The use of L1 and L2 in the classroom

I really liked Isabella Villas Boas´ article because I truly identified with it (http://ctjconnected.blogspot.com.br/2013/08/l1-in-l2-classroom-from-sin-to.html). Having started as a trainee in CTJ, I´ve seen in some conferences, as much as I´ve been told by some observers, not to use the L1 in the classroom at all. On the other hand, the use of the mother tongue in some situations is accepted by others, which has created a big confusion in my mind. After all, am I allowed to use the L1 in the classroom or not?

I particularly believe that the use of L1 in the classroom is not an unforgivable mistake. Sometimes, the use of L1 by teachers can help students understand meanings faster. Instead of spending five precious minutes – or even more – trying to convey a meaning, the teacher can make use of L1 to translate, briefly, the meaning of a word. When a student asks me “Teacher, what does … mean?”, first, I ask the rest of the class if they know, if they don´t, I try to find a synonym in English, if the student still doesn’t understand, then, as a last resort, I use L1, especially if the word is too abstract, which would be more difficult and time-consuming for him/her to understand. 

Besides, every beginning of the semester, I explain to my groups, whether they are children, teenagers or adults, that we are there to speak English. Otherwise, what would be the purpose of being there? I also try to encourage them to look for things of their interest in L2, such as movies, TV series, music and articles.

I also think that the use of L1 can help students make connections and find meanings inside their own minds. In certain occasions, I say “It´s similar to Portuguese! Do you understand now?”. And then I can suddenly see the air of relief in their faces. 

However, using L2 all the time would go against the principles that have been taught by many scholars, and what we have learned at CJT as novice teachers. We, teachers, are there to help create an English-speaking space, in CTJ´s case, a real American space, so students can enjoy and absorb as much knowledge and culture as they can.

To conclude, yes, I use L1 in the classroom sometimes, but only when strictly necessary, and yes, I believe that the excessive use if L2 would hinder students´ learning process, after all, it´s directly connected to the method we use (CLT) and not the Grammar-Translation one.

PPP x ESA

                    

                    PPP X ESA

According to Jeremy Harmer, in his book The Practice of Learning English, Audiolingualism is a language teaching method and was first referred to in 20th century, by Bloomfield and Skinner. It was based on behaviorist theory and structural linguistics, and its main feature consisted in using a positive reinforcement (effort to prevent student errors), with the use of L2 use only and excessive focus on form (inductive grammar and accuracy). It also focused on habit-formation through constant repetition of current utterances, drilling of sentence patterns and substitution, memorization and pronunciation. In this method, there was no or little placing of language in any kind of real-life context. As we can see, it was completely teacher-centered.

As a variation of Audiolingualism came PPP – Presentation, practice and production – in the mid-60´s, which proposed that language was to be used in clear situational contexts. Here, the teacher introduces a situation that contextualizes the language to be taught. Only after that the language is presented. Students will also use reproduction techniques such as choral repetition (students repeat a word together, teacher conducts), individual repetition (one student repeats a word after teacher´s urging) and cue-response drills (teacher gives a cue such as cinema, nominates a student and he/she creates, for example, “Would you like to go to the cinema?”).

In accordance with the author, PPP consists of a cycle, which is divided into three parts:

1)     Presentation: Teacher shows students a picture and asks them if the people in it are at work or on holiday, for example. In this case, they are on holiday. Teacher points to a boy in the picture and says “He´s listening to music”; then she says “Can anybody tell me ……. Jared ……?” or “What´s Jared doing?”. Then teacher models the sentence (“He´s listening to music”) before isolating the grammar point he/she wants to focus on (present continuous).

2)    Practice: Teacher has the students repeat the sentence “He´s listening to music” individually or in chorus. She/he corrects the mistakes that might come up. Now teacher models more sentences from the picture, drilling individually or in a choral again. Now she/he has more freedom to ask students to create other sentences, according to the picture that has been shown. For example, a student says: “She´s reading a book”, and so on. The use of pair work before students stating their sentences to the class is very effective, too.

