Category Archives: language

Sometimes Things Go Better Than I Had Planned…

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My Spanish 3 Honors students can conjugate 21 tenses in any given form on command. They can analyze and discuss the similarities and differences between Jorge Luis Borges’ short story and Salvador Dali’s surrealist paintings through the theme of duality of being and metafiction. My Spanish 3 Honors students can discuss the benefits and moral disadvantages of stem-cell research and technology in the medical field. They can recite the Beatitudes, discuss genocide in Guatemala, all in Spanish…HOWEVER: 
Many of them do it in an inauthentic accent that makes me weep bitterly at night…(okay that’s not true, but the accents definitely need some work…)
I have struggled for YEARS to find techniques to keep my brilliant students accountable for having an authentic accent. Their accent must match their genius minds. When I correct them in class, and they repeat after me, they are able to sound authentic and within a few minutes, they revert back to overcompensating with an “Americanized” accent (Imagine Dr. Phil speaking Spanish…)
You’re welcome.
While I understand that speaking Spanish with an authentic accent isn’t imperative to understanding the general gist of what a person is saying, and I also recognize and appreciate the fact that not everyone is capable of sounding like they jumped out of a Spanish telenovela, I do find it to be important to at least make an attempt to the best of one’s ability to produce a sound that is as similar as possible to the target language (in this case, Spanish). To make this blog not such a long read, I’ll get to the point…

I wanted to find a fun, out of the box tool that would help my Honors students become cognizant of their accents and to hold them accountable for trying to sound as authentic as possible. I wanted to provide them with a tool that they could use to practice at home. I introduce you to:
It’s a game where people try to pronounce certain words with a plastic barrier in their mouths. (Apparently it’s hilarious, I’ve never played…) Anyway, I came up with this idea because many English vowels require the speaker to close their mouths to pronounce. For example: “oh” or “u” (you). If you just tried saying these vowels, you find that your lips close together. My students are saying words like “dos” and “ocho” like “dose” and “ohchoh”. In Spanish, the mouth stays open. It’s hard to explain in writing, but the plastic tool prevents students from closing their mouths, thus forcing them to pronounce the vowels in a more authentic way. Here are some videos, first in English, then Spanish:

I asked my students what they thought about this new technique to help them with their accents, some said that they liked it and they could feel that the plastic piece was helping them be aware of the positioning of their lips when they spoke. Others said that it didn’t really help. Perhaps they won’t go home and practice with their own tools that I provided to them, but there was an even more valuable lesson that came up with using this ridiculous piece of plastic. It was ridiculous. I have found over the years that in order to be successful at speaking a language, one must take risks. The mental filter that tells you that you sound dumb, or are going to sound ridiculous impedes many language learners from actually attempting to speak. The biggest lesson for my students was to eliminate the filter, to both look and feel ridiculous, and attempt to speak anyway. Did this piece of plastic help them improve their accents dramatically? Perhaps not, but it certainly made them more cognizant of their accent, and it was a physical reminder to let go of the filter and just try to sound the best that they can. This is not what I had planned to happen with this activity. I was more focused on getting my students to sound more authentic, but an even better result came from the class: My students were having fun, they lost their obtrusive filters, and began to let go of the fear of speaking (and singing). 

I’d say that’s a win!

Trying something new: TPRS Storytelling in French 1

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Prior to this year, I’d been familiar with TPRS Storytelling in language acquisition classes, but I always assumed it was for younger students. Everyone I knew who employs this method teaches either middle or elementary school world language courses, so I always kind of dismissed it as someone who has taught pre-AP language and literature courses.

However, I follow a rather large French Teachers Facebook group and there has been a ton of buzz lately regarding TPRS Storytelling (Sidenote: this Facebook group is seriously the best PD I know about! As a non-native speaker, I can ask a nit-picky French grammar question to literally thousands of teachers and get an answer within minutes, peruse other member’s materials, and upload my own materials to our shared Google Drive. I totally encourage you all to join a group like this if it exists in your field!).

Several teachers have begun sharing their experiences with storytelling and simultaneous drawing to help learners visualize and understand. I’ve been reading their articles with interest, but still maintained my initial skeptical and dismissive attitude thinking my ~30 freshmen (a predominately male class, mind you) wouldn’t take to this method since it involves sitting quietly and listening at times and active participation in French at other points in the class.

Now that I’ve gotten my bearings on my life as a new teacher here, I figured I was ready to take the plunge after reading success story after success story on the Facebook group page…

I dipped my toes in the water for my first story, a particularly average story about two students, their likes and dislikes, life at school, and after-school activities. My stories involved new language students hadn’t yet learned. I wasn’t sure how they’d react, but they were responsive, attentive, and inquisitive the entire time. They helped me name the students, gave me their schedules, and determined that they were twins at Carondelet and De La Salle. Flash forward a few weeks, and imagine my surprise upon learning from their unit evaluations that nearly every student enjoyed the activity and wanted more!

So this morning, I got even bolder with my story. It has a crazy twist at the end and the class erupted in laughter (after hearing me speak only French for 20 minutes!). I followed the activity up with oral True/False questions in French and had them draw scenes from the story. The kids totally knocked it out of the park; I was so impressed with how much they were able to understand and respond to, and I think they were too.

I’m already scheming follow-up activities, dreaming up ideas for how to weave stories into my French 2 curriculum, and I am hoping to build my repertoire of stories and seek out further PD that will help me grow in this methodology!

Maybe my drawings will also improve along the way…. 😅

Monster Storybooks in Spanish 2

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My Spanish 2 students are practicing body and hospital vocabulary and also the different past tenses and uses. To practice body vocabulary, I engaged students in a whole TPRS body part identification game, and ultimately playing “Simon Says”. The next activity was for students to take out their ipads and I described a “monster” to them. I described the monster saying “the monster has four arms, and six eyes, and three eyes are red” (in Spanish). Students then drew what they heard on their ipads for listening comprehension practice.  Once that was finished, students were to create their own monsters at home, and draw and describe in sentences “My monster has five legs…” etc.

Once all of the students created their monsters, I divided them up into their family groups of four, and they worked together to create a story, with their original monsters, and other vocabulary from the chapter. The results were entertaining, and the girls had a great time creating their stories and drawing their monsters. Interestingly, I found that many of their stories were based on monsters feeling “alone” and that they didn’t have any friends. It’s definitely something to consider and how some of my students may be feeling trying to navigate through high school.

This was a great activity for kinesthetic fully body response, listening comprehension, creativity, artistic skills, practicing vocabulary and collaborating with classmates.

Here are some of the pages taken from their stories: