Part of my adjustment to the school has been dealing with the change in teaching style. For years I have been trying to teach language in ways that have been proven to be effective. Generally that means that I've need to avoid being "a teacher" as much as I can. Instead, I've focused on motivating students, giving lots of comprehensible input,
lowering stress, and creating opportunities for real communication.
Motivating Students
When I was a linguist in the U.S., I was trained in how to study
languages. Our courses were intense and had 60-70% failure rates.
Statistics on students who passed the courses showed that they were
motivated while the students who failed were not. The number on
correlating factor for success in language programs was motivation: it
was more important than curriculum, teaching method, or even the
ability of the teacher in the language being taught.
My first priority in a language classroom is, therefore, to motivate
my students. The students who are motivated will pass, and those who
aren't won't. Different students have different motivations, of
course: Some want the approval of their teacher, some want to prove
themselves in the eyes of their peers, and some have more private
motivations. I am pretty good at finding my students' hot button,
which is the main reason that I have been successful at language
teaching. If a student needs more challenge, I give it to him or her.
If the student needs someone to appreciate him or her, I'm there. It
is exhausting work.
Sadly, most of what we do in class is not motivating for the student.
Twenty minutes of "Listen and Repeat" followed by memorizing an
incomprehensible role play does nothing to make the students want to
speak English.
Comprehensible Input
According to modern models of how the language center of the brain
works, language is acquired, not learned. The traditional model of
teach, drill, and exercise is not particularly effective in getting
students to really use the language.
Stephen Krashen's 1981 publication on comprehensible input shined a
light on how the language center works:
1) Listening or reading which is slightly above the level of the
student allows him or her to use contextual clues to learn new
vocabulary and grammar;
2) Authentic material presents the students with realistic use of
vocabulary, grammar, and word co-location;
3) Engaging material keeps the student interested and motivates him or
her to try to understand; and
4) Comprehension comes before production.
A typical, effective unit spread over four classes would start with
listening and reading on a topic which is familiar and interesting to
the students, from which the students can extract the target
structures and vocabulary. Receptive activities (with correction)
through the first two days would help the students absorb (acquire)
the language. Topics would vary and include many kinds of language
already studied. The final two lessons would move into productive
activities, emphasizing subjects which the students want to write or
talk about. This means that the student has a good amount of freedom
in choosing (sub-)topic and method of presentation. The third class
period would use a shorter, simpler topic than the final class for the
unit.
As you can guess, we don't do that, either. We have listening which is
either too easy or too difficult for the students. Mutli-level classes
don't help the situation, but many of the topics are too difficult
even for middle school students. The material is boring and
unrealistic. We rush into production from the first class.
Lowering Stress
Stress is a large factor in whether a student acquires language or
not. The greater the stress, the less is absorbed. Shrum and Gilsan
list the most stressful activities as:
1. Read silently to self
2. Repeat as a class
3. Writing homework
4. Book exercises
5. Group work
6. Projects
7. Team games
8. Repeat individually
9. Open, free discussion
10. Interviews
Medium stress activities are:
1. Pair work in preparing a skit
2. Read aloud
3. Listening exercises with written component
4. Speaking one-on-one with instructor
5. In-class writing
Standing in front of the class giving a presentation is, predictably,
nowhere on this list.
Comprehension Before Production
Well, you can guess that we don't do this, either. We rush to
production on the first day, introducing the vocabulary for the unit
and playing "Listen and Repeat" with incomprehensible vocabulary and
pair work, expecting the student to pay attention when they can
understand nothing about what's going on.
Conclusion
Weather is a good, recent example of a failed unit we did. "How's the
weather?" is a common phrase taught in older language books, but is
unrealistic and offers no interest to the students. Have you ever been
in a room and asked someone else how the weather is today? Discussing
the weather is common, but asking about it isn't. Focusing on
discussing the differences in weather between countries, cities, and
seasons would be a more engaging topic. Broadening the discussion to
activities and food during different weather conditions will make it
more interesting. Bringing in what students are studying about weather
in science class (with a much simpler set of vocabulary and syntax)
will make the topic relevant to the student. Using geography in the
class would also be easy.
I'm not blaming the teachers. They are good teachers and moved to this
position because the administration trusts them to teach well. I don't
want to insult them.
I made a mistake last week when I was talking to the teachers and
discovered that they had all just begun teaching language. "Now I
understand," I said. I think that I hurt Mi Sook's feelings. I didn't
mean to. The truth is, though, that teaching language is different
than teaching science or history. The methodology is almost reversed.
I understood why our classes were so much like math or morality:
that's what the teachers were trained in.
We should really have a language teaching course for the department.
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