Electives aren’t Elective for Artists and Diplomats

As funding gets tighter and tighter, more and more schools are inclined to cut funding for music, the arts, foreign languages and a whole host of other courses that are “nice” but “not necessary.  It makes practical sense, the argument goes.  Kids surely need to measure a triangle or identify adverbs before they learn another language or how to paint, right?  As you may have guessed, I believe that this reflects a value judgment more than a universal truth. 

As standardized testing increases and only makes schools accountable for Reading and Math scores, everything else (including science, history, shop, gym, and other more traditional “staple” courses) goes out the window.   But what about things you can’t test? What about kids with a special aptitude that we are not fostering that are instead written off as failures because they don’t know the Pythagorean theorem?  What about the classes that reinforce or deepen core skills? What about the classes that teach practical skill over theory?  It’s not all fluff, and the treatment of electives as superfluous should be of grave concern.  This post will look at (but not exhaustively) some benefits from these elective courses, look at how they might be incorporated into other courses when budget shortfalls and shortsighted policymakers combine forces to cut these courses, and will hopefully start a conversation about how to rethink how we approach electives for the sake of our kids.

Electives Reap Large Reawards

The most obvious benefits of electives are for people who are not entering a field directly tied to math or reading, and these are not all starving artist careers.  If your child wants to be a diplomat, foreign language should be a centerpiece of their education (sorry Madeline Albright).  If your child wants to be a physicist, well, a good start would probably be a physics class.  If your child wants to be a product designer, architect, medical researcher, lab technician, etc., they’d benefit from science classes in a lab or drafting classes in a studio.  If your child wants to be a chef or baker, perhaps home economics classes would shine at the forefront.  If your child wants to be a carpenter, mechanic, plumber, electrician, furniture maker or construction worker, shop classes would be key (right along side some science and geometry).  If your child wants to be the next Yo Yo Ma, a healthy dose of musical instruction will be key.  

That said, the benefits of elective courses goes above and beyond the obvious exceptions to students that don’t fit the school-college-knowledge worker path.  All students can benefit from elective courses. Here’s how:

Studying a Foreign Language

·      Carolyn Taylor-Ward’s Ph. D. dissertation found that students who had learned a foreign language in the third grade consistently outperformed their peers who had not on standardized tests, including on the English reading/writing portion. 

·      A Stanford University study found that high schools with a higher proportion of students enrolled in foreign language classes tended to have higher levels of annual performance (except in the case of schools with the highest incidence of poverty or English-language learners).

·      A Canadian study noted that students of foreign language tend to acquire and remember all information faster than their peers and tend to perform better in tasks requiring critical thinking. This holds true even for kids with cognitive disabilities.

·      Given the need to reach a global audience (or a more diverse American audience), when competing for a job, a candidate with a foreign language will—all other skills equal—be more likely to get the job and to help a company or agency reach a broader array of stakeholders.

Studying Art and Music

·      The American Youth Policy Forum just completed two studies that found that students, particularly poor students, that study the arts tend to do better on standardized tests.  Further, they found that 80% of students in schools with arts programs get all As and Bs while this is only true of about 65% of students with no arts education. 

·      Students of the arts may be more likely to go to a good college because as the amount of time a child studies art in high school increases so do BOTH their SAT Mat hand Verbal Scores. 

·      A Georgetown University Masters thesis found that children who take arts classes stay in school longer and are less likely to drop out of school.

·      Children in Tucson schools have proven far more engaged and focused when taking music and dance classes, and they also are using their whole bodies, which is of critical importance as diabetes and childhood obesity burgeon across the U.S.

Studying Shop and Home Economics

·      A recent Education.com article highlights several benefits of shop classes, which teach kids to focus, to carry out a project, to develop a concrete skill that can be directly used as a job, and to work in teams.  Additionally, these classes reinforce “STEM” (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) course content.

·      Retooled shop classes like those mentioned above in Tucson have actually involved 21^st century processes and provide direct training for a high-tech manufacturing sector that is expected to add some 110,000 jobs in the next five years.

This is just a sampling of some of the electives we are watching go out the window, but their potential to improve the critical thinking, career prospects, practical skills, and EVEN standardized test performance, grades, student retention, and college readiness of our children should give you pause before allowing such classes to be cut.  That many are directly tied to greater improvements for the poorest students is of critical importance to closing the so-called “achievement gap” between white and minority students.

Electivizing the Core: Solutions in a Budget-Scarce Scenario (Act on it!)

The benefits above suggest that schools rich in these elective programs create students that master other subjects better, are more job-ready, are better able to think creatively and work in teams, and have a stronger love of learning.  I think the best solution is to do what Tucson did and directly increase the use of such programs from the top down and from the bottom up.  That said, for schools or districts that find increasing funding to such programs politically or economically impossible, there are some possible solutions that increase use of electives without touching the core curriculum:

1.     Use foreign languages to teach all subjects.  Children will learn English at home or around their town, so if they are taught every subject except possibly English or another foreign language in say Spanish or Arabic from a young age, that child will be much more likely to be bilingual and to master their course content at the same time.

2.     Use public-private partnerships to have companies sponsor high-tech shop programs.  These programs could occur afterschool or during holidays and could be tied to internships that more directly bridge the gap between the education system and job market and that need not be “remedial” or “fluff” courses.

3.     Encourage and support teachers in using elective-based lesson plans:

a.     A colleague of mine had her understanding of Africa’s changing map and history awakened when her father made her draw maps of Africa annually and she SAW the geopolitical changes that were occurring and was inspired to understand why what she was drawing had changed.

b.     Use shop, drafting or art lessons to illustrate principles of geometry.

c.      My Sophomore British Literature teacher had us act out scenes from literature or make newspapers or songs to illustrate a particular work or concept.

d.     My 1^st Grade teacher taught geography by asking us to learn key phrases in the languages of different countries, preparing or sampling food from those countries, dancing or celebrating holidays in those countries, etc. through a unit called “Tommy’s Travels.” Our mythical peer Tommy traveled around the world, and we’d reenact what he might have encountered.

4.     Use volunteer organizations like Habitat for Humanity or KaBOOM! to build these kinds of hard skills in students while improving their community and strengthening their ability to carry out a project, 

5.     Invite programs like Junior Achievement or Future Problem Solvers (both of which I did and found incredibly rewarding and helpful for engaging in teamwork and creative thinking) into Social science, science, or English courses.

Speak out!

Can you share a personal experience from a “non-core” or “elective” class that shaped your life?

What kinds of lessons have you used, experienced or heard of that creatively integrate arts, language, shop, problem-solving or other alternative classes into other subjects or parts of the school day in a creative way?

Be a Better Learner of Foreign Languages

My last post focused quite a bit on the failures of language teaching, but if you took away from that article that the failures of students (or yourself) to learn a foreign language are going to be completely remedied by improving teaching, you are kidding yourself. There are exceptional teachers that will waste all their effort to help their students and that will get jack squat in return. I know, we all love to blame teachers, cut their benefits, and pretend like parents and students couldn't possibly be part of the problems our education system faces...turns out, that's probably a little misguided. This post is designed to compliment the article on foreign language teaching with proactive strategies that language learners (or those supporting a language learner) can use to prepare themselves and better acquire a new language. And teachers, giving your students the tools to effectively learn is something you can do to set them up for success, so this article is also directed at you.

Not everyone will be able to use some of my strongest tools for studying foreign languages like being a dork and having a job that requires me to travel to other countries. Not everyone would be willing to live in a neighborhood where an FL is spoken. But there are ways to approach building vocabulary, using increasingly complex grammar structures correctly, and even pronouncing words in a way that approximates a native speaker that students can use to speak a language better. I offer some of the strategies I've used to study FLs to stimulate a discussion of strategies for learning other languages and to hopefully improve your retention of foreign languages. Even if you hated high school Spanish, I guarantee that many of you are sad that you didn't get more out of years of language study. Hopefully this will inspire some people to take up another language.

Memorizing vocabulary is a big challenge for a lot of people. It is boring to sit and learn lists of words, often words you don't care about right now (and may or may not ever care about). Some people just don't have great memories. The following are some strategies to improve retention (because at the end of the day, most things that are worth doing require some grudge work and you DO have to learn words, which often involves memorization if you are not immersed in the language).

Vocabulary Retention:

Use all four pillars of language learning to improve retention: read, say, listen to, and write the new word.

