Skip to main content

Post #11: Deciding on Discourse



I think one of the most interesting things I have experienced in my practicum actually (interestingly) did not involve Spanish at all. One day in class not soon after the Parkland shooting, a few 8th graders began a discussion that ended up taking the whole class period--and to my surprise it ended up being really good. The students were actually quite respectful of one another and their opinions, and listened when Mrs. Vieceli reminded them to think about the story from all sides. I was surprised and impressed by the civility with which the students were able to discuss a controversial topic like gun violence--certainly more civil than the majority that were going on at the time.

A large reason why this discussion was able to happen, from my perspective, is the facilitation of the teacher. Mrs. Vieceli helped them along with questions and guided them away from trigger words that would cause arguments or unreasonable comments from the participants. I'm not sure I've heard that much maturity from eighth graders in my experience, and it was just very impressive.

The problem, of course, is that this discussion took place in English. I would be, like, 400x more impressed if it had taken place in Spanish, but I'm not sure even my advanced conversation students could handle that. Mature, deep conversation is difficult enough to promote in English; for most classrooms, it is nearly impossible to have in Spanish.

Why is that? Well, much of the problem with Spanish education lies in the lack of emphasis on communicative competence; instead, students are "taught to the test", expected to memorize grammar and vocabulary forms rather than being taught the function of the language. Students aren't motivated to learn that way, because it isn't meaningful. Yet it seems like communication isn't possible if students don't know what forms to use... and round and round we go.

How can we foster authentic conversation in Spanish to encourage students to actually use and practice the language? One way that has been shown to be effective is by allowing students to choose what to talk about. This can be achieved in many ways--through a survey at the beginning of the year assessing students' interests (which are then integrated into the texts and topics learned throughout the year), giving them multiple options for activities that they can choose from, or even permitting "chat" among students during class time--but only if it is in Spanish!

It's really interesting to see how much more students are willing to challenge themselves if they are invested in the topic of conversation. In the Intermediate I class I taught for a few weeks, I made a specific Spanish-only rule and regularly enforced it to encourage students to engage in even idle conversation in the target language. Even in the kid's class that I am teaching for my content area methods course, it made a world of difference when I told the kids that they could choose any favorite food to write about, rather than just using the vocabulary words. I've been in classes where, in response to students asking "How do you say [insert word of interest here]?" the teacher responded, "Oh, we haven't learned that yet. Just use a word you know." In my experience, that type of teaching leads to students feeling restricted instead of encouraged and motivated. And as in any area of education, unmotivated students really do not learn very well.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post #9: Aprendiendo el inglés como segundo idioma: Un desafío--y una bendición

When you look at the title of this blog, I would guess that immediately you recognized a word or two if you've had any instruction in Spanish--maybe the articles, maybe "inglés", but not too much else. Then going back and reading it again (like you probably just did), you could potentially decode the meaning--"bendición" is pretty similar to "benediction" or "blessing", oh wait, I learned "aprender" at some point, "segundo idioma"--that's got to be second language because this is the ESL blog post. So you've got the general idea now, but it wasn't immediate--you needed a moment to sort through it all. And that's assuming that you have some background in Spanish, which may or may not be the case.  For English language learners, this is a daily and near constant experience in school. Depending on the level of their abilities in the various language skills (listening, reading, writing, and speaking), ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Post #7: Merely Motivation

I'm not even a real teacher yet and I still ask the same question, the one that all teachers ask themselves at some point (or various points, if we're being honest) in their career: Why don't my students care? Why aren't they applying themselves? Why aren't they motivated? Especially if the content of a class is one that you have a lot of passion for (e.g., myself, Spanish, linguistics, culture, grammar... I'm a total nerd about them), it can be difficult to understand how students cannot see how interesting or important the content is for them to know. They should just... realize that, right? And yet, while there will always be those few bright and "self-motived" kids that are in it for the grades, motivation seems to be the constant struggle of education. Hinchman and Sheridan-Thomas (2014) suggest that part of the issue is due to our misunderstanding of the nature of motivation. Motivation is not easily defined, nor is it easily created but rat...
Post a Comment
Read more

Post #4: Understanding Understanding

There's this internal struggle that goes on in my head whenever Common Core is brought up. Many of my relatives are heavily right-leaning individuals that believe that CCSS is (a) a curriculum and (b) ineffective and making our students less intelligent and more confused. I feel like a parrot sometimes, telling them over and over again, "It's not a curriculum, it's a set of standards to make sure our students are all at the same level." "It's not a curriculum, it's a guideline that tells where approximately students should be at a certain grade level." "It's not a curriculum..." I understand that Common Core was designed to help improve education across the board and even the playing field that has been for so long wildly unequal based largely on socioeconomic status and racial considerations. The "greatest nation in the world" should not have such a disparity among its schools, and the creation of this set of standards...
Post a Comment
Read more