3)    Production: the end of the PPP cycle is production, called by some specialists as “immediate creativity”. In this stage, students are asked to use the new language, making sentences of their own. For instance, the teacher may ask students to think about their family or friends and come up with sentences of their own, for example: “My brother is on holiday now. He´s lying on the beach”. Even though there was space for students´ production, critics claimed that it was still too teacher-centered.

Therefore, in the 90´s – explains the author – PPP started to get under attack, because of its extreme teacher-centered way. Also, the way that it treated the learning process, as a ‘straight line’, in which students started from no knowledge at all, going to very restricted utterances and on to immediate production, was another point of strong criticism; nowadays, we know that human learning isn´t like that, that it´s more random.

In addition to that, by breaking the language into small pieces, it may have cheated the students, by leading them to think that the language is full of ‘interlocking variables and systems’, said Tessa Woodward, in 1993. In the same year, Michael Lewis suggested that ‘PPP reflected neither the nature of language nor the nature of learning’. A year later, Jim Scrivener stated that PPP was even ‘disabling, not enabling’. Another researcher, called Byrne, had suggested, back in the 80´s that the learning process could be a circle, involving presentation, practice and production all the same, but teachers and students could enter it at the stage that they chose to, added Harmer.

So ESA came up, in which E stands for engage, S for study, and A for activate:

1)    Engage: arousing students’ curiosity and affect them in some way are important for successful learning. This way, unless students are emotionally engaged, learning won´t be as effective as it could be.

2)    Study: describes any teaching and learning element where the focus is on how something is constructed. In this model, study could be a part of focus on form or a communicative task where the students´ attention to form is drawn to it by the teacher or through their own activities, noticed by them.

3)    Activate: any stage at which students are encouraged to use all the language they know, for example: communicative tasks, reading for pleasure or meaning focus activities where the language is not restricted.

The author states that ESA has three basic lesson procedures, Straight Arrows, Boomerang and Patchwork:

1)    Straight Arrows: It´s similar to PPP. The teacher engages the students by showing them a picture or a situation. At the study stage, meaning and form of the language are explained. The teacher models the language so students can repeat and practice it. In the last part, students finally activate the new language by using it in their own sentences. There are no significant changes here, and the focus on form is still very strong.

2)    Boomerang procedure: It allows a more task-based and deeper approach. Here the order is EAS; the teacher engages the students before asking them to perform a task (which may be written or oral) – what would mean to activate. Only then, having finished the task, will they study the aspects of the language. This procedure is a good correcting strategy, in a way that it allows the teacher to identify where the mistakes occurred.

3)    Patchwork: It may follow a variety of sequences. For instance, the teacher may engage the students first and encourage them to activate what they know before studying the language elements, and then return to more activating tasks, after which he/she re-engages the students again before doing some more studying. It seems to be the most varied procedure, since it goes back and forth, making students to be attentive and busy all the time. It might be a teachers´ ally, because it won´t leave any space for them to drift and lose interest.

To conclude, PPP may be very useful when it comes to a form-focused lesson, especially if we talk about lower levels, where students have a restricted vocabulary. It´s irrelevant, though, in a skills lesson, where the focus on form may occur as a result of something that students saw or heard, not as the main objective of the lesson.

Source: The Practice of Learning English. Jeremy Harmer. Fourth Edition. Pearson.

Learning how the brain works - a new perspective as a teacher

In accordance with James E. Zull, in his book The Art of changing the brain, learning originates in concrete experience, which leads us to the term “experimental learning”. But it is just the beginning, because learning also requires reflection, the development of abstractions and active testing of those abstractions.

According to the author, the learning cycle is divided into four steps: a) concrete experience: one receives direct physical information from the world (vision, hearing, touch, position, smell, taste); b) reflective observation: remembering relevant information, daydreaming and free association, analyzing experiences (it integrates sensory information to create images and meaning); c) abstract hypothesis: generation of abstractions, which requires manipulation of images and language to create new mental arrangements, developing plans for future action, comparing and choosing options, creating symbolic representations and using short-term memory (problem solving and making judgments, organizing actions) and d) active testing: it´s necessary for the learning cycle to be completed. It´s the conversion of ideas into physical action. It includes intellectual activities such as writing, creating relationships, doing experiments and talking in a conversation (Zull).

