then write it up on the board.
  4. After completing a few lines of this together, I reread the new text written in the other perspective, and often have students translate it back one more time just to emphasize that it is in the new perspective. This is a natural time to point out the language features that convey the perspective (verb endings, pronouns, possessives, etc.).
  5. Once students are getting the hang of it with my guidance, I set them to working on it independently, or with a partner.
  6. Once most students have completed, I share how the text should look if fully converted to the other perspective, and usually have students trade their work with a partner for them to check it.

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

You have generated a new(ish) text with this activity, so you can do any literacy activities you like with it. That being said, it is also wise to not beat a text to death for fear of boring our students to death, so it’s also okay to move on once the activity is complete.

I sometimes take student copies of the new text for a completion grade, and/or have them put the newly created text into their binders as another text they can read as “review,” aka for more input.

Pro Tips!

  1. Provide lots of modeling! This is a very “language class” activity that takes a second to get your head around – it’s not something we do often out in the world. Thinking aloud about how to change the perspective helps students do this thinking for themselves, which is actually getting them to think about what parts of the language convey the information about perspective. Maybe this will help them notice and acquire these features, or maybe it’s just a good strategy to satisfy any demands for you to “teach grammar”.
  2. Provide a word bank! Students with a lot of language may be able to do this activity more independently without a word bank, but Novices can benefit from having correct forms nearby to help make the changes. This obviously is very helpful if you have stem-changing or otherwise irregular verbs and you want to give students the feeling of success on the first try.
  3. Maybe you don’t do this for some languages! As I was typing this post, I was thinking about Japanese and Chinese, which don’t have subject-verb agreement. If you were “changing the perspective,” it might be just changing out pronouns, and that could feel silly. Horizontal Conjugation works really well to show how verb forms influence meaning, so if this is not an issue in your language…try a different rereading activity!
  4. Retell story in the past tense! An alternative to changing perspective might be changing the tense. If a story is told in the present tense, it can be flipped to the past tense with a prompt like “Imagine this story happened yesterday. How might it sound then?”
  5. Try out plurals! I have seen some teachers use a prompt like “Imagine that the main character has a twin, and they are inseparable!” This forces students to use 1st person plural forms.
  6. Turn it into an opportunity to develop empathy! A story told about someone else puts some distance between the teller and the subject. Reworking something into a first person perspective might be an opportunity to place oneself in the shoes of another person. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? How might they be experiencing their story differently than I would? Why?
  7. Starting this later is okay! The temptation to “teach about conjugation” has historical precedent in how languages are taught: level 1 is for “mastering” the present tense, level 2 is for the preterite/imperfect, etc. Students need lots of written and auditory input of different forms to acquire them, so they will have a more intuitive grasp of this concept the further along they are in developing their linguistic systems. I start Horizontal Conjugations with my level 2 students – and it’s been a great at-level task because they have the linguistic resources to start thinking metalinguistically!

What if I want to learn more?

Here is a blog post from The Comprehensible Classroom about Horizontal Conjugation, with a handy graphic at the bottom to remind you of how it works! This second post describes using student Free Writes as base texts, which would be so fun, and a way to honor student writing. Martina also made this video explaining the process!

Here is Elicia Cárdenas’ great post about how she thinks about grammar instruction in her classroom, and how she differentiates Horizontal Conjugation in her classroom.

Here is a video of Sil Perera presenting to the Northern Indiana TCI Conference explaining Horizontal Conjugation.

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

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!