More Notes on Feedback

Amy Lenord started a great Twitter discussion about how one encourages language learners to process language.  This eventually led to Martina Bex refering us to her excellent “I am a grammar geek” post, in which she talks about how much she loved– and found effective– the “red ink” from her Spanish profs in Uni. Bex and I very briefly discussed this.  (I will bet that when she has a spare moment– and she is a Mom again, congrats!– she’ll discuss this more.  Ha!)

Now, anyone who knows Bex knows that the basic deal with her is that what she wants done, she gets done.  Bex wants babies? Bex has four (at last count).  Bex wants to acquire Spanish?  Bex signs a months-long “no English” agreement with her room-mate!  Bex wants to master C.I.?  Bex does, in like two years of teaching.

So it is not surprising that she acquired a ton of Spanish in very short order in Uni. 

Again: she wanted, liked & felt she benefited from corrective feedback  in her Spanish classes. 

This raises two questions:  did the feedback she got actually help her, and, if so, why and how?

Well, let’s take Martina’s word for it, and say, sure, corrections and comments helped.  Now, how?

Well, suppose young Bex– or anyone else– wrote this on their Spanish 201 composition:

*  Ayer, yo fue al cine con mis amigos, y vimos una película.

This should be “yo fui,” and say her prof writes that on her paper.  Now, what happens next?

1. Bex notes there is an error.
2. Bex re-reds the sentence: yo fui al cine.

Most of our students will not even do #1.  Most will go straight to the mark, wondering  what did I get?  did I get an A?

Some will note, ok, there was an error.

A very few will re-read the corrected sentence, and maybe linger on it, in which case it is functioning as good comprehensible input (albeit not many repetitions).

So, why is the feedback working for Bex?  In my view, it is because

a. Bex is majorly motivated which means,

b. Bex wants feedback, and when she gets it,

c. the feedback provides comprehensible input.

Suppose the prof had written “ser takes an -i in the first-person singular.”  Would this have done Bex any good?  The research says no.  Maybe for Bex it did.  Maybe she went, hmm, yo fui al cine…

I was also recently talking to Adriana Ramírez and Luce Arsenault about giving corrections in their Sp and Fr classes.  Both maintained that their kids got better as a reuslt of having to do corrections.  They havn’t obviously had time to do a controlled study, but we noted a few things:

1.  Both have very motivated, mostly Asian and wealthy white kids, who have been hearing from their literate parents from Day 1 of school, memorise (for many Asian kids, who have had to learn zillions of Chinese characters before coming to and sometimes while in Canada), and edit (for wealthy white kids, whose parents are uber-literate, professional, etc).
2. My kids– who are generally Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu-speaking, and have less-literate and generally non-English speaking parents, almost none of whom have any formal experience learning additional languages– have not been primed to memorise and relentlessly improve their work.  This is not to say that our parents do not value education– they do, very much– but it is to say that they have not “acquired” some of the academic habits that can sometimes for kids in language classes.

There is a simple lesson here:  unless people want feedback, and get it, and the feedback is comprehensible input, it is not going to do any good.

So the teacher should focus not on marking and correcting, but on relaxing and reading and being happy in their spare time, so when they show up in class, they have the energy and mood to provide good C.I.– in story asking or reading or MovieTalk form– for kids.  And kids should not be forced to correct work (although if they want to, why not?).  Rather, their work should be hearing C.I. in class, and– if they must have homework– reading or viewing comprehensible and interesting target-language stuff.

 

 

 

Spanish Results: Adriana Ramírez’s Level 1 Spanish #showumine

My colleague Adriana Ramírez (@veganadri) has published some beginner results.  Here are three of her kids’ writing samples from early October 2015.  This is semi-sheltered grammar (no past tense yet) from classic TPRS: storyasking and reading, with some MovieTalk. They had 30 mintes to write these.  Also note that these kids

• do not “practice” writing
• do not “practice” or “study” grammar
• are not forced into any kind of “communicative output” or “communicative pair” activities
• do not use notes or dictionaries when doing writing assessments.

These are very good results.  Check it!

My Marking System for a Language Class Summarised.

“How do we mark kids in C.I. classes?” asks a C.I. newbie on the Yahoo listserv.  Assessment and evaluation are always hot topics.

First, definitions.  Assessment is observing how people are doing, and based on that observation

1. changing what you the teacher do and
2. giving students feedback in order to
3. improve student performance.

