Video Games and Language Acquisition

When I went climbing in Colombia in 2008, I found Colombian climbers who all spoke excellent English. Asked how they had learned, all said a variation of school was totally boring and useless…but subtitled movies and YouTube and TV in English are great. When I was in Mexico in summer of 2022, the Mexicans who spoke good English all repeated what the Colombians had said, but with an addition: I play a lot of World of Warcraft/Call of Duty/Guild Wars etc, as well as I use Duolingo (or other such apps).

Is this true? Do people actually acquire lots of language from gaming? Yup..and thanks to C.I. Fight Club‘s Joe Kelley, we now have some solid data. In this paper, Dixon, Dixon & Jordan looked at what effects gaming in an additional language had on gamers’ language acquisition. Here is a brief summary. Discussion follows.

A caveat: these studies measured vocabulary acquisition only. This is a decent, but incomplete, picture of what ppl have picked up from exposure to a language. But it’s a useful base: if we know vocab, we can undertsand the language, and that understanding leads to implicit acquisition of “grammar” over time.

So what did we learn?

1. Not all games are of equal value. “Non-educational” games produced much greater gains than dumb stuff like Quizlets or Kahoots (which are basically flashcards). Actual fun games also outperformed the likes of Duolingo, which is just a sophisticated flashcard.
   
2. Fun matters. The authors note that “Further limiting the success of educational games [eg Duolingo] is the idea that these games replace ‘play’ with “repetitive and superficial tasks in which the learning objectives are too obvious” (Reinhardt, 2019).” Students can smell b.s. a mile away. And while kids may have low “performance” with the language they are acquiring, their brains are cognitively quite advanced. So dumb activities like “match the word to its definition” are going to make ppl feel spoken down to and bored. This is crucial to remember: vocab level and brain development in a language classroom are not in sync, so we must increase the thinking whilst decreasing the amount of vocab used.
   
3. Exactly as anyone who reads would have predicted, “[G]ames requiring no output from participants showed the greatest positive effect (d-weighted = 1.60) on L2 learning outcomes.” In other words, students don’t need to speak or write in the target language to acquire it.
   
   There is some interesting discussion about why (in the context of video games) speaking and writing requirements seem to slow acquisition. First, when speaking (or writing), we aren’t getting input, and input is what drives acquisition. Second, the authors speculate that the real-time cognitive demands of gaming overload players. When you are listening to (or reading) a new language, AND moving a game controller AND processing non-linguistic input, AND planning moves, your brain is super-busy. The amount of “conscious bandwidth” available for processing language is limited, and so people pay less attention to everything, including language.
   

Like anything else one might do in a language classroom, the overall message of gaming studies is, if it’s interesting and comprehensible, people will want to do it and will acquire language from it. I wouldn’t assign games as homework, or have kids play these in class, but I have told them “if you can play a game in Spanish or using Spanish settings, or with Spanish speakers, you are going to pick things up.”

There seems to be a lesson here for eg DuoLingo: stop teaching people, and start interesting them.

Getting Rid of a Big Buuuuut

This is a decent bottle of wine. It’s also a bet. I bet you this bottle of wine that any objections to comprehension-based language instruction will be adressed and refuted in this post. Go on…take  the bet! (Mormons and other teetotalers, we can do a bottle of Portland’s finest kombucha, how’s that?)

We all know that C.I. works for language acquisition. Actually, we know that C.I. is the only thing that works. As linguist Bill VanPatten put it on his show, “the benefits of grammar-focused teaching are purely incidental.” That is, when we give students worksheets, or force them to talk/memorise scripts, or memorise lists of words or grammar rules, or whatever silly thing the textbook preaches, they pick up (a wee bit of) language not because of these activities, but despite them.

We have research to support these claims.  Yet, we still have colleagues, Headz, Adminz, Faculty Adjunctz, Evaluatorz, some Parents, and even some students, who say a version of “buuuuut…C.I. doesn’t work.”

That’s a biiiiiig buuuuut, and nobody’s pedagogical self wants to walk around dealing with THAT, sooooo…TPRS Questions And Answers is proud to present, Getting Rid of a Big Buuuut, aka “short and sweets for the haters.” Some people don’t like, can’t or won’t read, or don’t “believe in” science. This is for them. Here goes. Thank you: BVP, Robert Harrell, Terry Waltz, Blaine Ray, Bob Patrick and others for many of these ideas.

1. But people need to talk to acquire language!

Robert Harrell: OK, so you need to talk to learn to talk. Right. What language would you like to learn?
— Uhh, Urdu.
OK, let’s start by speaking Urdu.
— But I don’t know any Urdu
…

2. But we need to [consciously] know grammar rules to speak a language. 

ITEM:

Me: Which sounds better, I like to run, or I enjoy to run?
— I like to run.
Why?
…
Who taught you that “rule”? Did you practice it? …

ALSO ITEM

Me: Which sounds better, I am a professional nice tall man, or I am a nice, tall professional man?
— The second one.
How do you know? Who taught you?

AND ITEM

Terry Waltz:
*takes out phone and turns stopwatch on*
Say three sentences about what you did last night.
— Uh, I cooked dinner and ate with my kids.  Then I watched the news. Later my husband put the kids to bed.
OK, now, say three sentences about what you did last night, but don’t use the letter “s”.
— I, uhh, cooked dinner and I ate with my uhhh children. Then I watched uhhh TV. And my hu– er, partner– put our ki– err, children– to bed.
Your first took you four and a half seconds. Your second took you sixteen. How easy is it to speak when you have to think about your own language?

3. Colleague: But if our kids don’t know how to conjugate verbs and fill in the blanks, how are they going to be ready for [high school/middle school/Uni]?

You: riiiiight, good point.  Let’s have a look at State/provincial standards. Hmmm. I don’t see anything here about our curriculum preparing students for any specific subsequent classes.  Could you show me that?

Colleague: …

4. Colleague: but they still NEED those skills.

Tina Hargaden: suuure. Let’s have a look at State standards.  There is going to be something in there that says, “students will be able to conjugate verbs and fill in worksheets.”
*looks up the Oregon World Languages Standards and what Novice High students should be able to do*

Tina and colleague: *read that students at this level “understand, exchange, and present information about familiar topics in everyday contexts using a variety of rehearsed or memorized words and phrases with attempts at creating simple, original sentences and questions.”

