teachingmtp

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Week 10

Week 10 – Reflect on this past semester with respect to how you’ve grown as a second language learner. Have you progressed as much as you thought? Are you satisfied with the experience? Do you have regrets?

I mentioned this in class, but coming in I didn’t think I would learn as much as possible, since I chose to live in an apartment rather than a home stay. I’ve had a few second thoughts about that, but I don’t regret choosing an apartment. I might have lost some opportunities for language learning, but I don’t think I would’ve had as good of an overall experience, knowing how much I enjoyed living with Elizabeth. That being said, I am pretty proud of how far I’ve come. It’s hard to remember what it was like at the beginning of the semester, and some interactions are better than others, but I know my listening comprehension has improved dramatically as well as my vocabulary. I know so many more words and I’ve learned a lot more about certain colloquial grammar rules. From this class in particular, I feel like I know a lot more about what goes into language learning, and I feel as though if I were to continue French or start a new language, I would be better equipped. I am extremely satisfied with this experience, both linguistically and otherwise. I was just working on my transcriptions and I’ve definitely made serious progress. I can speak in different tenses, and Severine always says our class is excellent which I’m proud of too. I wouldn’t say I have any specific regrets, but I do wish I had more opportunities to just try and talk in French. But it’s hard to speak to strangers who share a language, let alone when I can barely say anything, so it’s hard to find people to practice with. I probably could have put myself out there more, but our program doesn’t make that easy to do. I am proud of myself regardless though, and happy with my progress. 

[teachingmtp]

Week 9

Week 9 – What do you think are important ingredients for a successful language-learning experience? Think of the context, the materials, the instructor(s), the learning environment.  Comment on children and adult learners.

First of all I want to say that I don’t think that there’s one way to teach that will work for all learners, but there are some things that will help for most students. I’ll start with young people. For very little kids, such as under 5, I think all you can do to help them is expose them to the language, and it has to be in person or else it won’t make a difference. Once they’re school aged, I think games and songs are the most useful. They won’t understand grammar and semantics until they’re a little older anyway, so it would be a waste of time to try and explain it, especially in another language. Kids are perfect targets for implicit teaching, because they won’t understand explanations anyway. They might ask questions but are much more likely to just go along with what you say because they have to do that for many things they learn about anyway.

I think upper elementary and middle school should be the beginning of the shift in how you teach a language. They will be able to understand more about languages and how they work. If a learner has already learned some of a language, it’s also a good time to start teaching things in that language, because it will advance their vocabulary very quickly and allow for actual practice with the language. If a student is just beginning learning around 12 or 13, I think this is the time period in which we should start teaching them more like adults. That means teaching them grammar and rules, since they will ask about it anyway. One thing school systems that utilize traditional language teaching tactics lack is practice speaking. Overall, the point of a language is to be able to use it, not talk about it in a different language or write verb conjugations without being able to say them out loud. Teachers should focus more on group conversation, even if it isn’t ideal since everyone shares a different common language, a learner has to practice creating and saying sentences in the other language.

[teachingmtp]

Week 8

Week 8 – What has been the most challenging thing about being in Montpellier, from a language point of view? Please illustrate with at least one example.

I think the most challenging thing for me has been spontaneous production. I generally do okay when I am expecting what people will say, or at least when I know what’s appropriate in the context. For example, the elementary education girls went out for lunch and I could respond to everything our waitress said, sometimes just understanding it, and sometimes figuring it out from context. She asked if we wanted more water, and even though I don’t know exactly what she said I said oui. For things where there’s a lot of context, or less pressure since we were in a big group, I’m usually fine or braver in my spoken production. When I am caught off guard though, or I have to think of something on the spot I struggle. For example, the woman in front of me at the grocery store forgot her umbrella in the bagging area, so instead of saying “votre parapluie?” I just picked it up and knelt down next to her so she could see it and take it from me. Even though I know the word for umbrella! I can never think of things on the spot. I think I’m also nervous about not being understood because I don’t have a lot of practice with words I’m less familiar with. I scared to try and speak if I know I probably won’t be understood anyway, so I think that deters me sometimes as well, and it happens more often when I’m caught off guard because I have to say words that I don’t usually.

[teachingmtp]

Week 7

Week 7 – Think about conversations you’ve had in English with non-native speakers (in France or elsewhere). How do you respond to errors in such conversations? Do you provide error correction? Why or why not?

