Tag: vocabulary

PEARLL Summer Institute: Vocabulary

Last week, I attended the PEARLL Summer Institute lead by Rebecca Blouwolff. Rebecca is an absolute master teacher, so it was such a pleasure to learn from and with her.

I had originally planned on doing a post of takeaways for every day of the institute, but then I ended up taking a tumble during a morning run before Day 2 started and ended up in the emergency room. WOOPS. I’m totally fine – just scraped up – but I missed out on two days of learning, so here’s what I was thinking about coming out of day 1:

Setting goals for students = creating challenges for them, not to-do lists

This year, all three levels of German at my school will be offered as dual-enrollment classes for both high school and college credit. The college I have partnered with uses a textbook, which I have never done in my German teaching!

…and that textbook is quite, uh, traditional. I panicked a little bit when I saw the final exam, but then got my head on straight and am determined: I will teach any required vocabulary and grammar as contextualized as possible. This will require some thoughtful backwards planning, and some creativity when it comes to choosing contexts that bring all the isolated vocabulary lists from the book together into input and interactions that make sense.

Of course, the textbook has goals like “Ask and answer questions about someone’s hobbies” and “Describe the major geographical landmarks in a city” as facades to disguise the underlying strict grammar agenda, so my task this year will be to figure out: why? Why does a speaker of the language do these things? In what contexts?

A fellow participant framed the selection of Can Dos by saying that communicative goals “feel more like challenges to our students, versus just long to-do lists.” That is helping me engage my creativity: what problems are our students solving when we do these communicative acts? What will make them feel excited, creative, challenged?

I haven’t fully fleshed out my planning for each level with this lens yet – still hanging on to summer – but I love the idea of a creative “challenge.” As I get closer to the school year starting and have had time to meet with my first-ever student teacher (!), I’ll try to make a post outlining my planning mindset as I work through this challenge.

Dividing up vocab lists: prompt students to build their personalized vocabularies

Rebecca showed us some example unit vocabulary lists, and they were divided into three sections: 1) I need to know how to produce this in order to complete a task, 2) I need to be able to recognize this in order to complete a task, and 3) other language that might be interesting to know and use.

Section 1 (the MUSTs) contained mostly high-frequency vocabulary relating to a thematic unit, including some items referred to as “grammar-as-vocabulary”. That means providing not just an infinitive for verbs, but verbs conjugated to subjects, perhaps even including a common preposition that follows. Sometimes, it was entire phrases that just needed to be completed by an appropriate noun or adjective. Language learners acquire different conjugations more as vocabulary, rather than as “take-infinitive-chop-ending-add-new-ending” as traditionally taught, so this made good sense to me.

Section 2 (the recognition section) contained lower-frequency words and phrases that might help support interpretation of unit texts (including terms that would get students through authentic resources dense with unknown vocabulary). Interestingly, Rebecca also includes the “you-form” questions that undergird the unit theme: “What do you like to do in your free time?” “Which do you prefer?” “When do you…?” She’s not expecting students to produce these from their noggins spontaneously, but they will come to recognize them through scaffolded interactions throughout the unit.

Section 3 (interesting to know and use) is where students can really personalize their learning. I have tried variations on this before – including having a “My Dictionary” section on the back of any vocabulary sheets I give students in anticipation of texts we use in class – but nothing has really stuck. What made this click for me is the realization that students need strong lists of useful, high-frequency language about a topic (found mostly in section 1), but also training on how to expand and track their own personal vocabularies.

Students can learn personal vocabulary from their Free Choice Reading books, from texts explored in class that have words glossed or explained in/by context, by asking their teacher for a word, by looking words up themselves. I think having conversations about the ways we can pick up new vocabulary that’s meaningful to us, as well as compelling their need by asking good, interesting questions in class, will help students put booster rockets on their language acquisition AND their motivation. It feels good to know the words you want to know!

Match vocab list to unit Can-Do statements

This one hit me like OH! …woops. Rather than giving the long list of every possible term related to a topic, really narrow down vocabulary lists to mostly include high-frequency formulations, and make sure that each term is matched to one of the performance objectives of the unit. Ding!

Maybe if a term is only really related to an Interpretive Reading or Listening task, it can just go into the “recognition” section of the vocab list. High-frequency, adaptable terms (“I play…” “I live in (a)…” “I feel…”) can stay in the “MUST” section, and what follows can be sorted by how frequent it might be to your learning community. The 10,000 possible ingredients for a favorite meal? Ditch them, and pick higher-frequency terms to replace them. (So maybe not every possible type of meat, for instance, but just…”meat”!)

And if it doesn’t match a specific performance objective, but lives in the topical universe? DITCH IT. MAKE THE LISTS SHORTER. Long vocabulary lists do not make kids learn more words. Exposure to large amounts of comprehended input in different contexts makes kids learn more words! And this all needs to be contextualized within the framework of a given unit.

These are my developing thoughts for now. What do you think?

What if I want a vocab list?

Generally, in CI World, we know that students acquire vocabulary most efficiently from comprehensible messages in the Target Language. That means that Ye Olde Vocabulary Lists of yore are not quite as helpful as we used to think. Trying to memorize them engages the brain’s explicit/conscious learning faculties, versus the implicit/unconscious learning that is capable (and more durable, in the case of language) when focusing on getting students as much comprehensible input as possible. For this reason, many CI World teachers have ditched vocab lists and just focus on providing rich, repetitive, compelling comprehensible input in class. And that’s all!

…but what if I want a vocabulary list? What if my students want one? There’s something satisfying about the neatness of a list. It implies and provides structure, and is something to refer to when feeling lost. And maybe your department/school/district requires that you provide and teach students thematic/semantic sets of vocabulary. This is the situation I’m currently in with my school’s Spanish department (I’m a singleton with German – I have more freedom there), so this is something I’m thinking about this year as well.

We have to be mindful that students sometimes struggle with classes that don’t “look” entirely “like school.” Especially in the early levels, we’re mostly asking students to just listen, read, and show that they understand. That is VERY different from any other class they have taken, where they may have to take and summarize notes, respond frequently with their own thoughts, elaborate on those thoughts, work out individual written responses to prompts, etc. Just understanding what you hear and read sounds like a murky goal – even if we as teachers know that it is what they need. But maybe having a vocabulary list gives students the comfort they want in “learning” the language when we secretly know that we are creating class such that they acquire the language.

This question actually opens up to two different contexts with distinct solution sets, so let’s explore each context and see how we can best support our students on their quest toward language proficiency.

Context 1: I have a mandated vocabulary list

This context is affecting my Spanish teaching this year. This year, I’m teaching second-year Spanish. I’ve come in to a new school whose Spanish department adheres pretty closely to the scope and sequence provided by a textbook, which is not how I teach. But! I was told that as long as I cover the vocabulary and structures present in the chapters my department uses over the course of the year, I can teach however I want. My district seems big on teacher autonomy, which is truly a blessing.

So, what am I going to do? Here have been my plans for “covering” the vocabulary lists I’m expected to cover this year:

  • Calendar Talk: Calendar Talk is great for introducing all sorts of new vocab, because it necessarily includes compelling events from students’ lives. In addition to reviewing the Spanish 1 calendar basics (days, months, etc.), we’ll be able to review future plans, and start talking about what students did over the weekend. A seamless and natural introduction to the past tense forms!
  • Card Talk: Card Talk can be angled to introduce any subject – check the linked post for ideas how to use Card Talk prompts to push conversation towards thematic vocab. School unit? Have kids draw what goes on in their favorite class. Talking about places in town? Have kids draw their favorite spots, and go in on what is around them, where they are located, etc.
  • OWI: Specify that the One Word has to fit some sort of theme – it has to be an article of clothing, it has to be a toy of some sort, it has to be a food, etc. This will likely draw in other related vocab – pieces of clothing are often friends with other pieces of clothing, for instance. #BillylaBufanda
  • Storytelling: As with OWIs, unscripted stories can be angled towards problems that mirror the language introduced in a thematic chapter. An OWI that is a pencil can be at school and have some sort of problem with its history teacher. Or, you can go the route of purposefully building in vocab list vocabulary into stories. Or let someone else do it for you! I am a huge fan of Anne Matava’s Story Scripts, just because they’re so wacky and fun, and I’ll definitely be using “You, In the Corner!” and “An Important Test” early on during the school unit because those have always inspired much hilarity.
  • Picture Talk: Picture Talk can be used to kill 2 birds with 1 stone – I can pull up an image from the Target Culture, and discuss both what is going on in the picture, and if it is different from an analogous context here in the US!
  • Story Listening: Now, I don’t do Story Listening exactly as Dr. Mason describes, but I love using it to include cultural tales in my classes. I think it will be a fabulous way for students to hear lots of natural language, and because I’m teaching Level 2, it will be good for them to hear the different Spanish past tenses in natural contexts.