Tina: *shows colleague examples of how students can read and write stories in, and understand spoken Blablabian*

Tina: sooooo those verb conjugations.  Where do the Standards mention them?

Colleague: …

Note: if you can find ONE State or Provincial language curriculum that includes verb chart filling out, pronoun-placing etc work as an objective, that bottle of wine is on me cos you, uh, “win.” Go on, get your Google on.

5. Colleague: but students need to know all the words for food if they will ever survive in France.

Terry Waltz: I’m a certified, professional Mandarin-English translator and I have lived and worked in Taiwan for years. I still don’t know all the words for the food I typically eat there. Neither do the people who live there. And when we don’t know, we just point, and say I’ll have that.

6. Colleague, Head: but students must know all the numbers from 1-3,998,231.6, all the location words, all the colours, the alphabet, all the basic body parts, and the words for clothing.

You (in your head): ya right cos when I go to Taiwan, I’m gonna need to say “I need 87 pairs of blue pants to wear on my legs A and B under the raincoat.”
You (actually): Why?
Colleague/Head: Well, these are the basics of language.
You: What do you mean?
Colleague/Head: They are used a lot. Basic. Also they are in our textbook as the first units and they are on the exam I have coincidentally been giving for the last 45 years.
You: I wonder.  How about we look at frequency lists to see what’s most used?
Colleague: …
You: *show them the Wiktionary Frequency Lists*
You: *press CTRL F to search the list* Ok, let’s see whether or not “yellow” is in the top-1000 most-used words in Spanish.
You: *type in amarillo. Nothing comes up. Type in sea (“is” in the subjunctive form, typically taught in Level 4 or 5 in textbook programs). Sea is the 150th most-often-used word in Spanish.*
You: Hmm that’s weird, well I guess we better ditch colours in Level One and start teaching the subjunctive.
Colleague: …

7. Parent/admin: but when *I* was in school, WE learned Latin by memorising verbs and lists of other words.

Bob Patrick: You took Latin in high school?
Parent: Yeah, and I got 91.358%.
Bob: Quid agis hodie?
Parent: …
Bob: s.l.o.w.l.y.): Quid agis hodie?
Parent: …
Bob: Femina haec/homo hic ebrius est! 😉
Parent: …
Bob (in his head): Aaaaand how well did that Latin teaching work out for you?
Bob (aloud): It’s normal for any student to forget some language over time. But you had trouble understanding me asking you how are you today? in Latin.

Note: Kids, don’t try this in parent-creature int– err, I mean, student learning reflection conferences. And if you do, let me know how you did it politely.

8. Colleague/Head: but that input stuff doesn’t work, because students aren’t learning grammar.

Blaine Ray: “I believe the best thing a department can do to show who is learning the language and who is not is to share timed writings. If departments required teachers to bring all timed writings from their classes, then it would show who is teaching well and who is not. Teachers wouldn’t be able to pronounce that their students are learning. They would show what their students have learned by bringing in writing samples of all of their students.”

You: That’s possible.  Why don’t we see? I propose this: let’s you and I choose a picture of, I dunno, a boy walking his dog. We’ll each project that in front of our classes. Students will have five minutes to write about the picture.  They can’t use phones, notes, dictionaries, etc.  Then, we’ll compare.
Colleague/Head: ….

9. Colleagues/Headz/Adminz: but [C.I. instruction, using stories and other interesting materials] is too teacher-centered. 

Bill VanPatten: The [C.I.]  classroom is NOT teacher-centered. It is teacher-led.

C/H/A: but [C.I. classes are] too much about fun, and not enough about real communication.

BVP: Entertainment is a valid form of communication.

C/H/A: but [C.I. classes are] too much about stories and characters, and not enough about exchanging information.

BVP: [C.I.] is communicative, since it has an expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning.

C/H/A: but teachers who use TPRS [and other comprehensible input strategies] do not teach enough explicit grammar.

BVP: What’s on page 32 in the textbook will not be the language that winds up in a student’s head.

C/H/A: but in a C.I. class, there is very little interaction with input, because students are listening to stories and questions, not engaging in conversations.

BVP: Interaction with input simply means indicating comprehension. Students can do this in many ways.

Grammar Nazi Who Has Been Teaching French 2 For 45 Years: but I feel like Mr Smith’s kids neeed to learn and practice verb conjugation because when they show up in my class, they can’t complete verb conjugation tables.

Bryan Smith: “Do the ESL/ELL students study countless grammar rules to prepare for state testing? No. They don’t. They are learning a second language by getting lots of comprehended input. If they learn that way, why shouldn’t WL students?”

K folks, have at it.  Refutations = you get a bottle of wine!

Against Rules: Rothman vs the Grammarians

It is a lovely Sunday, work is over, but sadly my climbing partner Tiff has decided to chase boys instead of vert, and so here I am reading SLA papers, in this case Jason Rothman’s “Aspect Selection in Adult L2 Spanish and the Competing Systems Hypothesis: When pedagogical and linguistic rules conflict” (2008).

Rothman in this paper hypothesises that conscious learning of grammar “rules”– in this case, the distinction between the preterite and imperfect tenses in Spanish, for L2 learners of Spanish– will interfere with native-like acquisition of those “rules.”

There is a standard explanation of the preterite and imperfect that we Spanish teachers give: the preterite is a snapshot of the past, and the imperfect a movie.  Finished past action vs habitual or ongoing past action, etc. Now this is not wrong, but it is far from complete. Which of the following (from Rothman, 2008), for example, is correct?

(11) Siempre que  fuimos a la universidad, estudiamos en la bliblioteca.
(12) Siempre que íbamos a la universidad, estudiábamos en la biblioteca.

Both are, obviously, but the meanings do not follow the ongoing-vs-completed template of instruction. Both mean more-or-less “when we went to the Uni, we ended up studying in the library.” Both are generalisations, but 11 connotes an accidental (unforseen) generalisation, whereas 12 is a foreseen generalisation.

Rothman took three groups of people who knew Spanish: native speakers, those who had studied, and those who had acquired Spanish “naturalistically,” i.e. on their own, largely through TV, radio and interactions with native speakers. All did the same two tasks.