I don’t usually respond to errors unless I don’t understand or someone can’t find a word, and I guess I don’t know if that counts as an error correction. With the first example I just usually ask someone what they meant, or if they meant what they thought I meant. This happened when I worked at a grocery store at the service counter where money transfers occurred, because there were a lot of immigrants in my hometown whose first language was Spanish. I would usually ask because money was involved and it was often being sent to their family members, so I would want to make sure I got everything absolutely correct. 

In terms of the second example, like I said I’m not sure if it counts as as error correction, but if someone asks for a word or is struggling to think of one I’ll suggest one or tell them. This happens a lot in class with one of my professors and our host teacher. I do it because they ask for words, so it wouldn’t make sense not to. 

I never correct my French peers or people who are working at restaurants because it would be disrespectful and it’s really not necessary, I can just ask if I didn’t understand or try and use French.

With our kids at school I will correct their errors more frequently, but not always. Like I talked about in last weeks journal, I think some error correction can be too confusing and actually detrimental, but when I know they know the rule they messed up or they just need to learn a new word I will correct or help them.

[teachingmtp]

Week 6

Week 6 – What are your thoughts on error correction? Think of your experience in and outside of the classroom? When is it necessary? When does it inhibit learning?

I think error correction is sometimes necessary but also can be distracting or confusing. When the learner definitely understands the rule or thing they did incorrectly I think it’s good to remind them of what they know. Also when their mistake drastically changes the meaning of what they’re trying to say, even if they don’t fully understand the rule or reason why they’re wrong. Some examples of when I think it’s good is correcting “has” to “have” or vice versa, because a learner would know the rule they’re mixing up. Another example would be if a learner uses an incorrect word to describe something is to tell them the correct one even if they don’t know the new word.

I think it’s distracting when every single time a learner makes an error it’s corrected. If they’re understood and the error is minor, I think interrupting them will just confuse them and make it harder for them to speak in general. They might get more nervous about speaking for fear of being over-corrected and not want to try something they’re not 100% confident in. It can be confusing as well if they don’t have any idea about what they’re being corrected on. It will essentially be useless if you correct a grammar rule they don’t know how to use, because they won’t be able to recreate it in any meaningful until they either learn or figure out the rule themselves.

Outside of the classroom I don’t have many thoughts on error correction, because it doesn’t happen to adults from strangers. If anything Elizabeth might correct something I said or my pronunciation of a word, but she doesn’t know significantly more than me so it’s not the same as getting corrections from a native speaker.

[teachingmtp]

Week 5

Week 5 – How is grammar taught in the classroom where you are teaching? Explicitly, implicitly? Give some examples. What is the response from the students?

Sabine teaches grammar in a number of ways. One way that sticks out to me the most is how she corrects the kids while they speak. She will say things like “Does that sound nice?” if they say something like “they has.” Then she expects them or another student to correct the mistake. I think that this is more explicit because she is directly correcting the way they speak, but she doesn’t always offer an explanation so I’m not sure. I think this is because they already know the rules though, so someone must have already explicitly taught it to them. I think most of them would be able to say the mistake was an incorrect conjugation though, so the knowledge is also explicit. The students are usually quick to correct themselves and each other though, and the repetition must be helpful even if they don’t fully understand the reasoning behind it.

Another example is mini lessons where she either is introducing or reviewing grammar rules. This is very explicit teaching and is necessary for the kids to have a good base understanding. Lately we’ve been working on past tense and she reviewed how to ask questions because the past tense conjugations and question sentence structure combined was confusing for some kids. I think this cleared some things up for a few kids, but went over the heads of some of the others. A group I was working with was trying to use “does” at the beginning of past tense questions, so I don’t think everything was understood after her review. Some of the kids seemed to catch on right away though.

I think implicit grammar is a little harder to pick out examples for, but I think corrections can sometimes border on implicit if they don’t really understand the meaning behind why it’s wrong, especially if another student is correcting them. Another way is just listening to the teacher and mimicking her speech patterns since there is no explanation but they know it’s correct so they should say it like that.

[teachingmtp]

Week 4

Week 4 – How are pronunciation and vocabulary taught in the classroom where you are teaching? Explicitly, implicitly? Give some examples. What is the response from the students?

Our teacher, Sabine, does a great job of teaching vocab both explicitly and implicitly. For implicit, she often will be giving directions and during them will use 2-4 synonyms for a hard word. For example, if she was talking about art history and presidents, she might say the sculpture was huge, gigantic, enormous and continue on with her instructions. She does that frequently throughout class. This helps kids understand that the words mean the same things as well as to help everyone to understand what’s being said because one child might remember a certain but not another.