In our brains, we have the front cortex and the back cortex. So, concrete experiences happen in the sensory cortex (back), reflection involves the back integrative cortex, abstraction, the frontal integrative cortex and active testing, the motor cortex (frontal).

The author states that the four stages of the learning cycle are important. To have the four of them completed is our goal as teachers. I personally identified with the part in which he asks, "Can we teach without anyone learning?". And then he says that we might have had the experience of having tried our best teaching someone, and at the end, we discovered that it didn´t work. Or did it? Just because the learner didn´t get it the way we expected him/her to get it, does it mean that it didn´t work at all? Did he/she learn nothing? We can say that the person learned something, because anything can produce learning. 

I´ve been having this experience this semester, with a student who has a severe grade of learning disability, she has ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and APD (Auditory Processing Disorder), all at the same time. She´s a listener student, which means that she can´t be assessed the same way the other students are, even her test is different from the others. What I´ve noticed is that, when I´m able to produce an atmosphere that is conducive to learning, she is able to produce something. Then she answers my questions correctly and participates. She may not respond on the same speed the others do, but she responds in her own way and time. So the student is always able to learn something. As teachers, we should always try to optimize the learning cycle, designing activities that stimulate the senses, reflection, abstraction and action.

Another part of the brain plays a very important role in learning and it´s called the amygdala. According to the author, it makes us recognize a dangerous situation and feel negative emotions, as anxiety and fear. When survival, some kind of reward and pleasure are threatened, the amygdala gets activated (Zull). But how does it relate to the classroom? As a teacher, I must be aware that my learners will be automatically monitoring a given situation in the classroom through their amygdalas, and it´s up to me creating a negative or a positive environment for them. I want my students to learn, but I have to say that not always I´m able to provide an adequate atmosphere to them. Even when I think of activities to do in the classroom, with the best of the intentions, sometimes they don´t turn out the way I wanted them to, and maybe the learning process isn´t completed. I try to, but it´s difficult. But now that I´m aware that this atmosphere has to be created, I try to plan my lesson in a way that they feel more open to learning. I have to teach them in a way they don´t realize that they´re actually learning! This way, things get a little lighter.

According to the author, the front cortex is responsible for solving problems, creating ideas, and transforming those ideas into the symbolic form called language. It is also responsible for what he calls “working memory (short-tem memory)”, that happens when we have to remember a few things for a short period of time, in order to develop ideas or solving problems. He also explains that it is different from “long tem-memory” (Zull). But how can the brain attain information? We have to receive information and immediately create an association with other things, so we can remember that information later on. The brain needs to create a story, because it gets easier to make connections and then, remember something important. The brain likes stories.

As teachers, it´s important that we don´t overload working memory. Teachers have a large number of facts that have been already processed in their brains, but students are only starting in this field; they´re still getting only isolated facts. If we want them to process what we are trying to teach them, we have to limit the number of information they get. We have to "break" the information in to smaller parts. The author says that the conscious rearranging and manipulation of items in working memory is very close to what we call thinking and that´s why the front cortex is usually called the brain´s executive part (Zull).

It is important that the teacher focuses separately on the attending part and the task management part of working memory: attending is just separating the relevant from the irrelevant. Task management is more personal, it depends on the student´s past experiences on his existing neuronal network. That´s why sometimes we have to stand back and give the learner freedom. And that´s the moment when our explanations are often ineffective, because who is learning has to try their own ideas (Zull).

In conclusion, now that I´ve had the opportunity to understand better how the brain works when it comes to learning, my lesson plans have changed for the best. Since the brain attains information through concrete experiences, I try to include activities that provide that to the students, so they can remember that in the future and then make their own connections. Now I know that I have to “fire and wire” my students’ brains, which means that I have to create “sparkles” and make neuronal connections happen inside their heads. 

Source: James E. Zull – The Art of Changing the Brain.