Response to Chris Cashman - part 2 - Learning vs Acquisition

This is part two of my response to Chris Cashman's questions, which can be seen here. Part one of my response can be seen here. I have put Chris' text in blue so you know whose words belong to whom.

First of all, I’ll share some common points between how I teach and some of the methodology you brought up. But then, I’ll launch into a big gap that remains for me – a gap from what you shared, and the lack of response about it when I post about these things on other blogs, discussions with colleagues, and ACTFL Discussion Boards. Still coming up dry.

The thinking behind your grammar videos actually overlaps a bit with the pattern that I myself use to present grammatical structures – and vocab too, actually (I give vocabulary lists for four out of eight units in Spanish 3).  

Keep in mind that the grammar videos are there to help others learn Spanish. They are not necessarily made for my students. While some of my students use them, I would say that the majority does not. And considering the medium (online), it is very hard to replicate what goes on in my class with the internet since what I do is not lecture at all, but instead incredibly interactive and contingent upon my students to provide feedback, ideas, reactions, input, etc.  Meaning: we have conversations in the TL on a variety of topics.

Día 128 - Quizzes

I don't think I've talked much about assessment yet this year.  The problem is I don't really know yet how to create a wonderful summative assessment tool.  I have so far decided to use formative assessments.  For those of you not familiar with the terms...

A summative assessment is basically the assessment we do that shows the students have learned from the unit, such as a test, a paper, or a presentation.  It's a big assessment.

A formative assessment is what we use along the way to track the students' progress so we can possibly help them before the summative assessment (test, paper, presentation).  These could be quizzes, worksheets, classwork, or anything that gives the teacher an idea of how the students are progressing with the material.

Well, I really like the formative assessments.  I am the foreign language department at my small rural school.  As a result, I haven't been too worried about creating massive tests for my students.  Instead, I have been giving 3-5 point quizzes constantly.  I try to do at least 2-3 a week when possible.  This is so I can constantly chart the students progress.  Another formative assessment in TPRS are the writing assignments for students to write in the language.  This has proven helpful to see how students are doing as well.

I like these assessments because they are realistic and as I chart my students' progress, I am able to go back and help on things that they aren't quite grasping yet.  The silly thing is that the quizzes I give are over the stories that we talk about in class.  As a result, the quizzes are so silly because our stories are often silly.  This also helps the students to succeed on the quizzes because they are able to remember more pointless information such as the names of silly characters or why they looked weird or what their problem was.  The best part though is that it's sneaky teaching because they think that the quiz is incredibly easy and forget for a moment that the whole thing is in Spanish.

I love when students tell me that a quiz was easy.  That means they were paying attention to the meaning (and not worrying about the language which is naturally being acquired).

I should do a few summative assessments though throughout the year.  I hope to worry more about that next year.  This year I might try and give a test over the main structures and some other vocabulary we've gone over to make sure they're getting it.  But the quizzes reflect the learning from the students and that's good enough for me to defend myself.

Día 42 - I don't know enough Spanish

I've been trained to speak Spanish according to the rules of grammar and there are many things I can probably not talk about at great length from lack of conversational practice in those areas or lack of interest.  The daunting task when one teaches with TPRS is that a teacher might never quite know where the story could go if they are asking questions and relying on the answers from the students.  Sure they can guide the students in their information. 

But today I have come across some words I had to make sure of in the dictionary during class.  I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing.  I am hardly a dictionary in class.  There are many words I have never had to use in Spanish such as 'cheetah'.  Yesterday as I looked it up during a storytelling session, the students were amazed that I had never learned the word in Spanish.  But hey, I can talk for hours upon hours about literature analysis thanks to my college classes.  I mean, that's the important stuff right? 

Doesn't do my students much good.  The idea I am working on is to model to students that it's ok for me as the teacher to not know every word in the Spanish language.  I also like storytelling because they reveal to me the things I am not sure how to say and thus I have to learn them.  Through teaching, I have probably learned quite a bit more about Spanish than in my graduate classes about the language because I was exposed to the questions I hadn't thought of about it by my students.  Since I am no longer coming from a fresh vantage point, I appreciate my students pointing things out to me that I had not ever seen.

So in short, whether it be best practice for foreign language teachers or not, I don't mind admitting that I don't know all the words. ;-)

Heck in my previous post or two, I learned that 'snuck' is not standard English.  The standard word is 'sneaked.'