An explicit way she teaches vocabulary is to write the new word in both French and English on the board during a lesson. This often happens when she’s asking the kids to explain or describe something and they need to ask how to say a word. She will tell them and write it down for the whole class. I like this way of teaching vocabulary, because it makes the words relevant and useful for the kids, which I think in turn helps them remember them.

Generally, the kids remember the vocab very well. She will often call back to the past lessons and have them talk about last week and try and have them use the words they learned. This I think is sort of implicit, but only after explicit learning had taken place.

[teachingmtp]

Week 3

Week 3 – How has studying phonology impacted your learning of French and your teaching of English? What do you wonder about your own production, learning and teaching?

Studying phonology has made me hyper aware of how I talk. Struggling through pronunciation of very difficult French words has made me more aware of how difficult it must be for my students as well. The different vowels and consonants that exist in one language but not the other are interesting to me and it’s nice to know that there’s a specific reason why I can’t pronounce the r in quatre 90 percent of the time. That is probably the sound I struggle the most with in French.

 My students have pretty excellent pronunciation, but sometimes I can hear them struggling with the sounds that don’t exist in French, like th. That is the most common one for them to struggle with. They usually replace it with s or z in our class, not so often a plain t sound. Some of their vowels can be a little off, like all the diphthongs we have in English.

I’m interested in why some people have so much trouble pronouncing words and some people seem to pick up words really easily. I know my mom is terrible at pronouncing words. She would help me study in French, and she would have to spell the word out loud because I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say. And I would say the word over and over again and it was like she couldn’t hear what I was saying. I don’t know how much this has to do with phonetics, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about lately. I just don’t know why some people can pronounce things easily and some people never seem to get the hang of it, and I feel like it’s related to phonetics and sound production.

[teachingmtp]

Week 2

Week 2 – Describe a language learning incident involving your learning of French since your arrival in Montpellier. What happened? How did you react? What did you take away from the experience?

I was waiting for the tram with my headphones in and someone said something to me, so I took one out and he repeated himself. He asked me, in French, what time it was, which I understood, but instead of responding I said “Je parle anglais.” So, he asked me again in English, and I responded in English even though I know how to say the numbers of the time it was in French. I think because he caught me off guard, I completely forgot everything that I know! Every time I’m not prepared or have a sentence already formulated in my mind about what I want to say I feel like I forget all the things I know. Even simple ones like telling the time.

I don’t know really what to take away from this experience, maybe that I need more spontaneous French interaction and to focus less on premeditating on what I want to say. I might be able to surprise myself with my abilities if I just slow down and try not to panic when someone talks to me by chance or says something I don’t immediately understand. I hope to be more comfortable with my production, because I feel like I understand way more than I can produce.

[teachingmtp]

Week 1

Week 1 – Describe your experience learning a second/foreign language. What languages have you studied? For how long? Have you learned another language without taking classes? What were the factors that made these experiences positive or negative, i.e. The teacher, the materials, access (or not) to native speakers, motivation…etc

I took French for four years throughout middle and high school. I only reached the French 3 level class because our middle school had electives every other day, so I took French 1A and 1B over two years, then started French 2 my freshman year. I enjoyed the language, but my teacher wasn’t great. She was incredibly scatter brained so the class lacked structure and it didn’t feel like I was really learning anything. She went extremely slowly, so slowly that in week three in Severine’s class we have already covered almost everything I know about verbs. I know more vocabulary, but I feel like that isn’t as practical. We didn’t have any access to native speakers, but my teacher did live in France for several years so she was essentially fluent. While she was talented in the language, she wasn’t in teaching. I think maybe it had to do with how unmotivated other students were, because she had to explain everything in English for the students who didn’t take it as seriously or understand as well. The class dragged on and wasn’t fun or interesting, so I decided to stop taking it my junior year of high school. 

I haven’t learned any languages without taking classes. I know some Spanish words, but nothing about the grammar or vocabulary, just things like counting and greetings. I went to an integrated elementary school where the other language was Spanish, but I was in the English or ‘regular’ classes. But we sang songs in Spanish and English at assemblies and my teachers taught us the most basic of basics, I think just as enrichment. The town I grew up in also has a lot of recent Hispanic immigrants, so throughout my school experience there were a lot of Spanish speakers and I think that’s another reason I know a few words in it.