They sorted the students to account for Spanish knowledge etc etc, so they got three groups who were functionally similar (ie all could read Spanish about equally well).

Task One was, read “Goldilocks” in Spanish, and choose the correct of two forms of the verb (preterite or imperfect). Task Two: read a paragraph with blanks, and generate the right form of the verb (again, the choice was between preterite and imperfect).

Now, this was a “Monitor” task. The students dealt with writing, and had time to employ the conscious mind, rules, declarative memory etc. Rothman hypothesised that, because conscious learning and rules couldn’t capture the subtleties of the p-vs-i distinctions, students who had acquired via these rules would underperform others.

The results?

1. Native speakers all overwhelmingly made the same and correct choices.

2. The “taught” students of Spanish made a wider variety of errors, and many more of them, than did the native speakers.

3. The “naturalistic acquirers” of Spanish made significantly fewer errors than did the “taught” students, and their error patterns were more native-like than those of the “taught” students.

Rothman’s hypothesis was therefore confirmed: acquisition of the aspectual (tense) system of Spanish was significantly slowed by conscious learning and speeded up by exposure to input. As he puts it, “pedagogical rules of oversimplification can result in L2 performance variation, perhaps indefinitely.”

Rothman points out that if teachers wanted to meaningfully and beneficially “explain” the p-vs-i distinction, they have to do it in significantly more complex ways than they– we– now do. There is, in other words, way more going on than the “photo vs movie” metaphor.

And the old problem of mental bandwidth here arises: because, as Bill VanPatten notes, we have limited “room” in our heads for explicit information, the more explanations we get, the less “sticky” they will be in our memory. In addition to this, some of these explanations about why we would use one verb tenses or the other– are not particularly student-friendly. Do you want to explain about adverbial quantifiers, semantic distinctions, and accidental vs foreseen generalisations? Could kids understand these? Would they care?  

There are obviously also about 1,000,000 more “rules” in Spanish– or any other language– and so we would rapidly hit a wall if we had to teach using rules.  No time, little student interest, and no way to keep all those rules in your head (or access them in real time tasks, such as speaking or listening).

Luckily, there is a way out. One major implication for teachers, which Rothman notes, is that “the only compulsory variable is sufficient access to quality input.” This is exactly what Stephen Krashen predicted forty years ago: providing input beats anything else, and there is very limited benefit to learning grammar “rules.” Krashen’s dry comment that the relative clause is less than compelling also merits note: nobody other than classroom teachers really cares about grammar.

People who have to teach to stupid, grammar-focused tests take heart:  loads of C.I. is way more fun than studying the stupid textbook, and it works much better!

The moral of the story: input gets the job done just fine. Stories ahoy– carry on!

 

 

 

How Should I Teach Avoir vs Etre Verbs?

I just wrote a post about how to teach por and para, which is a classic old-school Spanish teachers’ conundrum.  And then in the staff room I heard two of my French-teaching colleagues talk about “Dr and Mrs Vandertramp” verbs.

French is like German: you have to use either avoir/haben or être/sein plus the main part of the meaning verb when you want to say like I went or she bought.  I think one is called the fast farticiple and the other is called, what is going on or the meaning verb.

I taught French like 18 years ago and kids always got these mixed up.  So like the genius I thought I was I did some research and learned about Dr and Mrs Vandertramp, a mnemonic for remembering which verbs use être and which use avoir to make the past tense. I taught that to the kids (along with the house diagram below).

Th kids memorised it , and they did well on their verb quiz (my cunning motivational tool to get them to study), and when they actually had to write a paragraph or whatever on their test, they all totally blew it.  J’ai alle.  Je suis achtee, etc. 

Mais non! I thought, tabernac, what did I fail to do? Years later I would realise, thanks to Mr Blaine Ray and Dr Stephen Krashen and finally professor Bill VanPatten, that we learn grammar from language, not language from grammar, as Lomb Kato said.  Or, as VanPatten puts it, “things like person-number endings on verbs must be learnt from the input like anything else; they can’t be taught and practiced in order to build a mental representation of them.”

So, if rule-teaching doesn’t work, an grammar drills etc don’t work, and if even fun mnemonics and pictures don’t work, how DO we get kids to acquire the “rule” for avoir and être use in the past?

(While we’re at it, we might as well solve another classic French (and Spanish, and German) teachers’ problem at the same time:  how to we teach the difference between the imperfecto/imparfait  and the passé-composé/pretérito?)

Easy!

First, we start using these–yes, in the past tense– from Day 1 of French 1.  Yes, our total beginners can handle more than one verb tense at a time.  If kids hear this a lot, and understand it, they will eventually pick it up. You can start asking/creating a story on Day 1 of French 1 with the following sentences:

il y’avait un garcon 
il est allé
il a besoin de…

Yes, you have three verb tenses here.  Kids can understand.  In your next story, you use an avoir verb, like elle a cherché right along side your être verb. And you keep doing this–using language naturally, albeit with carefully limited vocabulary– from levels one to infinity.

If you are a French teacher who has been saddled your whole career with a textbook, and you are wondering what?!? teach three verb tenses from Day 1?!? Impossible!, trust me.  Our brains pick up all grammar at once, so to speak.  And if even I, a terrible C.I. teacher at best, can do it, anybody can do it.

Second, we do not ask kids to memorise mnemonics or rules.  This is because even if they do something as pointless and boring as memorisng Dr And Mrs Vandertramp, this grammatical knowledge is useless in real-time writing and speaking.  It takes too long to remember and apply the rules consciously.  And, as Bill VanPatten reminds us, conscious knowledge cannot become implicit competence.

Third, when we translate, we translate meaning and not grammatical geekery.  So in French, we translate il est allé  as “he went,” and we do not add “and this is the direct vocative object transitive verb tense bla bla.” For il a besoin de…, we do not say “French requires the use of a bla bla bla…”  We just say “it means he needs” and if little Johnny ever gets curious, we can say, “well it more specifically means he has need of“.

Fourth, we don’t worry about it.  When Maninder goes to Paris and asks est-ce que le train a sortí instead of est-ce que le train est sortí, the Frenchman with whom he is talking will understand him perfectly and say pas encore.  The Frenchman will think, allors c’est un americain but whatever. meaning has been communicated.  We have waaay bigger fish to fry in our French classes than obsessions about verbs.