There are so many ways to weave in “required” vocab – we just have to be a little creative in sequencing our classes and providing specific communicative contexts so that the vocabulary just happens to come up. (Or, it just seems that way to our students! *wink*)

I think you can also get your kids in on it a bit, too. I explicitly told my students that we have to do similar stuff to what the other classes have to do, but that we’ll try to make it as fun as possible. If we ever run into a situation where interest is waning, we can remind ourselves that we’re doing our best to have fun and “cover” all the stuff. Kids usually like a conspiracy…er…challenge. *wink again*

Context 2: I do not have a mandated vocabulary list

This is my situation with German this year! I am the best only German teacher at my school, and my district (again) provides teachers lots of autonomy, so I have a lot of freedom to teach whatever vocab seems best. For me, I am aiming for natural language usage. So, I’m creating contexts for communication, and we’ll use whatever language comes up!

This does lead to things being a bit unpredictable, and honestly, I’ve found it difficult in the past to keep track of what I’ve said to whom. Sometimes I find myself “introducing” a gesture for a verb, and the class is like “omg Herr Fisher get it together, we got this!” Other times, I have discovered that a fairly high frequency / useful word hasn’t come up in a long time, or at all, and I end up doing mental gymnastics trying to introduce it to the class.

Then, I stumbled upon this article by Justin Slocum Bailey, who is an outstanding Latin teacher and teacher trainer. He had an idea that was so simple, I went YEAH: just ask kids at the end of class what words/phrases were most central to the day’s interactions, and what seemed most useful. Boom! The students help you build out a vocabulary list, so there’s a feeling of mutual responsibility. You can then just make a spreadsheet (I keep mine in a Google Spreadsheet) with all the language you’ve used, so you know what each class has heard and used. Boom!

I also check back on my Write and Discuss from each day to see what has come up in class. I write mine by hand on the board to keep them shorter, and then type them up into a Google Doc during my prep. I do this in conjunction with asking the class, because sometimes certain language stuck out to them more, and that language doesn’t always necessarily show up in the Write and Discuss. (See: a super random vocab word a kid asked for during class, a fun interjection, you accidentally taught a swear word when you walked backwards into a chair and fell over and politely remind your students to never ever use ever, etc.)

Now what do I do with this word list, once I have it? The first thing is feel relieved, because if anyone ever asserts “we (they?) don’t even do anything in there!” I can whip the list out and be like “well then, what is all this language we’ve used?! (dramatic music)“

I also have thought out some other, non-affective uses for such a list, which could include:
– Building new readings that are recombinations of familiar vocab, either for days when I need to sit to refrain from dying, or for performance assessments (both throughout an instructional cycle, using AnneMarie Chase’s Quick Quizzes, or at the end).
– Spiraling the vocab that appears in my Bell Ringers, which are usually reading (input!)-based.
– Playing games! I could easily make these a Quizlet set for students to study, if they should so choose, which easily turns into either a Gimkit or a Quizlet Live. Same idea with a Kahoot!
– Printing the list for a parent or child. Sometimes they just want some sort of proof, something to study. This could be it!
– Reminding myself of other useful stuff that hasn’t come up yet – and then magically bringing it up!

Sometimes, you might want to target other useful vocab that could wow their next level teacher and make your classroom life more flowing. Slip a new word or phrase into the classroom convo when it makes sense, and boom! You have a more proficient user of the target language.

Overall:

If we communicate to our students via lists, they will produce…lists. I’m aiming to use class time to communicate in real questions, statements, stories, etc., so that hopefully one day, my students will be able to do the same. But for as long as we need to hold onto the idea of the vocab list for the world language classroom, then we can certainly provide – and make it useful to us, too!

What do you think? Do you have to follow a set list, or do you have more freedom? Do you have an argument for vocab lists that I’m not thinking about? Let me know your thoughts and ideas below!