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Working With Emergent Language

What is emergent language and why is it important to language teachers?

One way of answering is that emergent language is the language that comes out of casual communication in the classroom, the word that a learner may have heard (or misheard) but is still waiting for the right encouragement to be uttered, or even the gap in a phrase that’s waiting to be filled.

As a matter of fact, we, as teachers, are too often worried about “teaching the Unit”, “doing the exercise”, and “practicing the structure” to the extent that we can forget about the fuzzy nature of language, the complexity of its paths and the unpredictability with which some language items are maintained in the process of language acquisition while others seem to be forgotten, only to resurface some time later and then return to the background and so on.

By forgetting these aspects of language learning, we are actually trying to swim against the current, and, worst of all, we’re expecting our learners to do that together with us. This is the reason why it’s important to recognise that there is a linguistic space, between that part of memory where we store information for long term retrieval and “working” memory, where words and grammar are stored for use, but not consolidated yet, where we can have an idea of the direction in which the “river” of each learner flows.

But while most theorists nowadays recognise that language acquisition is also a subconscious process that results from informal, natural communication, in which emotions and even the biographical memory of the individual play a fundamental part, how can we create in the classroom the same conditions that would occur in casual, relaxed conversation?

As Scott Thornbury recently commented in his blog, “language emerges in second language learning situations, especially when learners are engaged in communicative interaction. The learner talks; others respond. It is the scaffolding and recasting, along with the subsequent review, of these learner-initiated episodes that drives acquisition.”

As teachers, what we can do, is to create the right context for the learners where they can engage in the communicative interaction, supported by the teacher providing vocabulary or other forms of support, from simple encouragement to the recasting of a phrase.

One activity that I find very successful to this purpose can be found in the book by Ken Wilson entitled “Drama and improvisation”. The name of the activity is “T-shirts”.

The preparation is not overly complicated:

The teacher cuts a t-shirt for each learner and one for himself out of a big sheet of paper.

To offer a model to start with, he/she needs to draw on the t-shirt something that is related to aspects of his life.

Then he will ask the learners to ask questions about the drawings.

After having finished all the questions related to the teacher’s t-shirt, the learners will be invited to draw on their own t-shirts pictures of things that are meaningful to them.

After that they will be encouraged to ask questions about their classmates’ drawings.

The teacher’s role is fundamental in that he or she has to guide the conversation with the aid of the drawings, paying attention to recast the students’ utterances with the correct grammar and pronunciation. The teacher can also provide the vocabulary when required, but keeping in mind that the main aim is to have the students talk about themselves with the language they know.

This activity works extremely well even at beginners level, where very simple questions can be asked, like: “why” followed by the name of the thing depicted in the drawing or even by simply pointing at it, and merely asking “why”.

The teacher will then “recast” the question correctly in the target language “why the books?”

The learner repeats the question in correct form, then the teacher will provide an answer. For example: “because I read many books for my work”.

This activity has many aspects that make it great for working with emergent language:

Firstly, it offers the possibility of a very high level of personalisation, allowing the learners to talk about themselves and the things that are important to them.

The drawings constitute a reliable base for the learners to clearly identify what they want to talk about.

The activity can be easily adapted to different levels by moving from the concrete to the abstract, using the drawings as a starting point.

Last but not least, I think that this activity offers the learners the opportunity to use some vocabulary items that absolutely are relevant to them but that might not be present in the coursebook, giving teachers and learners alike, the chance of catching a glimpse of the richness of the world that everyone holds within himself or herself, moving beyond the dry and quite prescriptive patterns of traditional language courses.

After all, shouldn’t language be a social device used to get in touch with each other?

–Ed

*My description of the activity T-Shirts is actually an adaptation from Ken Wilson, “Drama and improvisations”, 2008: Oxford University Press, p. 29.

*The quote from Scott Thornbury is taken from the post “E is for Emergence” https://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2017/07/23/e-is-for-emergence/ (Last accessed 03/08/2017)

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Just For The Record...