 

Anyway.  The bigger point?  “Un-Englishy” grammar should be used from Day 1, comprehensibly, naturally and frequently.  If the kids hear and read it enough, they will pick it up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Should I Teach Por and Para?

Today’s question, from Facebook: any fun ways of teaching por vs para? This is a classic question, much like how do I teach ser vs estar?

For those not teaching Spanish, these words can be translated as “for.”

So how should we teach por and para?

First, we do not make a list of their similarities and differences, and we do not  make a list of usage rules for kids to memorise.  Why? Because even if kids do something totally boring and dumb, like memorising grammar rules, not even the best of them– in real time speech or writing– will be able to remember and apply the rule.  There isn’t enough time in real time.

Imagine having to memorise and then remember this!  😦

Second, we do not make a “unit” around por and para. The textbook “unit” around a grammar concept, verb tense, topical vocab set etc is a bad idea: it will artificially narrow and limit language: John buys a blouse for Suzie.  He buys it in order for her to like him.  He pays $20 for it. He passes by Nordstrom on his way home from buying the blouse for Suzie.  He wonders, “did I pay too much for that blouse?” You can see how limiting this is.

Third, we start using them, from Day 1, appropriately, in context.  A perfectly good sentence for a beginning story comes from Blaine Ray: el gato quería un iPhone para comunicarse con otros gatos (“the cat wanted an iPhone in order to communicate with other cats”). In any quest story, we can have a character try to buy something:

¿por cuánto salen?      (“how much do they go for?”)                                                                      — salen tres por veinte (“three go for twenty”)

Fourth, when we do translate, we avoid using the word “for” (which will be confusing). Instead, we translate each “use type” of por and para with context (and usage-) specific words.  So we write

le da veinte por tres he gives her twenty [pesos] for three [of those]
es para su madre it is meant for his mother
fue por la calle she went through the street
aprendió por escuchar he learned by listening
por ahí close by
se perdió por haber dormido she got lost because of having slept
te amo para siempre I’ll love you forever

(This is much like ser and estar.  We don’t translate them as “to be (+ a bunch of rules)”.  Rather, we translate them as “to be” for ser, and “to feel” or “to be located in” for estar.)

Finally, we don’t obsess about it. The gringo who ends up in a Mexican market saying le doy veinticinco para dos sounds foreign to a Mexican, but also perfectly comprehensible.  This is the equivalent of a Mexican saying why you don’t have no oranges? to a Canadian Safeway employee.  The Mexican’s not having acquired any yet has zero impact on how comprehensible she is to a Canadian.

 

 

 

To plan, or not to plan?

How do we know what a student can really do with an additional language, in, say, writing?  Suppose we wanted to be deadly boring for our students.  Hmmm, how about, we make them write about their daily routine, that should put both students and teacher nicely to sleep.

If we are a traditional teacher, we want to know what they have learned: what they can consciously do with language.  We could give them a writing prompt–describe your daily routine– time to plan/look at vocab/check out Google translate/”reflect on our learning”/plan out our metacognitive strategies/whatever, then give them a bunch of time to write, and then mark it.

If we are C.I. teachers, we want to see what students have acquired— what they can do without any planning, immediately. So we give them the same topic, zero prep time, a bit of time to write, then mark.

A teacher recently shared two writing samples from Spanish 1.  One sample is from a CI-taught kid in his class, the other from a kid taught by his grammarian colleague.

EXAMPLE A.  This is from the textbook/grammar teacher’s top student

• the teacher spent three weeks doing a “unit” on reflexive verbs
• the teacher’s students had just finished their “reflexive verb unit”
• they had time to “prepare” their writing
• they had 20 min. to write
• about 120 words
• quality: excellent, with minor errors

EXAMPLE B. from one of the C.I. teacher’s middle-of-the-road students

• the C.I. teacher spent about one week doing a story involving this vocab
• the story using this vocabulary was asked one month prior to this being written
• zero planning time
• 10 min. writing time
• 104 words
• Quality: excellent, with very minor errors

What I noticed:

• The CI student’s output is twice the speed of the traditionally-taught kid
• the CI kid does as well as the grammar kid with no planning time and half the writing time
• The CI kid has “been away” from the vocab for three weeks and uses it as well as the kid who just finished a “unit” on it
• The CI kid spent one week with this vocab while the grammar kid spent three weeks

Anyway…faster writing with zero prep time and less instructional time: C.I. is looking a lot better than the text.

Some Simple Subjunctive Tricks

Here’s some suuuuper-simple tricks for using the allegedly “advanced” subjunctive from Day 1 in Spanish class (and we had better use the subjunctive– and any other “advanced” grammar– from Day 1, because the more exposure kdis have to it, the easier it is for them to acquire).

FIRST, when we are creating a story– or an Invisible, or an OWI– you ask the kids for suggestions.  All we do is, we restate suggestions in the subjunctive, which is appropriate.

So, if this is “classical” TPRS, and our character has to go somewhere, we ask ¿adónde va la sirena? We solicit three suggestions and as each one comes up, we say es posible que la sirena vaya a Nueva York, then también es posible que vaya a la casa de Barack Obama, and finally es posible que vaya a San Diego.

We do our five-second pop-up by saying we say “vaya” instead of “va” because it’s not certain (yet) where the mermaid goes.

We can also do this with tener, querer, ser, etc: es posible que tenga un perro, es probable que quiera tener menos tarea,  and es posible que el hombre sea malo, etc.

If we are doing a Slavic-style OWI, we must first figure out how many characters there are.  We get suggestions, and we restate them, saying es posible que haya tres chicos or es posible que la chica tenga tres perros.

For teachers who are using fully unsheltered grammar — ie past tenses from Day 1– you can also use the past subjunctive, eg fue posible que la chica hiciera su tarea or ¿fue probable que el profesor no diera mucha tarea?

SECOND, when we are doing attendance, we talk about The Missing Kid.  So, if Johnny isn’t there, we say, clase, Johnny no está hoy. ¿Dónde está Johnny?  [kids make suggestions]  Clase, ¿es posible que Johnny esté en casa y esté enfermo? or ¿es posible que Johnny tenga una cita con el médico? or ¿es posible que Johnny vaya de excursión? 