Assessment in a comprehensible input classroom means checking whether individual students (or the class) understand both statements and questions, and– if they don’t– clarifying. Weak choral responses?  No response?  Wrong answer?  Go back and clarify. The same goes for individual kids.  If Johnny can’t answer the question “What does ___ mean?”, go back and re-explain.  BOOM! that’s assessment.

Evaluation is assigning a number to student work based on a student’s performance in relation to standards (criteria).  This we do at the end of instruction (ie when a story cycle is done, or at the end of the year).

Second, principles.  If you havn’t been in-serviced about “assessment for learning,” google it, I can’t explain it all here, but let’s make three things SUPER CLEAR.

A.   We only evaluate “final products,” not practice, homework, behaviour, attitude, etc.   The long and the short of this surprisingly controversial statement is that we expect our kids to do X, Y and Z, and the mark we ultimately assign them at the end of Year ____ of Blablabian Language Class should reflect how well they do X, Y and Z, baseed on a set of criteria.  Whether or not Johnny is nice in class, and whether or not Suzy does her homework are irrelevant: what matters is how well they do in relation to criteria.

B.  We only evaluate what has been taught.  No random new vocab, no activities on tests the kids havn’t done, no gotcha! games etc.  You test what you teach, period.

C. We always let ppl re-do work so they can improve their mark. In my class, this means that their mark is always their most recent writing, reading and speaking mark.

Assessment should be fast, simple and minimal, because people learn from interesting comprehensible input and not from testing and feedback, and because teachers need to see their families & have a life 👍.  

Now, here is what I do.

DURING THE COURSE

My instruction is very loosely built around story cycles. I will ask a TPRS-style story, and add to that Movietalks, Intro Routine, Story Listening, Picturetalk, reading, etc. When we are “done” with one story and its associated vocab, I evaluate. Evaluation for a story cycle includes the following:

1. Two listening quizzes. For this, I read a 5-7 sentence story that I make up on the spot aloud. The kids listen, write down the Spanish, and translate into English. This will be 33% of the story cycle mark. To evaluate these, they basically get a mark for getting the gist of each sentence. I don’t “grade spelling” unless the spelling makes their writing incomprehensible.
2. One reading quiz. I will give the kids something to read, and get them to translate it. Whatever it is, it has to be 98% comprehensible. Usually, I will give kids a version of something we have created in class, or something similar to what we made in class. To evaluate this, I will randomly pick three sentences and see how well they understand. They will get a mark out of three.
3. One Story Listening grade. I do Story Listening on Fridays. I get the kids to summarise a printed version of the story and hand that in.  They almost always get 2.5/3 or 3/3 on this. This goes into the reading category. If a story cycle takes more than a week, sometimes they get two SL grades added to their reading.
4. One 5-min picture description write and one story write. This is how I mark writing.
6. Other stuff: I can also grade comics for a reading mark. If we are reading a novel, I can copy a few sentences from a chapter and get the kids to translate that for a reading mark. You can easily get reading marks from Textivate, and I also use Sr Wooly scores sometimes for reading marks.

So, at the end of a story cycle, I will have two marks for writing, two for listening, and one or two for reading. Each category is worth 33.3% of grade. I print marks out & post them online.

Now, if kids have unexcused absences, or they didn’t do the comic or Q&A for stories, etc., they will get a much lower grade than they expect. If the grade is low, I tell the kid or their parent “Baninder is missing X, Y and Z. If she completes these next story cycle, she will probably get a higher grade.” So the kids know that the posted grade is their grade right now. They also know that they can change their grade by paying attention.

When the next story cycle starts, the gradebook resets.

AT THE END OF THE YEAR

In my course, the final exam is 100% of the mark. I tell kids and parents that their marks along the way are a rough indicator of how well they are doing.  At the end of the year, we do the following:

1. First class: they have a listening test where I read a longer story (15-20 sentences) aloud.  They have to write down the Spanish and translate. Then, we have a reading test: they get a written text they have never seen, and translate it into English. I randomly pick 5 sentences and grade those for each of reading & listening.

2. Second class: they have three writing tasks.  First, they have 5 min. to describe themselves.  Second, I project a picture, and they have 5 min. to describe the picture. Third, they have to write a story.