In this week’s post, I’d like to share with you a technique that I’ve been using ever since I first started teaching English more than 25 years ago, and which is now being used as a student-centred tool for teaching Arabic to people like me at Sharek. Community Language Learning(CLL) was developed by Charles Curran in the 1970’s as a way to draw out language from what the learners in the room wanted to say, perhaps as a reaction to the very controlled, imposing drills of the audio-lingual approach that was in vogue at the time. I first read about it in Earl Stevick’s A Way and Ways (1980) and I’ve been experimenting with it ever since. The basic procedure is as follows:-

Students sit in a circle so that they can communicate easily with one another. Between them they need a device for recording audio (most mobile phones can do this now of course)

Their task is to create a short, recorded conversation between themselves. If anyone wants to say anything they have the option of asking for support from the teacher before recording their utterances. If they’re lower level learners, they may choose to say something in English first and the teacher teaches them how to say it in Arabic.

The recording of the complete conversation is played back to the learners and the teacher checks that everyone understands everything – perhaps by asking them to retranslate each Arabic utterance that they hear back into English.

The teacher transcribes the conversation onto the board and invites the learners to ask questions about form and meaning. He or she may also set up more practice activities to activate the language in the

This approach also works quite well in one-to-one classes. Here’s a conversation in Arabic that I recorded in this way with a friend of mine Saif, a native Arabic speaker. You can listen to it here

As you can see in the transcript below (with English translation added) the dialogue contains a lot of useful everyday conversational Arabic –  the kind of things I really want to learn how to say.

Nick: شو عملت في العطلة؟ What did you do during the holiday?

Saif: انا خيمت في العطلة  I went camping during the holiday.

Nick: وين خيمت؟ مع مين؟ Where did you camp? With who?

Saif:  انا و اصحابي  خيمنا في منطقة بعيدة ساعتين  عن توتنيس Me and my friends camped in an area two hours from Totnes

Nick:شو اسمها القرية؟ شو اسمها المنطقة؟ What’s the name of the village? What’s the name of the area?

Saif: ما بعرف بس هي قريبة من اكستر I don’t know but it was close to Exeter.

Nick: قريبة من البحر ؟ Close to the sea?

Saif: لا، ما في بحر هناك بس في نهر  No, there’s no sea there. But there’s a river.

Nick: شو عملتوا هناك ؟ What did you do there?

Saif; شربنا شاي وطبخنا اكل . عملنا اكل وشوينا جاجWe drank tea and cooked food. We made food. We barbecued chicken.

Nick: سبحتوا في النهر ؟ Did you swim in the river?

Saif: لا هما ما سبحوا  . انا بس  سبحتNo they didn’t swim. Only I swam.

Nick: لانو المي كان بارد Because the water was cold?

Saif: المي كان كتير بارد وانا مجنون بحب المي البارد The water was very cold. And I’m crazy. I like cold water.

Nick:  انا كمان Me too.

Saif: انت بردو بتحب تسبح في المي البارد؟ You also like swimming in cold water?

Nick:  ايو . بحب . انا بحب اسبح في البحر في الشتاء . بس ما بطول. بسرعة Yes. I like it. I like swimming in the sea in winter. But not for a long time. Quickly!

Before recording each of my utterances I was able to ask Saif for language support so that I could say everything as accurately as possible. Of course there are still some mistakes in what I say, but as a learner it’s really nice to have a record of me speaking in Arabic that I can listen to again. In fact, because it is my own voice that I hear, I think it makes the grammar and vocabulary contained in the dialogue much more memorable and learnable.

Reference:

Teaching Languages: A Way and Ways (1980) by Earl W. Stevick; Newbury House

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What’s In The Bag?

The other day I was lucky enough to go and see one of our teachers, Rahaf, in action, teaching a small group of upper-intermediate learners of Arabic. There were lots of really nice activities in the lesson and I particularly liked this guessing game that she played at the beginning and that I managed to record.

