This was inspired by a conversation with a student from Germany who isn't in my Spanish class, about how to teach vocabulary in a World Languages course.
I don't use flash cards most of the time. I try to incorporate communicative activities in my classroom as much as possible. So I try to avoid using "memorize the Spanish word / memorize the English translation" activities as much as possible. My students still have a vocab list with the Spanish on one side and the English on another, because they get nervous if they can't see their vocabulary. But I use it as a security blanket, not as a primary source of vocabulary. (That's the intent, at least.) I see flashcards, as a rule, as an extension of memorizing translations. Studies show that this is an ineffective method of learning a language over the long term.
Instead, my students do glossary entries--they write the Spanish word and its translation, write a definition in Spanish or use the word in an example sentence, and draw a picture that illustrates the word. The idea is that by using the word in a meaningful sentence, they give it a meaningful context; by drawing a picture of it, they engage in non-lingustic representation, which helps with both retention and contextualization. I'll try to find the research on non-linguistic representation on vocabulary. The research is on the effects of vocabulary on L1 content learning, but it makes sense that L1 vocabulary acquisition strategies would work on L2 vocabulary, as well. The idea is that the students do one of these a day.
But this student, who learned English in Germany before coming to the United States, suggests a mechanism for using flash cards of the "L2-on-one-side-L1-on-the-other" effectively. It works like this--The student gets a box with 5 numbered compartments and 10 vocab cards. You run through the vocab, and every word you can translate and pronounce correctly moves up a compartment. Every day 10 or so new vocabulary cards go into Compartment 1. You study Compartment 1 every day, moving cards you know up. Compartment 2 gets studied every other day, with cards moving up as you go. Compartment 3 gets studied every week; compartment 4, every other week; Compartment 5, every month. After you know the vocabulary from Compartment 5, you can throw the card away, because you know the vocabulary forever.
Comparisons: If done correctly, both of these methods have students spending 10 minutes a day studying vocabulary, which is extremely helpful for long-term acquisition. (Source needed.)
Contrasts: The flash card box has a mechanism for revisiting old vocabulary; I ask my students to revisit their glossary, but have no way of making sure they do. The flash cards ask students to memorize vocbulary, while the glossaries ask them to use the vocabulary. Flashcards have students going over a large number of words each day, while glossary entries ask students to go over one word and use it in 3 different ways (including the one I purport to reject as effective). lashcards focus on 1-word-at-a-time acquisition, while glossaries ask students to use the words in sentences. The flashcard box places a specific value on knowing how to pronounce the words for advancement, and the glossaries do not.
Refinements: Flashcards could include pictures instead of words, where practical. (Turns out it's tough to draw a picture that represents conjunctions and words like "however.") I could include vocab quizzes for glossary entries, or some ongoing showing-off-glossary-entry speaking projects. Both projects could be modified to make them computer-based; this would use less paper and increase useability, but then accessibility would be a factor.
Mini-study idea: While presenting new vocabulary, half the class gets a flash card box and half the class gets a refined glossary entry project, with a limited set of vocabulary to choose from. Each assigment should be filled daily, and appropriate controls are put it to encourage and enforce compliance--the teacher checks the flash card box for changes, and checks in glossary entries, every day. After 1 week, the students take a vocabulary test that focuses on students' abilities to comprehend vocabulary; resulsts are compared. The test is re-administered after another week, and 1 month after the beginning date of the project, to test long-term retention.
Showing posts with label mini-study idea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mini-study idea. Show all posts
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Saturday, September 27, 2008
What drives what we teach?
"Why, Señor Cosby, the curriculum, of course," cry a thousand aggrieved administrators and education specialists. The curriculum is a document (or probably several documents) which outlines the learning objectives of a particular course, and it does this in various levels of specificity. Importantly, it leaves specific implementation unaddressed, so teachers can implement a lesson plan that best addresses their students' needs and fits their own teaching style. It addresses the goals of the class, what the students expect to be able to do at the end of the class.
