Switch to a communicative set-up

How is your classroom laid out? Is it conducive to communicative teaching and acquisition?
Recently my principal came back from a visit to another school and showed me a picture (on his iPhone of course) of a classroom that made him think of me. The teacher had put several tables together and then cut a giant oval piece of wood and laid it on top to create a large oval table. All his students sat around this oval table and he and they loved the setup. And this was in a primarily lecture class.
I told my principal that the standard students-in-rows-of-desks is a legacy of 150 years of education, way back in one-room schoolhouses when all grades were in one room with one teacher learning all subjects. If our education system has changed so drastically, why hasn't the setup of the classroom?
Nowhere is this more true than in language classes. Students need to be in a situation that helps them scaffold and collaborate because language is not a one-person game. You can learn and do math on your own, you can read history and answer essay questions, but language is not a solitary activity by nature. In the article Classroom Layout Preference Reflects Teaching Style authors Fernando Doménech Betoret and Amparo Gómez Artiga write that "Teachers-in-training with a specialization in languages perceived a layout with students seated in forward-facing rows as suitable for individual work (e.g., grammar and writing activities), but perceived a layout with desks in a half-square configuration as more suitable for speaking activities." My question is, since when is language "individual work"? That's part of the problem plaguing American world language teaching.
The fact is that a layout involving students sitting in groups of four or five is most useful when you have small groups working because it "encourages talk within the small groups, and exchanges with the teacher." Does that not sound like a language class?
In this small-group setup it's most helpful to "have the students sit so they're side on to you and remember to move around the classroom when you need to give instructions or change activities."

Here's my system:
I arrange tables in my room so that students are 4 to a table and are sitting facing sideways to me. They can easily turn their chairs to face the front if necessary, but mostly they are facing each other.
The first day of class my students make a "name tent" (a 5X8 card folded in half lengthwise) with their English name on one side and a Spanish name on the other (this also helps me learn their names). Each day before each class, I take about 30 seconds to randomly set out the tents. I go one on this table, one on the next, and so on. Then at the end I collect them all by table so they'll go out in a different order next time.
This way, I ensure that students are sitting with different people all the time. At least most of the time, they'll be sitting with someone who's better than they are, and someone who struggles more than they do, so there's a lot of scaffolding going on amongst themselves. This also helps one of my classroom policies to not answer as many questions as possible, rather to let students answer each other's questions.
So I challenge you to evaluate how your classroom is set up and rework it to promote communicative teaching and acquisition. You'll be surprised at the results!

Relating everything to English

Cross-linguistic transfer, the problem of a learner's native language interfering with the one being learned, is a big enough issue without us as teachers compounding it by constantly relating things to English. For example, giving students ways to remember words by relating them to English is not always a smart idea, in my opinion. I just got a blog post from a student who wrote "Yo soy mirror television." This is a student in his 2nd semester of Spanish 2. Someone along the way has told him to remember mirar by relating it to the English mirror so what does he remember? Mirror. Communicatively speaking, it's very possible that a native speaker would understand him, but the error still irks me. Also, this is a student who is not very motivated and I imagine I'll never see him after this semester, so that's a factor too.

Still, I try to point out when things are not like English as much as possible to convince them that they cannot try to force Spanish to be that way. When we listened to Aleks Syntek perform Intocable on the 2007 Latin Grammys, we talked about how looking up the words 'move' and 'on' will never get you to 'debo seguir adelante,' which is what he sings in the song. Today in Spanish 1 when we watched Belinda and the Cheetah Girls sing A la Nanita Nana, we talked about the phrase tiene sueño and why we'd never say it that way in English but we're just focusing on that being the phrase (chunking it, if you will) so we can work on not writing things like estoy sueño and worse, soy sueño. Same thing with yesterday's clip of Los pollitos and the phrases tienen hambre and tienen frío.

Remember, we're supposed to be fighting cross-linguistic transfer, not encouraging it.

When it's not all coming up roses

Lest you think that I think that musicuentos is the fix for every language acquisition issue, I don't. Friday was a good example of holding on to the good ones and trying to let the other stuff slide off my back while learning from it.