The idea is incredibly simple. The teacher takes in a bag of objects and the learners try to guess what’s in the bag. Of course in order to do this there’s a lot of natural, spoken Arabic being produced by both the teacher and the learners. What I really like about this activity though is that makes the learners think; it challenges them to scan through their mental lexicons and to come up with suitable things to say.  We place a lot of emphasis on these kind of brainstorming activities in our classes at Sharek because they’re a great way to make learning happen. As you can see in the video they also tend to promote laughter which is a very good thing to have in a language class.

Nick

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7 Deadly Questions

As a low level learner of Arabic, I really appreciate it when the teacher asks me lots of questions. In fact I’d go so far as to say that this is one of the main ways in which I learn in a classroom. Of course, it’s important that the level of the questions is pitched appropriately. If they are too easy it can feel a bit patronising; too challenging and I end up feeling frustrated.

In this video taken from an online class I took with Sharek Centre teacher, Rahaf, I think she gets the level of questions just right for me and I can feel myself learning quite a lot. Using a single picture, which she shared with me through Zoom, she carefully graded the questions she asked me, to give me lots of exposure and practice in some simple verb phrases. Here are the stages we followed:-

Rahaf showed me the picture and asked me to choose names for some of the people in the picture.

She went through them all and checked that we both knew who everyone was.

She asked me questions starting with ‘Who..’ for example ‘Who is running?’, ‘Who is behind the tree?’ I was being challenged to understand the questions in Arabic, but I only had to respond with the names of the people.

She asked me checking questions like ‘Samira is behind the tree, right?’ I had to process the language at a slightly higher level but what I actually had to say was still very simple.

She gave me the name of the person and asked me to say what that person is doing in the picture. This is more challenging since it’s the first time I actually have to produce the target forms myself.

She showed me some written sentences using the forms that we had been focussing on. This is a very useful challenge for me because my reading is much weaker than my ability to understand spoken Arabic.

She asked me some personalised questions using the same target language; ‘Do you run?’ ‘Do you walk the dog?’ etc. This was a good way to hear different conjugations of the verbs and to connect the language to myself.

So now some questions for you! To what extent do you feel that questions from the teacher help you develop in the language you are learning? What kind of questions help you the most? If you think this way of learning Arabic would work for you, then why not look into taking part in one of Sharek Centre’s online, or face to face, Arabic classes?

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Arabic outside the classroom

حانة قديمة و جميلة في سبيلبروك There are some great ways to practice a second language and especially to remember new vocabulary even when we are not sitting at our desk, with the course book in front of us.

One way is by”tagging” the objects inside our house, for example, by sticking Arabic names to things that are familiar to us and learn their names in Arabic.

Another way is that of tagging, only mentally this time, things that are outside our house and try to remember them in the second language.

Social media are just another great tool to take these practices to another level, sharing our ideas with others, commenting on other people’s pictures and possibly even making new friends.

Another great thing about social media is that we can access them from any place, at any time we want and instantly connect to our fellow learners and teachers.

For one such activity I asked the students to choose 3 colors they like and post 3 pictures that represent those colors. Then I asked them to write some short thoughts in Arabic about what those colors mean to them.

أحمر لون النار، الهوى، الخطر و الدم. أخضر لون الطبيعة، العروء و شعري. أبيض لون البراءة، التسامح و السلام

In another activity I posted some pictures of places that surround my home, giving a brief description and writing where they are located. So that during my Sunday walk I spent 5 minutes to practice my Arabic.

حانة قديمة و جميلة في سبيلبروك

Of course mistakes are just part of the game, so don’t be shy, If you think that you might like these activities, then click on one of the following links and join the Sharek stream!

colors

places that surround you

More sets will come in the following weeks so keep following us!

-Ed

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Arabic through drama.

You don’t need to be good at either Arabic or drama to take part in an Arabic through drama course at Sharek centre, London. We had a great time planning, rehearsing, and performing the beginning of this traditional Juha story and for me it was a nice opportunity to build up a bank of useful chunks of language in Arabic – even though I couldn’t quite remember my lines when we recorded it

On this course the teacher will share some drama activities like mime, simple improvisation activities, and working with sketches and scripts to help you use Arabic naturally and meaningfully, and above all to help it to stick in your heads.

Does anyone else have any experiences of learning a language through drama? Please share your experiences with a comment below.

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Zooming In And Out

For Sharek centre’s online Arabic classes we use a free tool called Zoom. This is a good name for it because it allows learners of Arabic anywhere in the world to zoom in to high quality classes with our team of experienced and qualified Arabic teachers at Sharek.

Here’s a very short excerpt of a class with Sharek teacher, Isra’a and a beginner in Arabic (me). Zoom is also a good way of looking at two necessary processes involved in REALLY learning a language, and you can see both of them happening in the video. We need to zoom in on language – that is look at the spellings of words, how to pronounce things, the meanings etc, but we also need to zoom out and use language for genuine communication; to share who we are with others and to make sense of the world around us.

We have lots of different types of learner at Sharek but the most typical situation is that students have previously done lots of zooming in type activities (memorising word lists and grammar transformation exercises etc), but have generally had fewer opportunities for communication and freer conversation. At Sharek, in both our online and our face to face classes, we put lots of emphasis on balancing zooming in with zooming out. because we believe that you need both these things in order to make the language your own.

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What does it mean to share a language ?

There’s a common misconception that people are bad at learning languages, and that languages like Arabic are extremely difficult. This is only true if the curriculum and the methodology used is imposed from above by academics sitting in ivory towers, who have forgotten that it’s actually communication that is at the heart of successful learning. As teachers, we can make people feel things are hard by pushing new language on them, but what about drawing language out of the learners themselves? Sharing a language empowers the learners by acknowledging that even a beginner has something to say. Giving learners a voice can be incredibly motivating and engaging. Our language approach: We focus on the practical use of the Arabic language for today’s world. Through our holistic approach to language learning, we integrate communication skills with cultural elements to expose learners to the rich tradition of Arab language and culture. A key feature of our strategy involves teachers and learners sharing and exchanging their experiences of Arabic with one another. As such, Sharek’s language courses revolve around shared and complementary learning, putting the learner and the way they experience the Arabic language—in and outside the classroom—at the centre of our process. We also place a lot of emphasis on the practical results of learning; conversation is but a starting point in enjoying the language and understanding the diverse culture from which it originates.

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Language Teaching Through Video and Film Making

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"مسابقة أفضل راو وراوية قصص وحكايات عربية تراثية قصيرة" #Competition #StoryTelling #BestStoryTeller #WinWithSharekCentre #PaidTripToLondon #ArabicStories #ArabicCulture

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A short animated video showing how we can help you learn Arabic in a new interactive way that you will enjoy. If you want to learn Arabic for personal development, or business purposes, we can help you understand Arabic and learn Arabic using innovative methods that will help you remember how to use Arabic in a way that suits you.

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Teaching the Arabic script through video conferencing software.

Quite often I hear colleagues who work in language teaching, and even some friends, wonder if it’s actually possible to teach online through video conferencing software, as online teaching seems unable to offer the kind of interaction that face-to-face classes guarantee and may limit the possibilities for genuine interaction.

Particularly when it comes to the teaching of Arabic script, we want students to engage actively with the letters and the rules that govern their connections and transformations, and not simply to sit back and watch the teacher writing the letters and repeating their sounds.

In the video below I’m showing how it’s possible to use software like electronic whiteboards to engage the students in exercises that require interaction between learner and teacher, like completing words that have  some letters missing.

The difference from doing the same exercise on paper, is that the learners watch the monitor of their computers without interruptions, focusing on every aspect of the writing carried out by the teacher, including the movement of the cursor while it’s shaping the letters. Learners will then have to think about what is missing and try to fill in the gap. They can also ask questions in real time to see if their thought-process is going in the right direction and finally, they can get immediate feedback from the teacher in terms of correction or upgrading their written language.

While it’s probably true that online teaching can’t offer exactly the same experience as classroom teaching, it is also true that the very constraints that can be found in online classes can be turned from disadvantages to advantages.

More to come on this topic in the following weeks!

-Ed

P.S. a huge "thank you" to M.!

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Golden retrievers on the tube

So, as promised, I’m going to publish a series of posts about retrieval exercises to help you to revisit, to recycle, and to reactivate (and lots of other words beginning with re- :-) ) the new words that you’re learning in your foreign language classes. No matter how motivating and interesting the class is, when studying just once a week, there’s always a danger that you’ll end up forgetting what you’ve focussed on by the time the next class comes around. So we need some tools for making sure that this doesn’t happen, so that we can revisit language when we’re lying in bed, when we’re walking to work, or when we’re on the tube. Quizlet is an online tool which allows us to create flashcards and language learning games with new language that you’ve learnt. It’s free to both add your own material and to use existing content which is already there. Because we at Sharek like sharing so much, we’ve made all of our Quizlet Arabic sets available for anyone to use. You can access them here. I can see that I currently hold the high score for doing this matching game in the fastest time https://quizlet.com/202168606/match Will anyone be able to knock me off my perch and be a better golden retriever than me? 

Nick

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Learning the Arabic script (3) Pictures writing

This week ends the cycle of posts about techniques for learning to write in Arabic, but more posts will follow about other topics, so stay tuned!

Picture writing, or writing with the aid of pictures, is a great way to boost your vocabulary and your ability to recognize words.

The teacher hands out cards with all the words needed to create a short piece of writing. Each card has one word printed on it as well as a picture that represents the object that the word refers to.

Then he/she asks the learners to recompose the starting text, or to create a new, original text, using the same vocabulary given in the template.

The learners can spell out the words they’re using while creating the text or read it once it’s completed.

I think that this activity works very well to bridge the gap between the acquisition of new words and their use in context, while exercising at the same time word retrieval, reading, sentence building and speaking skills.

-Ed

P.S. Please visit our blog at http://sharekcentre.com/blog/

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Learning the Arabic script (2) Jog your memory

Hi, and welcome to the second week dedicated to learning the Arabic script.

For this activity you don’t need anything else but two sheets of paper, a pen, and a corridor.

It’s also the kind of activity that can be organized in a classroom, with teams of students, or that you can set up in the comfort of your home, by yourself.

You can begin by placing the two sheets of paper at the two ends of the corridor. You could place them on a surface, like a table, or stick them to the wall.

On the first sheet of paper, you’ll have previously written down the words that you want to learn how to write.

When you start, read from the page the first word that you want to learn. Take  a mental picture of it, in order to memorize the shape of the letters, the way they attach to each other, those that connect and those that don’t and try to keep these details in your mind as much as you can. Now walk, or run (pay attention to the china cabinet) to the end of the corridor and write it down on the second piece of paper. When you’re done with the first word, run back to the first end of the corridor and memorize the second word in the same way.

Repeat until you’ve copied all the words on the second sheet so that at the end you should have two sheets with the same words written on them.

Once you’ve finished, it’s very useful to compare the two pages and see if you can spot any differences.

In this way, you can focus on your Arabic handwriting, and, hopefully, get rid of a few calories as well ;)

-Ed

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Learning the Arabic script (1) Quickspell!

This week I’m publishing the first of three posts describing different activities that can be used to learn the Arabic alphabet in more enjoyable ways than writing the same letters, or words, again and again and again. One of such activities is what we call “quickspell”:

The teacher hands out a set of cards for each student in the classroom.

Each set includes 4 decks of cards for each one of the four shapes that letters can take in the Arabic script, so that we have one set for the isolated form, one set for the initial form, one set for the middle form and one set for the final form.

Then the teacher asks the students to write a word; it could be a word that the learners know or that they don’t know, and they need to write the word using the cards.

The activity is actually trickier than it might seem, as some cards could be upside down, and all the participants have to go through the decks fast enough to beat the others.

I think the activity is a lot of fun; it works great with teams of learners trying to “outspell” their opponents. It can also involve students at different degrees of knowledge of the Arabic script, just by putting in order the decks of the lower level students while shuffling and turning upside down the letters of the more advanced ones.

At Sharek we had a great time with Nick and Rahaf, as you can see in the video below. So what are you waiting for? We’re waiting for you at Sharek and get ready to quickspell!

-Ed