This'll be fun.
A warm welcome to you, and thank you for visiting my blog on foreign language learning. It may evolve into something
else, but for the moment I'm developing it for a class project.
The assignment: create a website for students learning French as a
foreign language.
The class covered several really neat open-source programs - HotPotatoes,
Audacity, Gimp, BlueGriffon. With these in the arsenal, I do believe that the brave language
teacher might sooner succeed in his quest.
What is the end of that quest? To help the students, of
course. But that begs the question, what dragons are THEY trying to slay?
Certainly the shy bloke with a crush on the French girl at the coffee
shop will have different motivations than the shining star of a young woman
hoping to work in diplomacy, no?
Enter the central challenge of teaching. Having been a
student for all my life and a teacher for but a few hours, my perspective is
limited. But the dilemma is well known: different students learn at different
rates for a variety of reasons, including interest, focus, self-esteem, etc.
This applies to many if not all academic subjects. So what is the teacher to do
when she has a class of twenty?
One approach is to develop more effective teaching methodologies
and classroom management techniques. It may work for some. In my experience, although
learning can take place in the traditional classroom, it is not the best setting for
foreign language learning, study, acquisition, or appropriation.
Here's why:
Language is for communication. When learning to use a foreign
language, we must learn how it is used by native/fluent
speakers. I tend to agree with Diane Larsen-Freeman's argument (see this) that grammar, indeed language itself, is an
emergent phenomenon. Very few languages have committees that sit down and
determine proper use, and even then their rules are taken as recommendations
(e.g. French according to l’Académie française, and French according to young
residents of Marseille). Patterns of
speech evolve over time, and we can call the sum of those patterns the grammar of
the language.
That said, it can be helpful to look under the hood of a language,
especially when starting out. The 'rules' of grammar both emerge from
centuries of evolving use and determine what is and is not
normally acceptable in different situations.
How should we teach grammar? Introduce a dictated rule, then give
examples? Or give examples, then ask students to figure out the emergent
'guideline'? Should we give them endless structural exercises and
formulaic role-playing activities so they can practice rigid requirements of
the language in question? Or should we let them express themselves like
children left with a bucket of paint and a white wall - can we accept a
beautiful thought without cringing at the grammatical formlessness of the
'modern art'?
This dilemma in teaching grammar is similar to other questions
about how to develop various other competencies - listening, reading, speaking,
writing, interacting, mediating, cultural awareness, etc.
I have perceived an identity crisis in the discipline of foreign
language teaching, as those entrusted with literally broadening student's
horizons stand unsure whether they should lead students and survey the
landscape click by click, fly across the world and jump right into the foreign
culture, or put up a fight to stop technology from driving them out of
business.
The whole debate about teaching methodologies is, I believe,
becoming obsolete as it becomes easier to access information. A l'époch,
if a young Iowan wanted to learn French, he had his teacher, and he had a few
books in the local library. Eventually, maybe he could get his hands on
some records of Charles Aznavour. Of course, the situation has changed.
People have instant access to digital archives of authentic material at
various levels of difficulty, in addition to many free linguistic and cultural
guides of various calibers.
The information is out there. For those with an Internet
connection, much of it is available free of charge.
Yet for some reason, we have yet to optimize the teaching of
foreign languages on a grand scale. Particularly in the United States.
Maybe......
Maybe we should think about learning rather
than teaching.
(If you've already come to this realization, forgive me for showing up late to the party with a lame costume and your hundredth bottle of bargain soda - and please comment if you've come to other conclusions than the ones I detail below.)
Learning rather than teaching, because we are here for the students, right?
And if every individual learns differently, should we really try to
control the what, how, and when of every learning opportunity for every
student?
Should the education system itself be concerned with producing
productive members of society with certain basic knowledge and skills?
Sounds nice enough. Or should we, as parents rather than
administrators, sensei rather than instructors, see to it that our children
have the opportunity to follow their own paths? We can give them a
compass and mark the trees, but I think that to fully appreciate the jungle -
not as a danger but as a refuge and a wonder - we must all, at some point,
decide for ourselves where to walk.
That is to say, the path to wisdom is a deeply personal
experience. That does not mean we should take our kids out to the Amazon
when they're 5 and come back to pick them up when they're 18, hoping they've
grown up. Interaction with others is essential to growth and
happiness.
So how to balance these two elements of learning? We need to
find our own way, but we could use some companionship. The jungle
metaphor breaks down at this point. If you and I are trekking through
Brazil and decide to split up, well, that's probably the end of our mutual
experience of the rain forest. In order that we may each
blaze our own trail independently, we must physically separate.
This is not the case when it comes to growing up in a town or city
in the modern world. At school, children remain physically in the same building with one another,
yet they do in fact find their own way. It
happens socially and it happens academically, despite our best efforts to
standardize and regulate – all with the best of intentions, of course. Unfortunately, we may be stifling children’s
curiosity and creativity by holding them to a curriculum, and we may be
encouraging them to misplace their priorities when we assign so much
significance to grades (see, for example, this, this, this, this, and this).