For each of these, we ask questions, re-state answers (and negative answers) and make sure kids understand.

This is how it looks on the board:

THIRD, when we do weekend talk (“what are you/we going to do this weekend?”-type Q&A on Friday), we just add a wish to what a kid says, like this:

T: qué vas a hacer el sábado?

S: Voy a jugar Fortnite

T: ¡Espero que ganes/tengas éxito!

As always, we make sure the kids get the diff between “ganas” and “ganes.” With this and with The Missing Kid, we want to use one subjunctive form a lot per class (lots of reps). If we add one verb per class after 2-3 weeks they will have heard a fair bit of this appropriately.

We aren’t “teaching” the subjunctive to students who are expected to “master” it as a “unit.” We are just using it appropriately and meaningfully where it is necessary.  If we do this all year, the kids will develop a basic feel for it, which is really all they  need.

Eventually, after enough input, the kids will start using the subjunctive.  While they don’t, don’t worry: you can communicate just fine in Spanish without using it, and you don’t have to have a conscious explicit understanding of it to get the point. We know from research that a thing like mood is less important in the hierarchy of acquisition than is meaning, so learners will pay attention to word roots– eg. that hable  has to do with “talk”– before they tune into “oh, that e must mean incertitude or desire.”

Bill VanPatten recently called the Spanish subjunctive “peripheral,” meaning that while native speakers use it, it is not necessary for functional communication.  So…let’s use it and not worry about it.

Frequency List Lessons

There was a recent discussion in which a teacher said, my department head insisted on teaching only the present tense in Level 1, the preterite in Level 2, etc.  This Head’s reasoning was, people must “master” one set of “vocabulary” at a time. Bad idea.

Anyway, let us look at which verbforms in Spanish are actually most frequently used.  Here, from Wiktionary.com’s Spanish Frequency List, are the most-used verbs in Spanish, then some ideas about what this means for teachers.

The verbform is as given, and the number refers to how close to most-used the verbform is.  The lower the number, the more often used the verb is. Reference point: in Spanish, the most-used word is que (“what” or “that”) whose number is therefore 1.  The second most-used word is de (“of” or “from”) whose number is 2, and the articles la and el (“the”) are the 6th and 7th most-frequently-used words.  OK, verbs:

8.             es 22           está 42           vamos 44           hay 47           estoy 48           tengo 53           ha 55           sé 56           estás 58           puedo 60           quiero 62           soy 63           tiene 68           fue 69           ser 70           hacer 71           son 73           era 74           eres 76           tienes 77           creo 79           he 81           voy 82           puede 83           sabes 91           quieres 100        estaba 102         están 103         va 109         siento 110         tenemos

111         puedes 115         ver 124         decir 128         ir 132         has 136         estar 137        estamos 141        quiere 146        trabajo 148        mira 149        vas 150        sea 154        hecho 156        dijo 157        pasa 162        hablar 169        espera 171        han 173        sabe 177        fuera 181        podemos 182        dije 184        necesito 185        estado 186        podría 187        acuerdo 189        tener 190        dice 192        crees 194        gusta 197        será 198        haciendo 202        había

First, the facts.

A.  The top 202 most-used Spanish words include

• verbs in seven verb tenses (present, preterite, imperfect, present perfect, present progressive, formal future, informal future e.g. va a hablar)
• verbs in two subjunctive moods (present and past)
• reflexive verbs

B. Verbs we think are oft-used such as gustar are less-used than for example fue. 

C. The traditional textbook order of teaching verb tenses (typically, present ⇒ preterite ⇒ imperfect ⇒ present perfect ⇒ subjunctive) is totally at odds with how frequently verb forms are actually used.

The implications (in no particular order):

1. Traditional textbook verb sequencing will not help students in real-world use. Most students will not take five years of Spanish– two is more typical– and so traditional sequencing will overplay less-used “categories” (e.g. stem-changing verbs) and underplay what actually gets used (everything, basically).  They will therefore understand less than they should/could.
   

   We know this:  according to Davies and others, the 1500 most-used words make up 85% of all spoken language (in any language).  A reasonable target for a five-year high-school language program would therefore be, 300 words per year, more or less.  What if students only take two?  Well then, they will get the most benefit from using the 600 most-used words.

2. Textbook sequencing does not properly “model” grammar “rules.”  It is pretty obvious that everything normally used is “mixed together.”  A four year old will say something like yesterday Daddy took me to a playdate.  I hurt myself playing with Jason. But it was fun.  I like playing with Jason.  He’s nice.  Here, there are three verb tenses and a reflexive verb.In Spanish, English speakers have a whack of verb subtleties to soak up.  For example, the term “I was” could be estaba, estuve, me sentí or fui. If we teach one tense as a time, as the textbook does, we play up the morphology (form) at the expense of contextual “rule” awareness.  E.g. a Colombian will say cuando estaba cansado ayer en la tarde, me tomé un tinto (“when I was tired yesterday afternoon, I grabbed a coffee”).  The Colombian has acquired the “rule” that the preterite tense “interrupts” the “background” that the imperfect tense establishes.In a traditional textbook, however (eg the ¡Juntos! books I used to use), students will spend quite a while on the preterite, and then on the imperfect.  Even if they acquire the specific forms (which they generally don’t, because nobody is on anybody else’s schedule in terms of acquisition), when a new form shows up, two things happen:

   a. they will start using the new form (verb endings) everywhere and apparently forget the older form’s endings.  Kids who knew to say ayer yo fui a la escuela now say ayer yo iba a la escuela intending to mean the same thing.

   b. when (if) they pick up the new form, they will have huge problems “knowing” which form to use where.  Why?  Because there are so many “rules” to remember that the only effective way to pick them up is from contextual input modeling.  Basically, we need to hear an ocean of meaningful Spanish sentences which use both these verb tenses together.  This is true in any language of any grammatical structure.

   An English speaker can do a thought experiment here:  what is the “rule” for using the very high-frequency English words some and any?  Why can’t I ask do you have some advice? or answer no I don’t have some advice for you?  Why can I say do you have some of those washers for my drum? but not do you have some ideas? 