3.  For speaking, I do this.

After seven years of C.I., I have found this system clear, simple, low-work and low-stress for the kids. To sum up,

• students are always marked on their most recent work
• no oral evaluation for beginners
• this is real “assessment for learning” where only final products are evaluated with reference to criteria
• there is no marking of attitude, homework, participation, etc.  If kids screw around, or don’t work, I deal with it– but not by using marks as carrot or stick

Adriana recommends…

My colleague Adriana Ramírez has done some cool c.i.-themed stuff. As well as writing a “textbook” for Spanish TPRS called Learning Spanish With Comprehensible Input Through Storytelling (you can buy it through Amazon), she has a few other things.

A) teachers pay teachers. Adriana has a set of Movietalk lessons. These include questions, readings, etc. You can find these here.

B) Youtube channel– watch Adriana doing bits of lessons. The link is here.

I have not seen the videos or used the movietalk stuff so if ppl buy/watch them and like them, please comment. Her book is good.

Adriana’s great movie project idea

My colleague Adriana had a great idea for a movie project.

As I noted here, movie projects are generally a terrible idea in the languages class. As Teri W. has famously said, “peer to peer communication is the McDonalds of language teaching.” So, how do we make good movies? Adriana cracked this one:

A) Adriana gets the kids into groups of 3 and they make films of the stories. They have written versions of the stories (which include some dialogue) and they write out more dialogue (which she edits).

B) The kids film the stories. This can be done nowadays with any smartphone. Hell, you can even edit on a smartphone.

C) the fun here is the costumes, the non-verbal stuff (gestures, faces, sets etc), the music and the editing. The language is dead simple– the kids don’t have to do much in terms of “thinking” about output.

D) they use one kid as the narrator, and between one and three kids as characters in the film. They can also “subtitle” the film with dialogue.

E) the final product has title, credits, etc, a narrator’s voiceover, dialogue, acting bla bla, and perfect Spanish that the kids find hilarious. Adriana shows them during her last 2 blocks where she has the kids watching the films– they’re mesmerised and getting awesome comprehensible input– and she pulls a kid at a time out of class and does her oral assessment.

F) You can recycle these for next time you use the stories.

Anyway, thanks Adriana (@veganadri on Twitter) for a great idea that I am gonna try to do in June.

What is T.P.R.S.’ Sequence of Instruction?

Now that I have been using Adriana Ramírez’ Learning Spanish With Comprehensible Input Storytelling for 10 weeks I thought I’d show how I use the text. At any point, if there is extra time, or we are bored, we take out our novel– Berto y sus Buenas Ideas, or whatever, and we read– guided and questioned by me– for 5-15 min.

Adriana’s teacher book has the historia básica– the story version we ask– and the preguntas personalizadas, along with a short list of the grammar “points” introduced in each story.

A) Photocopy the historia básica and the preguntas personalizadas and give the kids each a copy.  I give my kids the historia básica in photocopy form because I want them to re-read a simple version of the story.  The historia extendida and the comprehension questions are in the student book.

B) establish meaning– have kids write down Spanish words and English meanings in the student books.

C) ask the story, sticking fairly close to the historia básica. Add 1-2 parallel characters. Have 1-2 actors for the main story and have the parallel characters sit at their desks (with one prop each) to identify them. The beginning is always establishing lots of details about the characters.

D) Personalised questions and answers (PQA): ask the faster processors in class (just regular kids sitting there) the questions you ask the actors. Do this AFTER each actor has said his/her answer. E.g. If you narrate “the boy wants to speak Spanish,” ask the actor “do you want to speak Spanish?” Then ask the kids “do YOU want to speak ____?” For this I use whatever I ask actors plus the preguntas personalizadas in the teacher’s book (the kids also have copies of these).

E) When done, ask a thousand comp questions. Does the boy want to own a Ferrari? Does the girl want 10 blue cats or 20? I read sentences from the historia básica aloud and ask questions, and I also throw a TON of PQA into this.  I will generally do the comp questions around the historia básica  that I’ve copied and given them– I have found that another, very simple, re-reading of more or less exactly what was asked helps a lot.

F) Spend one block (75 min) reading the historia extendida aloud, asking zillions of questions, doing PQA, etc.  This takes awhile, as the historia extendida typically has a bunch of new vocab (typically 15 or so words not in the asked/básica version of the story).

G) Do ping-pong reading of the historia extendida for about 15 min. Then give them 20 min to write the answers to the comprehension questions in the student book. I collect these and mark 3 questions/student for comprehension.

H) at this point, Adriana gives them one period to practise and perform the story– changing only names and places– but I have ditched this because the kids give me crappy output and retells do not seem to boost acquisition. Adriana is convinced it works– it definitely works for her and her kids– but I have not figured this out yet.  I’ll keep ppl posted as hopefully Adriana can walk me through this for the 37th time (I am not a smurt guyy).