Most of the elements for a revolution in education are already
here. Accomplishing one will just take a little insight and ingenuity,
and most of all the will to effect a change.
Change for change's sake is not progress. Swinging the
pendulum to the other extreme for no other reason than to rebel against systems created by our
mothers and fathers – or political predecessors – is childish. What then, are the motives for such a
revolution in education?
We should change the way we look at education in the United States
(and many other places) because the emphasis is presently on outcome more than opportunity.
And if that's not bad enough, we fail to deliver on the promised outcome.
In my country, we pride ourselves on a particular political
preference for equality of opportunity over equality of outcome. For all
the ways we could still improve our system of government, we have generally
stuck by the principles that (1) it is impossible to attain or maintain
equality of outcome in nearly any sphere of human activity across a large
society - from wages to nutrition to happiness, and (2) even if we could, we
wouldn't go for it! A government with the power to grant equal wages,
nutrition, or happiness has the power to take it all away. The weight of
history requires us to be skeptical of such a system, for men tend to abuse
such power. Much better is the agreement
among citizens that a person is born with the right to live, be free, and pursue happiness
so long as she does not infringe upon the rights of others. When the
human spirit has the opportunity to grow as it will - supported by the trellis
of other loving souls, nourished by the amazing planet which we inhabit, and protected and challenged by whatever or whoever is behind it all - the result is so much more beautiful than any
mass-produced product of a self-proclaimed benevolent system of government. Legitimate human authority is still important, in education as in society, but we must take care. In our ambition to make the world a better place, we would do well not to define the limits of human potential or to foolishly promise its attainment through standardized programs.
*******
In the world of foreign language education, teachers often struggle
to help students acquire both the knowledge and skills to become successful
users of the given language in a given set of contexts. We stay up late
thinking about this: how to better manage our time so that students learn more?
What kind of new activity could I try to produce better results?
Return to the heart of the issue: an oak tree growing organically,
or a plastic cuckoo clock being assembled by cold steel fingers?
I'll be honest, I have immense respect for teachers. They
helped make me who I am today, and they suggested routes that, as I try them
out, are at this very moment making me who I will be tomorrow. As I try my hand at teaching as an intern, I realize how very challenging - and potentially rewarding - a profession it is.
With that said, I very humbly propose a new way of looking at
foreign language education. By no means the only or the most original,
and not necessarily the best. I've thought a lot about this over the past
months, and I'm still making it up as I go along. But that's the key -
it's organic. As Logan (1973) described, a successful program grows in response to
student needs and interests.
I intend to use this blog both to think out loud about how we can
transform foreign language education for the better (holding on to what works,
discarding what doesn't, proposing new ideas), as well as to trace out my own
path as I explore various foreign languages.
Here it is, the long-awaited proposal:
Blogs. Yep, that’s about
it.
Learning is a deeply personal experience of looking inward and
outward, of reflecting in solitude and of connecting with others.
Instead of prescribing syllabi and textbooks, let's take the
"blaze your own trail" concept seriously for once. It's what
happens anyway - unfortunately, if a student's own way diverges from the
curriculum, his report card reflects only the greatest distance he walked down
the accepted road, regardless of the marathons he may have run on another
course.
The keys to a successful blog-based learning experience are access
and accountability.
Access to the
Internet and other tools is, for many (but not all) people around the world, a
daily convenience. Organizing the
multitudes of relevant information and resources could be one job of the teacher, but
the motivated student will often find what she's looking for. It
certainly does not require the massive amounts of money spent on textbooks
which even in their entirety provide but a snapshot of the living world of a
foreign language. The reliance on textbooks over the Internet, however, seems still to be a defining element in many classrooms today.
Accountability is
another frequently missing element in today's classrooms. In my experience, some teachers are beginning to rely
more on technology, but it is rarely student-led. When it is - i.e. when
students are free to roam the Internet or watch TV - there is a real danger
that the time will be wasted.
Why?
Take a group of kids who are used to the restrictions of sitting
in class, tell them they're free to look up whatever helps them learn French,
and you may well find that many are watching unrelated music videos or perusing
social media. How would a responsible teacher react? I would expect her
to say, "you have to control the access, set limits, define
boundaries." I would bet that this freedom - and the teacher's
resultant lack of control over her classroom - would scare many educators and
parents.
Institutions will vary in their flexibility concerning Internet
use. This is understandable. But we must also understand that when young
kids come to see 'school' as boring or as a punishment, it is only a natural
reaction if they jump to YouTube when given a little freedom. The
Internet, for all its dark corners and daily distractions, can be a great tool
for learning. I am not advocating here for any particular change in
schedules or room arrangements (there are a lot of more fundamental changes we
can make to the education system). Nor do I think kids should spend their whole
school day staring at a computer. Rather, I only wish to assert that the web
can supercharge learning if used intelligently, and that if kids only use it for
trivial purposes upon being set free from the normal way of doing things, we
should have a little faith that they will find their way if they really want
to, with some guidance from us. Imagine time-traveling to the year 1900
and seeing a bright young 9-year-old sitting in a one-room school house in a
rural community. If you then take him to the Carnegie Library in New
York, would you be surprised if he spent more time reading Yeats than Euclid?
