Language Expectations

In the Vista Higher Learning textbook , Vistas, Introducción A La Lengua
Espanola, (third edition, publisher José A. Blanco, ©2008, page
IAE-9), a bold description of a language student’s unrealistic
expectations of learning a second language is described as follows: “many students believe that making mistakes when speaking the target language must be avoided because doing so will lead to permanent errors. Others are convinced that learning another language is like learning any other academic subject. In other words, they believe that success is guaranteed, provided they attend class regularly, learn the assigned vocabulary words and grammar rules, and study for exams. In fact, in a study of college-level beginning language learners in the United States, over one-third of the participants thought that they could become fluent if they studied the language for only one hour a day for two years or less. Mistaken and unrealistic beliefs such as these can cause frustration and ultimately demotivation, thereby significantly undermining students’ ability to achieve a successful language-learning experience.”

As a student of Spanish, have you ever thought what it might take for you to become a fluent Spanish speaker? May I pose another question? How many years does it take to become fluent in English? A five year-old Kindergartner has spent five years in a home where English is spoken all the time, and when they arrive at school for the first time, are rather fluent in English. Let’s say that in those five years they listened to, spoke, and practiced English for approximately 12 hours a day. So for those five years, they had approximately 21,900 hours of language instruction. That is to say, they were truly immersed in English.

A beginning student of Spanish should have a realistic expectation of just what it will take to become fluent in Spanish. Many American students are good Spanish students on paper, but when it comes to being able to converse, they are lacking because of the inability to speak the language to gain true comprehension.

Por consiguiente, yo les puedo decir que no es fácil aprender otro idioma, pero la meta final no es simplemente conjugar los verbos sino hablar el idioma. ¿Verdad? (Therefore, I can tell you that it is not easy to learn another language, but the final goal is not to simply conjugate verbs but to speak the language. Right?)

Digital Dreams

Digital Dreams

Will Richardson in his book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, (Richardson 2006) says, “The National Educational Technology Plan, 2005, says, Today’s students, of almost any age, are far ahead of their teachers in computer literacy. They prefer to access subject information on the Internet, where it is more abundant, more accessible, and more up-to-date. Educational theorist Marc Prensky says these students are “Digital Natives”’ who are well versed in the uses and etiquette of computers, digital cameras, cell phones, text messaging, Weblogs, and the like. These students have been born into a world filled with gadgets and online community, and to most of them it’s a way of life” (Prensky, 2001a as quoted in Richardson).

“Most teachers in today’s schools, meanwhile, were not surrounded by technology growing up, a fact that Prensky says makes them “Digital Immigrants.” ‘And the speed with which these technologies have been developed . . . means there are many immigrants out there.’ No matter how hard they may try to adopt and adapt to these tools,’ Prensky says, ‘they still carry accents: they print out their e-mail, they write checks to pay their bills, or they use phone books to look up phone numbers. Unlike their students, who seem able to tune into many different media at once, the digital immigrants don’t multitask well, and the tools of the online world are rarely used personally or in the classroom.” All of this paints the picture of an educational system that is out of touch with the way its students learn.”

I sent my first text message last Christmas 2007, and I’m 62 years old. However, I see my role as a teacher of Spanish evolving at a rapid rate, and I love the technology behind the changes. I’ve never been intimidated by electronic and digital challenges, I see it as it is, the wave of the future!

Furthermore, Richardson says that teachers of the future are going to be, “connectors, content creators, collaborators, coaches, and change agents.” That’s what I want to be, a teacher that shows the pathway to the future of digital technology in the lives of my students. I have digital dreams, not nightmares.

My little high school in western Nebraska will put a laptop into every high school student’s hands next fall. We are a small high school but our implementation of technology is increasing rapidly. Our Nebraska schools are linked to Distance Learning (synchronous) and soon our teachers will begin designing their curriculum for student use on their laptops. I’ve taken two graduate courses this school year, and they both deal with technology, including how to use WebCT for teaching online courses (asynchronous).

It is an amazing and fascinating world we live in, and the technology information is staggering. But as part of the requirements of one of my graduate courses, I’ve developed this blog which continues to improve little by little. My sons-in-law and my oldest daughter are bloggers, and they’ve helped me add graphics, video, and soon I’ll add sound files. It’s exactly the kind of technology I want to introduce to my Spanish students, but at an accelerated rate and at an international level.

I will soon be in contact with an English teacher in Mexico, and we’ll work together to digitally connect our classrooms. That Mexican teacher can teach some of my classes via Skype, audio or video connections, and I can teach an English class for that teacher from my desk in Nebraska. There’s no intimidation here, but the learning curve is steep. However the ability to connect my students to Spanish speaking countries, develop friends, pen pals, and increase their learning potential is very attractive to a teacher.

My hope is that my students can capture my dreams for them!

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Tags: Digitaltechnology

He gave the grammar lesson to Sixto and I. . . . . . . . see last paragraph!