This is where I do MovieTalk and PictureTalk (Ben Slavic’s “Look and Discuss”). I will picturetalk 1-3 images that support the vocab from our story, and I’ll movietalk one video that does the same.

I) for homework, they have to either draw a 12-panel comic of the story, or copy and translate the story (the historia extendida). This is “deep reading” that really focuses them in on the story.

J) I sometimes “re-ask” the basic story super-quickly at some point (much less circling).

K) Test. First, speedwrite: they must write as many words as they can in 5 min. The topic will be either 1. describe yourself or 2. describe a picture I put on the overhead (this picture will be of a person who has possessions or characteristics of a character in the story).

Then we have a 5-min brain break.

Second, relaxed write. They have 35 min to re-write the story. They need 2 characters minimum, 4 dialogues central to the story, and they have to “twist” the story after our 3rd story. For the first two, they can just re-write the story. After that, they have to substantially change the story details.

L) I then give them the vocab etc (see A) for our next story.

Test and introducing new vocab takes 1 block.

NOTES:

1. If the kids like whatever we are doing, or reading,nand/or PQA takes off, I’ll spend as long as I can on this. If they are in the target language, and they understand, and there are zillions of reps, they are learning. Remember what Papa Blaine said: “My goal is to never finish a story.”

2. Another AWESOME thing to throw in are fake texts– easy to generate and personalise/customise for each story– kids like the visuals and you get loads more reps on the dialogue (this is the hardest thing to do– reps on dialogue). Just google “fake text generator” or try this one for iPhone texts.

3. Each class begins with me circling date, day, month, time and weather for about 1 min.  This means that by end of five-month semester kids will know all weather, #s 1-30, days of the week, etc.

4. It’s crucially important to remember that you must do what works for you and your kids. Adriana and I and Natalia and everyone I know who uses this book (and T.P.R.S. in general) uses it differently. T.P.R.S. itself is now different than what Blaine Ray created– he himself continues to modify the method– so do your thing. As I told Adriana, her excellent book is a platform from which Spanish teaching launches.  Adriana does retells; I don’t; both of us do assessment slightly differently, etc.

Ok there you have it, what I do.

Multiple verb tenses & different versions of stories– how?

I got a couple of questions from Andrew:

I was wondering if you ever have the kids turn around and read the class story in the past tense (or, not in whatever tense you read it during reading option A.)  Also, can you give me an example of what you do when you say they read a couple different versions of the story?

— Andrew

A)  Multiple verb tenses.  This year, I am using Adriana Ramirez’ book as a guide.  It is all present-tense until the 9th story, so, no I havn’t gone into multiple tenses yet.  Mainly this is because Adriana’s book does not have multiple-tense versions of extended readings (before the 9th story).

So far, this is working, but I would rather do it in all tenses simultaneously.  In the long run, this will work better– the kids will acquire whatever they need when they are ready– but in practice it’s a bit harder.  You need readings in all tenses and you have to be careful with stories– more pop-ups– and in my experience you end up with fewer reps on more tenses…so the acquisition is slower on everything, and there is tense confusion for the kids.

B) For “different versions of the story,” we are talking about the same structures and most of the same vocab used in different contexts with different characters.  E.g. In the version I ask, a boy wants to have a girlfriend, wants to impress a girl he meets with money/cars/etc, but she prefers pink dogs, so he gives her pinks dogs.  This is asked, acted, and orally reviewed, etc.

For the reading, the story has a girl who wants to have a boyfriend, who wants to impress a guy she meets with her enormous pickup truck, but he prefers small scooters, and so she gives him a small scooter.  Adriana’s book is organised more or less like that: the written story– the one the kids read– recycles the vocab from the asked (performed) story.

How well is Adriana Ramírez’ book working so far?

This year I decided to go in for a more classical, purely story-based T.P.R.S. than what I began with– what Ben Slavic described as “the freewheelin’ c.i.” I am using my colleague Adriana Ramírez’ Teaching Spanish Through Comprehesible Input Storytelling text. This is a set of 16 stories. You get a vocab list, a basic story, an extended reading, story comprehension questions and personalised questions. The thing was loosely designed to “piggyback” on Avancemos, the Spanish text our District adopted, but it stands alone too.

Today’s question: how well is Adriana’s book working?

1) Great.