Enter the journal, the record of thoughts. Encourage
students to keep a diary, a journal, a blog. On paper or online, or both.
Allow them to keep it private, if they wish (otherwise they may be tempted to write what they think you want to hear).
This is the second part of what I am attempting to do in
Withinaword. I am sure others have tried this in the past and are trying
it in the present. I came to this method, honestly, because of the
confluence of two lines of thought: I was trying to envision a website for this class
project, and I was thinking a lot about how to improve foreign language
education. For the website, I wanted to create a way for learners to
track their own progress in a user-defined environment and share their thoughts
with others. I spent so much time mulling the concept over that I left little
time to code. I then discovered WordPress, looked into it, consulted
a review comparing it to Google's Blogger, went
with the latter for the time being, and thus began this project.
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. A blog
is a personal space that I can use to record my thoughts as I go through the
process of learning a foreign language (or anything for that matter). I
can embed videos and reference authentic texts, write up a summary or a
reflection, and ask for comments from others. The huge advantage learners
have today with the web is the opportunity of exposure to real language use.
If I can then keep a rough record of the most useful videos I watch and documents
I read, along with my responses and others’ comments, I may see more of a
benefit than if I simply spent two hours watching Italian news reports without
writing anything down. This is a
self-directed process with no clear path at the outset but with a clear goal of all-around improvement in language competency.
Consider the mangrove tree.
It germinates in the water and spreads its roots so as to trap dirt
passing by, which nourishes the plant and allows it to further spread its
roots. Eventually it creates an island
where there once was none. It does not
know which particles will pass by in the current at any given moment, but its
goal is to grow and survive. In the same
manner, I think one could develop foreign language proficiency by combing
through the Internet/books/films/language guides, recording and reflecting on
those experiences, and practicing oral and written production both on the blog
and in interactions with others.
When it comes to interaction, I am hopeful that forums such as the
language learning community on Skype will provide a workable solution.
Nothing beats a good friend who's a native speaker of the language you're
trying to learn, but video conferencing might have a future in supporting
education. One of the drawbacks I find in traditional classroom
interaction activities is that, no matter how willing the students or how
well-organized the process, the lack of context and exposure to native
non-verbal/para-verbal habits renders the whole experience inauthentic.
Activities such as impromptu dialogues may help in practicing linguistic
structures and even pronunciation, but there is so much more to interaction
than what is on the surface. Nor can such patterns of behavior be
efficiently studied and rehearsed so as to improve the authenticity of the
classroom exchange. Two American students talking in simple, broken
French is simply not the same as engaging in even the more basic of social
interactions with a waiter in Paris. Of course, there are limits to
videoconferencing, but it could be one tool in a successful, independent
learner's toolkit.
What else...grammar. There are many
resources out there. It is time to get over our fear of grammar and start
seeing it as our friend. It's what will help us decode a language that
looks or sounds very foreign to us in the beginning. We need not memorize
all the points of grammar - better to dive in and start working with authentic
material. But, perhaps, two or three 30-minute study sessions of the
essential grammar points and the 'little words' like pronouns and prepositions
could do a lot of good in the early stages. I prefer this way to the
method many textbooks use, whereby they unveil a few grammar points each
lesson. It's ok to take it easy with the linguistic terminology and
obscure moods and tenses, but an initial overview of how the language works -
even if you don't retain all of it - could go a long way. This could be
particularly useful for learners of a second language within one family - e.g.
I can speak French, now I want to learn Spanish, so going over the grammar of
Spanish should go more smoothly than if I were to do the same with that of an East Asian
language.
*******
In sum, blogging could provide a solution to the problem of accountability and record-keeping that we might otherwise see with self-directed language study. Years ago, we had little access to authentic materials and few opportunities to interact with native/fluent speakers, so our best option was to take a class. Nowadays, we have this incredible access, but too often, teachers and students either make too little use of it, or they get lost in the forest of information without leaving any bread crumbs. Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." I ask myself, and I ask you: what is true education but an engagement with the world and a reflection upon the experiences which, like rings on a tree, come to define one's life? Maybe, if we stopped stressing about our national rankings on standardized math and reading tests; if we moved away from our relatively-recently-adopted mentality of scientific control in areas of human activity; if we started to appreciate the concept of worldwide, instant digital communication as a powerful tool to help us achieve individual and collective human potential and harmony in this wonderful world of dirt and grass; and if we took more time to think...
just think...
we just might transform education.
we just might give our kids the opportunity to realize their dreams.
we just might save our species and our planet from the more dismal fate that awaits a slumbering society, one that has long since ceased to stop and simply...
think.