Many Spanish teachers are searching the WWW for technical (digital) ways to enhance the conversational aspect of their Spanish language students. I’ve always been a believer that you need grammar in order to learn a language (I base that on how many of my American students misuse English grammar when speaking), but there is the premise out there that we don’t need to bother ourselves with teaching grammar.

For example, on the web site http://www.studyspanish.com/tchinfo.htm, dedicated to teaching Spanish, apparently without focusing on grammar, it is stated under the title “Grammar – Be Gone!, “It is our great hope that Spanish teachers will use this web sit to completely free themselves from the burden of teaching grammar in the classroom. we believe that the teacher’s skills are far too valuable to be used explaining grammar concepts, and that the student is much better served when the teacher can focus on communicative activities. Teachers who fully incorporate this web site into their method will no longer need to use valuable class time talking about grammar.” Now it should be known that this web site is an excellent resource for Spanish teachers and students alike. But as I reviewed it, I found that it is heavily laden with; you guessed it, grammar lessons!

Grammar is a vital part of learning any language. Every student who attends American public schools is trained in English grammar beginning in kindergarten. However, the teacher is speaking English as he/she teaches the grammar. If students are never trained in grammar, their ability to communicate successfully in society would be even worse than it already is. The ability to learn to speak proficiently in any language is not achieved by abandoning the teaching of grammar but by teaching the grammar as the language is being taught. Of course, this must be done gradually using less and less of the student’s native language in class and more of the language being taught, or the students will be lost and incapable of learning the language at all.

Now my two questions for readers of this blog are: “Do you believe it possible to teach Spanish conversation without grammar?” and, “Can we Spanish teachers teach grammar while speaking Spanish as if the focus was on conversation ability no matter the subject matter, e.g. grammar?”

Yes, I know, the title of this article is incorrect. It should say, “He gave the grammar lesson to Sixto and me.” My students missed it when I showed it to them. I simply told them they needed to take out “Sixto and” and then say, “He gave the lesson to me.” Not “he gave the lesson to I”. Oh well!

Speaking the language, the proof is in the pudding!

Blaine Ray & Contee Seely, state in their book, Fluency through TPR Storytelling, Achieving Real Language Acquisition in School” Fourth edition, Command Performance Language Institute, ©2005, (TPR stands for, “Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling”) state on the back cover of their book: “Even now, early in the 21^st century, foreign and second language programs in schools in North American and most of the world produce very few students who can fluently speak and comprehend spoken language or read and write competently. Nearly all high school, middle school and elementary school TPR Storytelling students can actually do these things.”

Questions:Is what they say about our foreign language teaching in the United States reflected in our students’ ability to acquire a second language? Do Spanish language students learn language facts such as vocabulary words, grammar, etc., but do not know how to converse? How do you feel about the above statement by the authors?

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Our two friends, our three enemies!

A difficult aspect of learning the Spanish language for non-native speakers is pronunciation. Most Americans learning Spanish have trouble with correct pronunciation of the letter “e” in Spanish. That’s why I enjoy using sound and audio files in my Spanish classroom to let students hear native speakers speaking at native speeds and with native pronunciation. You’ll enjoy the following famous YouTube presentation that has some glaring Spanish mispronunciations, but kids love it.

I tell my students we have two friends in Spanish, Wes and Les. But we also have three enemies, Ace, Lace, and Trace. The letter “e” in Spanish should always rhyme with our two friends, and never with our three enemies. I’ll explain below. Yes, there is an argument that the number “seis” (6) which rhymes with our enemies, but seis contains a diphthong, and that changes everything. There are always exceptions, including verbs conjugated with the vosotros form which I NEVER teach. Most of them contain diphthongs also. But suffice it to say that a diphthong is not just the letter “e”, it is the combination of two vowels.

Most Spanish language students tend to pronounce the letter “e” as if it were a long ā in English. But in Spanish, the number 3 (tres) does not rhyme with “trace”, but rhymes with Wes and Les, as if we were saying train trestle. Aside from having difficulty with trilling their “r’s” the letter “e” is complex. Another good example of the difficulty in pronouncing the “e” correctly is in the Spanish word for “afterwards”, “despues”. Often its pronunciation seems to rhyme with our enemies trace, ace, and lace, but it actually rhymes with Wes and Les, our two good friends.

As a teacher that has about 46 years experience with Spanish, (although I’m not a native speaker) I am always looking for resources to help my students pronounce Spanish perfectly. I personally have no problems with Spanish pronunciation, but I like to supprt my students’ learning by using sound or video files of native speakers. If you’ll click the link under video files on the right side of the first page of my blog, you’ll find an excellent resource from the University of Texas. Once you arrive there, click on the beginning tab at the left, and 15 categories drop down and you can choose numbers, for example, and have your students listen to various native speakers. It’s an excellent resource.

What are your suggestions for other teachers of Spanish? Do you think the issue of teachers that are not fluent in the language they teach is a big issue or not? I’d be interested in hearing from you.

By the way, as another hint on using digital technology, have you ever wanted to save a web address, and later it disappears or goes down? With Furl.net, you can “furl” a web site and it will be saved forever on your account even if the original site goes down. Try it, it’s free!

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