Don't memorize like a translator ("ok, perro is dog, perro is dog, perro is dog"). This sets you up to translate in your head, which will slow you down and impede fluency. Only say the word in the target language and instead of thinking of the equivalent in your native language, try:

• imagining a picture of the word (envision a dog and say "perro, perro, perro");
• thinking of things you associate with the target word as you say it (think of doghouses, collars, picking up poop, dog food, fighting with cats, tom and jerry, etc. while saying/writing/reading/hearing the word "perro");
• using examples of the concept you are learning (for example, if you want to learn the word for white in French, think "blanc/blanche" and then think of bedsheets, teeth, piano keys, chess pieces, paper, Germans, etc.); and,
• attaching the word/concept to a memory or a sensory perception (if you want to learn bread in Arabic, think khubz and then think of the smell of baking bread, your mom giving you bread with soup when you were sick ate age 5, etc.). Connecting it to your memories embeds it in a neural network AND gives the word some meaning to you.
  
• All of these strategies avoid setting you up for one for one translation and get you in the habit of thinking in the foreign language without any native language crutch. When you speak your native language, you don't think of words, you think of images, memories and concepts...so why would you try something else in the target language?

Time your studies and refreshers in a way that is compatible with how the brain commits things to memory:

• Study before you go to bed, as you may dream about the target language or in the language and you are helping your hippocampus to convert that new material to long term memory.
  
• Try to remember the vocab you studied before bed in the shower the next morning (if you don't shower in the morning, you can do it while eating breakfast, on the train/bus, etc...or you could start showering; your friends will thank you).
• Refresh the material you studied a couple of days after to reactivate the material (you start forgetting material about 48 hours later if it is not used).
  
• Continue to review a week or month out to keep it active.
  

Use that new vocabulary, even if it doesn't always make sense:

• Slip the new word into conversations, even with people that may not speak or even care about the target language (warning, you run the risk of saying "y'allah" or "vamonos" when you want to get your friends to get going).
  
• Go to neighborhoods where the target language is spoken and use your new vocabulary (and old stuff, but try to make an effort to be creative and slip in the new stuff. It helps to retain it, and it gives you practice being creative in expressing yourself in the target language, a key part of negotiating meaning when you can't express yourself exactly).
  
• Go to places that might have items that you just studied (if you just studied food vocab, go to a restaurant or grocery store, for animals go to the zoo, for clothes go to Target, etc) and then try to identify items you see in the target language.
  
• Teach someone else words. The most effective learning strategy is teaching someone else, so find some poor sap to convert into a foreign language learner and you will be doing yourself an epic solid.
  

Stop studying when you cease retaining, and don't think you'll be effective right after a study marathon or reading 100 pages of a novel.

Use words in sentences, even simple ones, in the target language that help you to recall the meaning of the word without making it a one for one translation.

Find a friend who is learning the language to be your conversation buddy. Speaking and listening are often intimidating with native speakers at first and you will simply not get enough practice if you depend on your class. A friend is a low-pressure way of practicing and simulating immersion while talking to someone you care about about topics of interest. Further, it is a great way to talk about people without them understanding you. My friend Derrick and I are both fluent in Spanish now because we would talk smack about people in high school (and we eventually got so comfortable in Spanish that regular conversations felt just as natural in Spanish as they did in English.).

Building vocabulary is much more effective if you set your own pace/goals:

• Don't wait until your teacher or textbook introduces something. If you need to say something or want to say it, learn how and use it. It'll stick better because it is relevant to you present tense.
  
• When you hear a song, see a tv show or movie, read a sign, etc., try to say it in the target language. For what you can't say, create a list of things in your environment that you'd like to be able to say and then learn that in parallel to class vocab.
• Bring outside vocabulary to a lesson. Your learning bolsters the learning of others and when you use those structures/words in class and someone doesn't understand, you create a teaching moment. When you teach, you retain, so it helps you and helps them. It is also a more natural circumstance for your class, as you gain vocabulary in your native language by encountering it not by memorizing it (despite what the GRE and SAT might have you believe).
  

Use natural overlaps between your language and the target language to guess new vocabulary:

• Cognates: Languages with similar roots often share similar words. For example, the word cotton comes to us from Arabic via romance languages: Al-qutn (arabic) --> el algodon (spanish), el cottone (Italian), cotton (english), etc. Most words in Spanish that begin with al, actually come from Arabic. Spaniards incorporated the Arabic article for "the" (Al) into the word. Alcohol comes from Arabic, so take that Saudi Arabia. This can sometimes backfire, but in general will help you to understand what is spoken to you. Just remember that you want to be careful about how you say embarrassed and excited in Spanish, as you might say I am pregnant or horny if you use a cognate. Portuguese speakers should be careful about asking to hold a Spanish-speaker's baby, as you are likely to use a false cognate and say "Can I hit your baby?"
  
