Are you struggling to stick to the target language in introductory classes where students have so little knowledge? It may seem difficult, but giving your students lots of rich, meaningful input is one of the best things you can do for their language acquisition, so this post is here to help!
Our goal
It’s easy to think that students won’t understand us if we use words they’ve never heard before. Shouldn’t we wait to use the target language until students have memorized a couple hundred vocab words which they can start recognizing in sentences?
Fortunately, we can take advantage of the brain’s amazing subconscious processing power and jump right in. Making sense of input isn’t about understanding individual words, but rather the overall message being communicated. Over time, students will automatically form connections between that message and the language used to communicate it.
As such, our goal is simply to convey a message which our students can comprehend, whether or not they understand the specific words we use.
Basic strategies
Use your body! Waving = hello, flexing = strong, thumbs up = good, etc. Many basic verbs (run, eat, read…) can easily be acted out, and more complicated instructions can be modeled. For example, imagine you want to explain the rules of a card game (such as this wonderful way to practice basic numbers). You may think “Well, I’ll just quickly explain the rules in English so we can get to the good stuff.” But this is the perfect opportunity to expose students to comprehensible input! By physically dealing out cards to a sample group of students and mimicking the sequence of actions, you can quite easily explain how to play entirely in the target language. Students think they are just getting the rules to a fun game, but you are actually providing valuable input for them to process in the background.
Visuals: Some concepts are difficult to act out, but can quickly be drawn on the board (house, mountains, sun). You may not be an artist, but that’s an opportunity for you to show students that no one is perfect. Photos, diagrams, or tables prepared in PowerPoint slides can also be fast ways to communicate more complicated messages.
Writing: If the target language writing system is similar to your students’ L1, lean heavily on writing. For example, native English speakers may struggle to understand Romance language pronunciation, but once the word is written out, it can easily be identified as a cognate (cognates are themselves obviously a crucial resource in general when available!).PowerPoint again can provide this writing quickly, functioning as rudimentary subtitles and glossing difficult words with an L1 translation in parentheses as necessary. It even has the option for real-time, auto-generated subtitles, if sufficiently accurate for your language. Finally, posters for common words or phrases used in the classroom (see here for an example in Spanish) allow easy reference—this is particularly useful if you teach a highly-inflected language, as you can point to the basic form even when using a complex conjugation.
Example: The first day of class
The most intimidating time to stick to the target language is the very first day of an introductory language course. Students have 0 knowledge to build on, and there’s so many complicated logistics to cover! Even so, this is also your opportunity to set expectations for the course, so why not start off on the right foot? Below is a sequence that I have found effective for both me and students.
Send an email in advance letting students know you’ll start the first day in the target language. I assure students that I don’t expect them to have previous knowledge, and that the goal is absolutely not to intimidate them. Instead, I briefly reference the decades of SLA research supporting this approach and explain that while it might initially seem overwhelming, they’ll quickly adjust.
Start class by introducing yourself: Point to yourself and write your name out on the board. You can also address what you’d like students to call you, maybe combining various names with thumbs ups or Xs to make it clear what is and isn’t appropriate. Right away, students will be comprehending the information you are communicating, even if they don’t understand the words.
Ask a few students their names. Write out both “my name is” and “What’s your name?” With a bit of pointing to yourself and the student, you should be able to get them to respond. If necessary, you could list off a few sample names (“Is your name…Fred? Taylor Swift?”). After the student responds, mime shaking their hand and say “Nice to meet you”, writing both this and “Nice to meet you, too” on the board. Repeating this with 4-5 students will give them the idea.
Have students ask each other their names. Provide a handout including “What’s your name?” and 5-6 blanks for Student 1, Student 2, etc. Between the handout and a bit of modeling, students intuit that they should ask their classmates their names. Give them a few minutes to mill around the classroom completing the activity. To end the activity, clap your hands and motion for them to take their seats.
Have students introduce their classmates. Ask a student their name. After they respond, look away to the rest of the class while still pointing at the student and ask “What’s his/her name?” It may help to write this on the board if the forms are different for your language. Repeat with several other students, pointing to them and looking at the rest of the class to ask their name.
Continue on with the rest of class! At this point, students have already learned some basic phrases and have comprehended the whole lesson without any English being used. You could continue with a similar pattern, introducing phrases such as “Where are you from?” or “How are you?”, or even basics such as colors or numbers. If you choose to review the syllabus (something I personally prefer to have students do on their own time via a homework assignment), you could start with parts comprehensible via cognates and writing (e.g. for Spanish: “Participación = 20%”), but at a certain point you will likely need to switch to English. Even if you do, however, you will already have set the expectation that you’ll be using the target language in a way that students can comprehend!
Hopefully these tips will help you stick with the target language in your own class. It’s a nerve-wracking transition to make, but it is one of the best things you can do for your students’ language acquisition, and once you get used to it, you’ll never look back!
Stefan DuBois currently coordinates the first-year Spanish program at the University of Denver. He enjoys keeping class fresh for both himself and his students by drawing inspiration from videogames, board games, and podcasts to create fun, communicative activities, many of which are available online at TPT.
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