This year I'm teaching six periods of Spanish--two Spanish 1, three Spanish 2, and one Spanish 3. Five of the six are having a blast. One section of Spanish 2, however, is not. For some reason this particular group of kids has been a challenge. Here's what I think the problem is: Musicuentos is based on research that says that motivation and listening are vital. In school, students seem to be motivated by one of three things: 1) what they love, 2) what is easy, 3) what is entertaining. So, kids who love math may find something difficult, but they'll still be motivated to do it because they love it. Unfortunately, I can't make kids love Spanish, so I go for the other two--easy and entertaining. God's taken care of the easy part by making their brains perfectly suited to acquire language. Throw in some pop music, the Latin grammys, and a Spanish-speaking monito or two, and voilá, you've got entertaining.

The problem is, in order for this to work, the kids have to listen and watch. This is my mantra. All the time I'm telling them this. But Class 6 doesn't believe me. They keep their heads down. They talk to each other. Incessantly. And we're miserable. Everything takes them twice as long, so there isn't time for the songs. They account for almost all the demerits I give out for off-task and disruption. Friday, one asked me how to say pissed in Spanish after getting a demerit for being off task. Total demerits for Class 6 on Friday alone? Nine. So how do I convince them that if they'll just shut up and watch and listen, it really will be easy and entertaining? Good question. I think today we'll work on the seating arrangement. And I've started working to get parents working on it with me.

Meanwhile, I take encouragement where I can. Earlier the same day, one of my freshman told me, "I've learned more in three weeks of Spanish than I did in three years of middle school Spanish."
(My mind files this little sunshine #1 away for dark times later. Little do I know I'll need it by the end of the same day!)

Then I check the weekly blogs. My students post on a blog every week. It's a fun requirement and a major part of keeping their grade up. I love it and they love it. So, I get this on one blog while I'm reading Saturday:
Hola! Hoy yo durmi en clase. Espanol es aburrido porque no lo comprendo. Yo amo Chris Brown mucho. Me gusta musica. Mi cancionfavorito es Disturbia. Adios.
Publicado por p.w.

Now, I know this student is frustrated because she's approaching my class as if it's like last year, and she keeps her head down a lot. But I also know she's comprehending because I check her comprehension a lot because I know she's struggling more than the rest of her classmates for that reason. (It's like a tangible affective filter, I swear.)

So I keep reading. Immediately after that blog, there's this one:
Hola amigos! Escuela esta muy aburrito, pero el clase de espanol es muy divertido porque cantamos musica. Ahora me casa esta vicia. Estoy solo. Esta muy triste, verdad?Adios para ahora.
(my mind files this sunshine #2 away for when I need it)
And that blog has at least 2 similar things.

Today I was checking my Spanish 3 blogs and something one of my students wrote blew me away. Absolutely blew me away. When I started teaching these kids in Spanish 2 last year, their ability to communicate was almost nothing. They could sing -o, -as, -a, -amos, -ais, -an all day long. But comprehend? Communicate? Very very little. You may not be impressed by this (especially if you don't read Spanish) but wow. Knowing where they've come from, I am. And before you wonder if a computer translator did this, I can assure you it didn't. I know this student, and I'm very very good at spotting computer translation besides, and this is his Spanish, 100%.
Hola! Ibas tu Dia del Trabajo? Mi familia y yo fuimos a mi casa de abuelos.Dios es Sensacional. Hace dos dias, mi iphone muerto. Yo llame el ayuda de Apple y dijeron ellos no me ayudaron porque mi garantia se fue. Mi padre y yo fuimos a el tienda de Apple y preguntamos ellos para ayuda. El hombre dijo no me ayudo, pero entonces me dijo que el fue a preguntar alguien algo. Se fue de mi papa y yo. Entonces, regreso y dijo que ellos reemplazon mi iphone y me da un lo nuevo.Fue un bendicion de Dios. Estoy muy feliz.-Cristian

So much sunshine. It's not all coming up roses, but the flowers are pretty abundant around here.