Where it all falls down is the "specific implementation" portion of that. Most teachers and classes have a textbook of some kind. We're smart enough and we've been trained well enough that we now know that textbook /= curriculum. Even so, I (and I'd guess a lot of other teachers) still turn to my textbook first when I have no idea what I should do the next day. I have my curriculum document, a list of the 65 learning goals per her class, which I tweak, realign, and try to implement more fully during the summer. I create unit plans, with learning goals and assessments and teaching strategies. I make weekly lesson plans during the week. And through all this process, I use the textbook as a place where I can steal materials from and then rip them apart and re-assemble them in a way that actually works. But when the chips are down, and my three-tiered planning system fails to take something into account (and yes, like all teachers, I make my plans knowing that they won't work), and everything falls apart (I plan on this happening most weeks about halfway through Wednesday of any given week), I grab my textbook and pick bookwork activities out. There are any number of problems with this.
Grammar-based fill-in-the-blank activities have been shown to be not a very good way of teaching Spanish at all. Vocabulary-based drills--a sentence in Spanish with a key word missing--are better than grammar-based drills, because they provide input and modeling as well as making a student utilize newly acquired vocabulary. The vocab sentences are like Spanish crosswords, only they look like what we think homework should look like. However, it takes no analytical ability at all to see that, in my particular textbook, two pages of grammar instruction and mechanical practice exist for every one page of vocabulary practice. And that's not even counting the supplemental materials, where the ratio is closer to 3:1. In deference to the "communicative methodology" craze sweeping the nation, my textbook has taken all the practice activities that used to be plug-and-chug writing activities and turned them into speaking activities. Same basic formulation, different communication skills. Still not so good. So the first failing of my textbook is that it dedicates too much space to pedagogically flawed activities.
The way the students interact with the textbook also leaves a great deal to be desired. It's as if the textbook is the embodiment of school work. We now have a lot of format options for activities of all kinds--we can make activities on Moodle, or turn them into whiteboard activities or overhead transparency activities or board games, all with relative ease--and while the students still know that they're doing work, it seems to feel less onerous. But pull out the textbook, especially first thing, and the students know that they're in for a day of what my high school Spanish teacher referred to as gruntwork. [Interesting mini-study idea: Take a textbook project. Give it to the students in 3 or 4 different formats, including straight out of the text. Compare completion ratios and success rates. Control for instructional strategy and classroom management issues.]
But because I'm a big-idea type of guy, I have a more fundamental reason for distrusting my textbook, and that's that textbook companies are sort of the devil. In his article "The Muddle Machine," Ansari (2004) takes down the textbook industries in a number of areas, including the way pedagogical philosophy is artificially tacked on as a marketing ploy, the manner in which materials are recycled from other textbooks, and the way textbooks are designed to sell lots and lots of copies and Texas and California, which leads to an almost-uselessly homogenized blend of content. The way that textbook companies operate guarantees that any particular textbook is not going to be as useful as it should or could be, because there's no overhead in a book serving any particular interest. I understand that textbook companies have to make money (and there's a LOT of money in this publishing model). I get it. But I also have to be aware that the textbook companies are motivated by something other than my students' learning.
But for all of this philosophical and practical objection to my textbook, it's still my go-to source for gotta-have-it-now classroom content. My units for my high school Spanish I and II classes are more or less tightly tied to the units outlined in my text. I use the vocabulary lists from the text as my core vocabulary lists, and add or subtract vocabulary as necessary. I present grammar content in the order it comes up in the book, plus or minus a couple of days. (I think it's crazy, f'rinstance, to teach a student to describe where they're going before teaching them how to say where they are.) If the curriculum is the bedrock of the instruction, then my text is the foundation of the house. If the curriculum is the map to the finish line, the textbook is the schematic for the car that will take us there. And as much as I struggle against this professionally repugnant and pedagogically flawed state of affairs, turning to the text comes so naturally.
I wonder what would happen if, for a week, for a unit, for a year, I refuse to use the textbook at all....