Anyway.  There you go: some data and ideas about word frequency.  Comments as always welcome.

 

How Do I Explain Comprehensible Input?

Kids, parents and colleagues often ask us why do we do stories in Blablabian class, and read so much Blablabian? or why don’t we practise speaking Blablabian more? or why don’t we study Blablabian grammar like they do in Mr Smith’s class?

These are good questions.  Now, since most kids and parents, and an unfortunately  staggering number of teachers, administrators, heads, and methods instructors in Uni don’t, won’t or can’t read S.L.A. research, we have to be able to get people to think about why we teach languages basically by using comprehensible stories and reading that recycle vocabulary a lot.  Our best explanation will be, because it works, and we show the kids, colleagues, parents or admins what kids can understand and do.  We can also point them to the user-friendly Tea With BVP radio show/podcast. We can also do the best thing of all time: ask our students, do you feel like you are understanding lots of Blablabian, and is it easy?

But sometimes you want to make a point quickly, or get people thinking, so, today’s question: how do I explain comprehensible input teaching?  Some of these are my ideas, and others come from Robert Harrell and Terry Waltz.

Q: Why don’t we study Blablabian grammar like they do in Mr Smith’s Blablabian class?

A: Ask the questioner, so knowing grammar rules is important to be able to speak a language?  When they say yes, say OK, let’s do a simple experiment.  First, ask them to tell you three things they did last night.  They’ll say something like first I went home and ate Pizza pops, and then I did homework that totally sucked, and after dinner I played Minecraft on my Xbox.Then, say OK, now tell me three things you did last night, but do not use the letter “n.”  This will open the door to a conversation that can show them why having to consciously think about language while using it will basically cripple our ability to talk.

 

Q: Why don’t we/your students/my children in your classes practise talking?

A: Ask the person what language that you don’t know would you like to learn?  They might say Urdu, or Dari, or French.  Then say to them OK, let’s start speaking Urdu.

At this point, they will say yes but I don’t know how to say anything. Then you say something like well, how would you like to learn to say something, and they will say something like by listening to it or by reading or watching it and you say exactly!  You can now talk about how input, and lots of it, must– and does– precede any kind of output.

Q: Don’t people need grammar rules explained to them to be able to speak?

A:  Ask whether or not the sentence “I enjoy to run” sounds right.  When they say, no, ask why not?  Most people will say uhhhhh, while the grammar freaks will say well the verb to enjoy must be followed by a noun or a gerund bla bla bla.  Right…and now you ask them when you were a kid, who explained that rule to you?  What, wait, nobody?  Well then how did you pick it up?

This is where you can talk about what polyglot Kato Lomb (21 languages) said:  we learn grammar from language, not language from grammar.

 

Q: Don’t people need to memorise a lot of vocabulary to learn a language?  Why don’t you get your students to study vocab lists?

A:  Ask them, could you explain how to turn a cellphone off? Obviously:  simply find the button, and press the button long enough.  Now, ask them, can you tell me how to draw a cube?  Here, I have pen and paper, explain away.

When they try to tell you what to do to make this cube, you will probably end up with something very different from this nice neat cube.
The point? Some activities that we do are simple enough to first explain and then simply do, like turning a phone on or off.  In school, things low on Bloom’s taxonomy, like memorising some dates for a history class, or doing long division, can easily be broken down into steps, practiced, and mastered.  Basiclaly, if a computer can or could do it, we can learn it by breaking it down into steps.

Other activities, however, are so complex that breaking them down into steps or chunks is either impossible or not worth the effort.  You could theoretically “explain” how  to draw a cube, but it would be way easier to just show somebody a cube and have them go at experimenting with copying it.  Similarly, you could ask students to memorise twenty Blablabian words (or some grammar “rules”) for a test.  But it would be much simpler to get them to listen to some sentences containing the words, explain what the sentences mean, and then ask them some questions about the sentences (ie circle them) in order to recycle the words.

Q: I learned Blablabian from textbooks, memorising word lists, and studying grammar.  I can still speak it.  Why should we do anything differently?  (This question  btw is one that I have never heard from a parent, but rather from some older languages teachers.)

A: First, we ask Mr Old Grammar Student a couple of questions in Blablabian, speaking at the speed of at which native speakers of Blablabian.  One of two things will happen: 1. MOGS will not understand the question, or 2. MOGS will get it and give us a fluent answer.

If MOGS doesn’t understand, the point is moot.

If MOGS gives us a fluent answer, we then ask, have you done anything to acquire Blablabian other than study the text etc? The answer is always one or more of the following: yes, I lived in Blablabia for three years, or I married a Blablabian who did not speak English, or I watch Blablabian-language news, or I really enjoy watching the Blablabian soap opera ROTFL BFF OMG LULZ on Netflix. 

At this point, one can politely bring up Lance Piantaggini’s point that how we actually acquired Blablabian might differ from how we think we acquired it.  The way I put it is this: can you tell me how much of your Blablabian came from Blablabian experiences, and how much came from the text?  Even if people don’t know, we point out that, at best, a student of Blablabian in a five-year high-school Blablabian program got 500 hours of Blablabian (and, if the teacher was using a textbook, probably a lot less). If they lived in Blablabia, they got that much exposure to Blablabian in six weeks!

At this point, only a hardened grizzled grammarian fighting the noble battle of the textbook will stick to their guns, and say something like well grammar preparation made it possible for me to go out and experience real-life in Blablabia successfully.  At this point we might say, and what percent of your students will eventually end up in a Blablabian immersion environment? but frankly I would rather at this point go and grab a couple of beers.

 

Ok folks, there it is, a few simple ways to get people thinking about why C.I. works.

Clarifications: A.I.M.’s claims about T.P.R.S. and reality.

The Accelerated Integrative Method— AIM– is a comprehensible-input second-languages method which was developed by Wendy Maxwell in Canada.  I havn’t used AIM (but have posted some comments about it from practitioners here).  AIM is better than any standard text:  they use stories, lots of repeated (and sheltered) vocab, etc, which are practices in line with what we know about what the brain needs to acquire languages.