2) I am almost done my 4th story– “Cambio de Pelo”– and these are my results:

a) for speedwrites (“write as many words as you can in 5 min”) I am alternating topics. For even-numbered stories, the speedwrite assignment is “describe yourself.” For the odd-numbered stories, the assignment is “describe a picture on the overhead” (Picture will have something to do with just-asked story).

Word count averages for speedwrites as follows:

— story 1 25 words + 45-word bonus = 70% average

— story 2 43 words + 40-word bonus = 83% average

— story 3 50 words + 35-word bonus = 85% average

In terms of grammar, every kid– except those who miss 2-3 classes– is getting at least 2/3 and over 1/2 are getting 3/3. Out of 30 kids, only 3 have “bombed” in terms of grammar and in each case their subsequent mark went way up. I.e. a kid who misses a bunch of classes, does the test, then bombs, will do much better later on (on the test after next story) because the stories recycle all the grammar and vocab.

Word count averages for “relaxed writes” (“rewrite the story, or modify it, or make up your own, and include 2 main characters and at least 2 dialogues”)

— story 1 ~80 words (they totally sucked– average grammar mark 1/3)

— story 2 ~130 words (much better– average grammar mark 2/3)

— story 3 ~ 180 words (better again– class evenly split between 2/3 and 3/3 for grammar mark)

Oral output:

The system for “teaching” kids to talk in T.P.R.S.– a.k.a. P.Q.A. (personalised questions and answers) is super-simple: you basically ask members of the class the questions you ask your actors. So, in the first story, you ask your actor “what is your name?” and s/he says “My name is ____.” Because s/he doesn’t know any Spanish, you write it on the board and they can just read off board. You then ask them “is your name ?” and they say “No, my name is _____.” You then ask your parallel character(s) the same question(s). Then– after the audience has heard it a bunch of times from actors– you ask the members of the class, starting with the keeners, the same question. Initially, the keeners will be able to spit it our right away in sentence form, while other kids will just say “John.”

After 5 weeks x 5 classes/week = 25 classes, 4/5 of the kids can now unhesitatingly and fluently answer these questions:

— what is your name? how old are you? where do you live? are you a [boy, girl, cat…]? Are you [tall, short, crazy…]?

— do you like _____? [about 15 verbs and 15 nouns to choose from]

— what’s the weather, day, date?

— what are you like? (i.e. describe yourself)

— do you prefer ___ or ___?

— do you have ____?

The other 1/5 of class (the slower-acquirers) ALL understand the questions, and all can say something— even if it’s just one word– that makes sense. E.g. “What’s the weather like?” — “Cold.”

3) Why is it working, and what would I change?

First, it’s working cos it restricts (shelters) vocab, and because the extended reading closely mirrors the story asked. Second, it restricts vocab overall. I have done a rough count and it comes out to the kids get about 3 new words/day on average. Third, the comp questions force re-reading, and fourth, I am liking Adriana’s comic idea.

Update on the comic: for the comic, after we have done the extended reading (teacher guided, and ping-pong), the kids have to create a 12-panel comic that illustrates the story. It has to look awesome– clip art, etc fine– with colour, each panel must have at least one sentence, and the comic must include all dialogue. This time, I also added a translation option: copy the story– by hand– then translate underneath in different colour, then leave a blank line (to keep it neat) and indent all dialogue. I am gonna see how the translation works, but the comic rationale is, it’s deep reading: kids have to re-read, select, and illustrate (read: concise focus). Adriana says it works best for the laggard boys and I have to agree.

My changes: First, My kids are 90% Indian, so English is often their 2nd language, and almost none of them hear English at home. Our kids read, and are literate, but lack some of the linguistic mental infrastructure that Adriana’s (rich, white and Asian, educated) kids do. So, they need MUCH more reading practice than Adriana’s, so I make them read BOTH the basic script– the story I ask, by photocopying it and handing it out– AND the extended one in Adriana’s book. Second, I am varying the speedwrites (5 mins) as noted above. Third, my kids don’t always get the comprehension questions, so I have to go through them. E.g. on the last story, one question was ¿Dónde vive el chico? (Where does the boy live?) and the kids all answered with “Vivo en Colombia” (I live in Colombia). Fourth, the retells don’t work. I am getting junky output from the kids so I am putting the kaibosh on retells for awhile until I figure out a better way to do this.

Anyway, overall, the program is working well and I am both recommending it and gonna stick with it. If ppl want to try it, email Adriana (ramirez_a (attt) surreyschools (dottt) ca or hit her up on twitter: @veganadri