Where it all falls down is the "specific implementation" portion of that. Most teachers and classes have a textbook of some kind. We're smart enough and we've been trained well enough that we now know that textbook /= curriculum. Even so, I (and I'd guess a lot of other teachers) still turn to my textbook first when I have no idea what I should do the next day. I have my curriculum document, a list of the 65 learning goals per her class, which I tweak, realign, and try to implement more fully during the summer. I create unit plans, with learning goals and assessments and teaching strategies. I make weekly lesson plans during the week. And through all this process, I use the textbook as a place where I can steal materials from and then rip them apart and re-assemble them in a way that actually works. But when the chips are down, and my three-tiered planning system fails to take something into account (and yes, like all teachers, I make my plans knowing that they won't work), and everything falls apart (I plan on this happening most weeks about halfway through Wednesday of any given week), I grab my textbook and pick bookwork activities out. There are any number of problems with this.
Grammar-based fill-in-the-blank activities have been shown to be not a very good way of teaching Spanish at all. Vocabulary-based drills--a sentence in Spanish with a key word missing--are better than grammar-based drills, because they provide input and modeling as well as making a student utilize newly acquired vocabulary. The vocab sentences are like Spanish crosswords, only they look like what we think homework should look like. However, it takes no analytical ability at all to see that, in my particular textbook, two pages of grammar instruction and mechanical practice exist for every one page of vocabulary practice. And that's not even counting the supplemental materials, where the ratio is closer to 3:1. In deference to the "communicative methodology" craze sweeping the nation, my textbook has taken all the practice activities that used to be plug-and-chug writing activities and turned them into speaking activities. Same basic formulation, different communication skills. Still not so good. So the first failing of my textbook is that it dedicates too much space to pedagogically flawed activities.
The way the students interact with the textbook also leaves a great deal to be desired. It's as if the textbook is the embodiment of school work. We now have a lot of format options for activities of all kinds--we can make activities on Moodle, or turn them into whiteboard activities or overhead transparency activities or board games, all with relative ease--and while the students still know that they're doing work, it seems to feel less onerous. But pull out the textbook, especially first thing, and the students know that they're in for a day of what my high school Spanish teacher referred to as gruntwork. [Interesting mini-study idea: Take a textbook project. Give it to the students in 3 or 4 different formats, including straight out of the text. Compare completion ratios and success rates. Control for instructional strategy and classroom management issues.]
But because I'm a big-idea type of guy, I have a more fundamental reason for distrusting my textbook, and that's that textbook companies are sort of the devil. In his article "The Muddle Machine," Ansari (2004) takes down the textbook industries in a number of areas, including the way pedagogical philosophy is artificially tacked on as a marketing ploy, the manner in which materials are recycled from other textbooks, and the way textbooks are designed to sell lots and lots of copies and Texas and California, which leads to an almost-uselessly homogenized blend of content. The way that textbook companies operate guarantees that any particular textbook is not going to be as useful as it should or could be, because there's no overhead in a book serving any particular interest. I understand that textbook companies have to make money (and there's a LOT of money in this publishing model). I get it. But I also have to be aware that the textbook companies are motivated by something other than my students' learning.
But for all of this philosophical and practical objection to my textbook, it's still my go-to source for gotta-have-it-now classroom content. My units for my high school Spanish I and II classes are more or less tightly tied to the units outlined in my text. I use the vocabulary lists from the text as my core vocabulary lists, and add or subtract vocabulary as necessary. I present grammar content in the order it comes up in the book, plus or minus a couple of days. (I think it's crazy, f'rinstance, to teach a student to describe where they're going before teaching them how to say where they are.) If the curriculum is the bedrock of the instruction, then my text is the foundation of the house. If the curriculum is the map to the finish line, the textbook is the schematic for the car that will take us there. And as much as I struggle against this professionally repugnant and pedagogically flawed state of affairs, turning to the text comes so naturally.
I wonder what would happen if, for a week, for a unit, for a year, I refuse to use the textbook at all....
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