AIM makes some claims about TPRS here, claims which I don’t think are always accurate.  Mainly I want to clarify TPRS (as I understand it).  I’ll quote AIM’s claims about TPRS and then clarify each in turn.  What is in the text boxes is all AIM’s words.

 

Claim: 

AIM	TPRS
Students speak primarily in sentences.	Students respond primarily with one-word responses.

Reality: in TPRS, students say whatever they are developmentally ready to say.  In a beginner class, students’ initial output will be one-word and yes/no responses to questions.  As input builds mental representation of language, their output grows longer and more complex.  TPRS is built on research, which shows that forcing output beyond what students are developmentally ready for does nothing for acquisition and makes many students uncomfortable.

 

Claim:

AIM The teacher uses a variety of strategies when students don’t understand.

TPRS Translation is the primary method used when students don’t understand.

Reality: a TPRS practitioner will establish meaning using direct translation, and use translation to clarify, but will also use gestures, props, actors etc to clarify what is happening.  What TPRS does not do: make students guess (or, in edubabble,  “use metacognitive strategies to decode meaning”).  Why?  Because there is no substantiation in research that language acquisition gets easier and/or speeds up when people have to guess at meaning, and because how effective decoding strategies are depends on how much the learner already knows (and on the language being taught– good luck using cognates and “sounding out” when acquiring Mandarin).  While babies and first language learners must guess, they have unlimited time to do so, while a classroom teacher has about 100 hrs/year max.

Claim:

AIM Offers a full online teacher training and certification program.

TPRS Offers webinars online.

Reality: both AIM and TPRS offer live training, and both offer online training, DVDs, etc.

 

Claim:

AIM Supported by a variety of research. (See attached)

TPRS Based on research of comprehensible input (CI) by Krashen.

Reality: the research into language acquisition supporting what TPRS does has been done by Krashen, Bill VanPatten, Ashley Hastings, Wynne Wong, James Asher, Beniko Mason and many others.  See this for a summary. A.I.M. is built around most of the same ideas.

There is some good data from the Netherlands which suggests that A.I.M. works somewhat better than a traditional “skill-buuilding” approach.  However, most of what is on the research portion of their page does not qualify as good science:  small sample sizes, lack of control groups, etc, mean that AIM claims must be taken with a grain of salt.

 

Claim:

AIM Yes/no questions are rarely used. The teacher focuses on total and partial questions with complete sentence answers.

TPRS Questioning is done by circling (asking the same question in many ways) that includes yes/no questions, QT and QP as well as PQA (personalized questions and answers). Answers are usually one word. PQA = teacher talk

Reality:

1.  PQA is not teacher talk.  It is teacher-initiated and teacher guided, because the teacher is the one who knows the target language.
2. Answers are whatever the student is developmentally ready for.  For beginners, this means one-word and/or y/n answers.  Later, output will become more complex and longer.  We know from research that asking people to output beyond what they can do– eg complete sentences for beginners– is not really language use; it is memorised performance.
3. Not all questioning is circling.  In reality, TPRS practitioners circle some new vocabulary, but prefer to use parallel characters (or students) for vocab repetition rather than focusing on questioning one sentence (though one-sentence focus is appropriate at times).

 

Claim:

AIM The students and teacher write very long, detailed stories together, which are generally based on the play being studied. This happens twice as a whole class activity and twice as a partner activity per 50 hours of instruction. The play, vocabulary and language manipulation activities/creative writing are systematically integrated for success, predictability

TPRS The student and teacher build a series of short stories (including 3 new words or phrases) called PMS (personalized mini-situation) by having the teacher “ask” the story. This oral activity happens frequently. Written exercises become more of a focus in the 3rd and 4th year.

Reality: TPRS includes writing right from the get-go.  However, writing (and speech) in TPRS are indicators, not causes, of acquisition.  In TPRS, students begin simple re-writes of stories after first co-creating one, and then reading various versions of it.

TPRS uses minimally-targeted (focused or chosen) vocabulary to build stories.  Aside from a few basic verbs, nouns etc, the stories go more or less in the direction that students want them to.

TPRS stories vary in length, generally getting longer as students acquire more L2.  Student written output (at the end of say Level 1) will be 600-1,000 words in one hour.

 

Claim:

AIM Believe in a balanced literacy approach.

TPRS High emphasis on the importance of reading (every second day) for language development. Students read early on. Students translate all readings out loud in a whole-class setting

Reality:

1. I have no idea what a “balanced literacy approach” is.
2. No, TPRS practitioners don’t necessarily translate all readings out loud, OR in a whole class setting.  Sometimes…but we do partner translation, story illustration (comics), free voluntary reading, etc as well.

 

Claim:

AIM The number of structures per lesson varies significantly.

TPRS In a typical lesson, the teacher introduces and focuses on three target language structures.

Reality:

There is no pre-set number of structures in TPRS.  An initial story will use a lot (because you need the “super 7” verbs to start storyasking with beginners).  Later ones will use more, or fewer.

 

Claim:

AIM All words and grammatical structures are associated with a gesture. The gestures are standardized. Gestures accelerate comprehension – no need to translate – the gestures allow the teacher to teach words as each represents clearly [sic] the meaning

TPRS Gestures are sometimes used in conjunction with new vocabulary, however teacher and/or students can create his/her own gestures. Gestures or a physical response (TPR) from the body (limits to imperative form) and are used mostly with younger students (under Gr. 5) when needed only.

Reality: 

1. In TPRS, TPR is not limited to third-person imperative.  As a matter of fact, Ray and Seely (2015) advocate using third-person singular (and other) forms when doing TPR.
2. TPR is suggested for younger learners, but also works well (albeit with limited effectiveness) for older learners.

 

Claim: 

TPRS has a “Five-day lesson plan which includes only three activities: PMS or mini-story, reading the extension, timed free writing and reading”

Reality: umm…TPRS practitioners also do any of the following activities:

• Movietalk
• novel reading
• translation (in various formats)
• la persona especial
• Picturetalk
• reading/listening to developmentally appropriate cultural texts and/or songs
• other games, such as Mafia, paper airplane translation, running dictation, etc.

 

Claim: 

AIM Teachers are encouraged to “flood” the student with vocabulary in the target language.

TPRS Teachers are encouraged to limit the amount of vocabulary introduced at one time.

Reality:  This is true.  Why do TPRS practitioners carefully restrict vocabulary?  Because of the “bandwidth” issue, or what Bill VanPatten calls “working memory constraints.”  Basically, the less variety of info the brain has to process, the more in-depth the processing of each item (and the sounds, grammar “rules,” etc with which it is implicitly associated) can be.  If we can recycle a limited vocab set over and over, the vocab will be easy to pick up.  In addition, when we have limited vocab– and so are not constantly guessing at/trying to recall meaning, because the working mind can have about 7 items in its awareness at a time– our brain can devote mental energy to soaking up grammar, pronunciation and other properties.

In TPRS, we “practice” language– by processing input– much like musicians practice pieces they are learning: we go over limited parts of tunes/songs to really nail them, rather than trying to soak up an entire piece in one go.

 

Claim:

AIM Provides everything for the teacher in terms of outlining in detail and with scripted teacher talk for teachers to model what they might say during whole-class activities.

TPRS The teacher asks many questions using the new vocabulary (5-6 questions) being taught. These questions are created ‘on the spot’. No teacher’s guide is provided since questions depend on student answers and reactions. A PMS (personalized mini-situation) is created by the teacher with the help of students, but all of this depends highly on teacher’s knowledge of the L2.

Reality: this is one of the alleged strengths (and to my mind) weaknesses of AIM.  The AIM curriculum is massively structured, which means that– provided they know the routines– any teacher can, in theory, start AIM with very little planning.  However, the rigid structure– this is what your play will be, these are your questions and answers– will inhibit personalisation possibilities, and also raises the question,  what if the students do not find the story interesting?

 

Claim:

AIM All students participate by speaking chorally, gesturing or reading the gestures. There is never silence in an AIM classroom – all students speak 30 minutes of a 30 minute class

TPRS One or a few students are responding to commands at once. The teacher does most of the speaking. Students only start producing the L2 when enough comprehensible input has been provided (called the silent period – several hours to several weeks)

Reality:

1. Nobody at AIM has ever explained why it is necessary for students to speak.  We know from research that input, not output, drives acquisition, and that forced output is not language, but what VanPatten calls “language-like behavior” which does not develop acquisition.
2. TPRS– outside of during bursts of TPR– does not use “commands.”
3. Students produce developmentally-appropriate L2 from Day 1.  Initially, this will be y/n and then then one-word answers, and later sentences.

 

Claim:

AIM Syntax and grammar are visualized, produced and embedded kinesthetically in this multi-modal approach AIM’s three-stage inductive grammar approach ensures a Natural Approach (Krashen) to the understanding of grammar

TPRS Teacher uses translation to clarify grammar and structures. They use pop-up grammar and one-second grammar explanations. For example, during the translation of a reading it is used every 20 second or so and always in the L1.

Reality: there is no need to “visualize” syntax or grammar.  Since acquisition of L1 (and L2, L3 etc) follow the same processes, and since nobody “teaches” their own kids grammar, vocab etc, it is not clear why one must “visualize” syntax.  If one understands the input, the brain will build mental representation of grammar.  This is not a problem in AIM, however– there is nothing wrong with grammar visuals– but they are unnecessary.

TPRS uses direct translation in order to waste as little time as possible and to stay in L2 as much as possible.

 

Claim:

AIM Specific language manipulation activities to scaffold the ability for language use

TPRS Does not contain specific language manipulation activities to scaffold the ability for language use

Reality:

1. “Manipulation” of language is not necessary to acquire it.  As Bill VanPatten notes, processing of comprehensible input alone “appears to be sufficient” to develop mental representation of L2.  In other words, reading and listening to what students understand is all they need to acquire the language.
2. TPRS does scaffold.  This fancy word means “make things progressively  more complex while keeping them comprehensible.”  TPRS practitioners go sentence-at-a-time with narration, use embedded readings, recycle previous vocab, do comprehension checks, etc.

 

Reality:

AIM Cooperative learning is emphasized – all written language skills are developed orally in conjunction/discussion/interaction with a partner

TPRS Students mostly work individually when it comes to written activities and frequently assigned as homework. Oral work is mostly presented as a whole-class activity

Reality: true.  Why does TPRS avoid “partner” or “communicative pair” activities?

1. Learners inevitably produce junky output, which becomes junky input for other learners.  If we accquire language through input, the purpose of generating bad output and having that bad output become bad input is, well, something I have not heard explained by AIM.
2. Learners need only comprehensible input to acquire a language.  If they want to talk, great…but they don’t have to talk, and the lack of forced output means many kids are more comfortable in class.

 

Claim:

AIM Carefully sequenced partner/group activities

TPRS Various random activities for ‘partner vocabulary practice’

Reality:

TPRS does not require or suggest that teachers to do “partner vocabulary practice.”  What “vocabulary practice” would be is not mentioned.  I am not sure where AIM got this idea.

 

Claim:

AIM Each activity of one type lasts a maximum of ten minutes to ensure the highest level of focus and learning potential

TPRS One mini-story/PMS is taught per 50-minute daily class

Reality:

1. There is no defined max/min length for any TPRS story.  Blaine Ray has famously told of spending four months on one story.  Sometimes a story doesn’t work, so a TPRS practitioner ends it quickly and moves on to other activities.  Some TPRS practitioners advocate what Mike Peto and Ben Slavic have called “quick takeoffs and landings,” i.e. stories that last 25-40 min.
2. How long an activity in a TPRS class lasts depends on how interesting the students find it. 
3. A TPRS class is not just story-asking.  TPRS practitioners also do Movietalk, Picturetalk, reading, persona especial, C.I. games, translation, skits, etc.

 

Claim:

AIM Students visualize every single word as the teacher gestures delaying showing the written word.

TPRS Students visualize the written word/translated written word very early on…

Reality: there is no requirement/suggestion that students in a TPRS class “visualize” the written word.  A TPRS practitioner will write whatever words are used (with translation) on board.  This is to help “anchor” and clarify the meaning of words, as we know that comprehensible– and not ambiguous– input is what leads to acquisition.

 

Anyway, that’s what AIM claims and what (my understanding of) TPRS actually is.  Be good to hear from AIM what they think, or if they can clarify.  Also be nice to hear from TPRS practitioners re: what they think.