• Comparable Structures: Sometimes you can learn how to say a whole slew of words by learning the pattern for that structure in the other language. Many words that end in -tion in English are the same in Spanish, except they end in ción. Information = información. Knowing this, you can say the word action, traction, fraction, satisfaction, etc. It isn't a perfect system, but it will allow you to guess a lot. Can you guess what the words dignidad, humanidad, and ciudad are in English? What is the English ending that corresponds to the Spanish "-dad?" (again, not perfect, as pidad is not the word for pity, e.g.)
  
• Borrowed words/neologisms: As many new concepts (like democracy, technology) developed in a globalized era and many languages borrow, you may already know how to say words in the target FL using your language with little modification. Democracia in Spanish and DemocraTiyya in Arabic are not hard to figure out, neither is computadora or combiuter. Turns out English borrows heavily, so you've got a lot, despite President Bush's unfortunate assertion "It's a shame the French don't have a word for entrepreneur."

Find ways to immerse yourself:

• Visit neighborhoods, stores, restaurants or even countries where the target language is spoken.
  
• Create a conversation club
• Join a meet-up group
• Find native speakers
• Listen to movies, tv, and music in the target language (and let me just say, The Mummy is pretty damn amazing in Spanish. Turns out the title, La Momia, is also a cognate).
• Date people who speak the target language (it'd probably be nice if you were attracted to them or say wanted to be with them, but love, like FL acquisition, is a complicated matter).
  

This is not an exhaustive list, but hopefully it will give you several possible ways to improve how you learn new vocabulary and get you to give an FL another chance.

Conjugating Verbs and Declining Nouns

It is often really difficult to wrap your mind around conjugating verbs or declining nouns when your language does not do this, but if you want to speak any romance language, German, any Slavic language, and Arabic (among others) well, you will need to figure it out (do we do this in English? Turns out yes).

1. It is much better if you use sentences instead of a chart because the chart isolates the concept from its usage. Create sentences like "I study at the library" and "She studies at the library" rather than saying "I study, you study, he studies, she studies, we study...etc). That way you are practicing usage and grammar together.
2. If you feel like a chart is the way to go for you, it is easier to develop a pattern if you make sure that all the words are chantable and fit into a rhythm. For example, I tried to learn the plural form of you in a chant form, but saying "you all, vosotros/ustedes" was tripping me up because every other English pronoun (I, you, he, she, it, we, they) is monosyllabic. I started using "Y'all" for you plural to keep that rhythm. As a result, this Chicagoan says y'all. I also say howdy, but I can't blame that on an FL.
   
3. Start by learning the regular verb pattern (if it exists) and emulating it with all verbs you encounter. You will make mistakes, but remember how kids go from "I goed" to "I went?" The same will be true for you. You will hear the irregulars being used if you are practicing with people and start to correct/refine. Also, sometime the regular pattern sounds really awkward/cumbersome and you get the idea that it is wrong: In Spanish, you should conjugate verbs ending in ir in the first person (I do, I eat, I read, etc) with -o. The verb "ir," however would just be "o," and you get the sense that there must be a better way to say "I go" and learn "voy" is the right way, not "o."
4. Learn tenses you need, don't wait. The sooner you add a tense to your practice, the more versatile you will get and the better you can express yourself. This will give you confidence and make the language more useful to you, and thus enhance your desire to keep going. Again, you will make mistakes without formal studies, but you will start the refining and retention process all the sooner and you will be inspired more because you learned when it was relevant.
   
5. Learn objects, prepositions and word order along with the verb (one reason I recommend sentences over verb charts). Some things that take indirect objects in English (I listen to her) take direct objects in Spanish (Yo la escucho). Sometimes a different preposition is used, I may "dream of/about you" in English, but "I dream with you" in Spanish (the verb soñar goes with the preposition "con" (with) rather than "de" (of). If you create an example sentence that includes an adverb to learn where they are placed in the target language, any prepositions that are needed, how direct/indirect objects are handled, you have a template to fall back on when in doubt.

Pronunciation!

So often, pronunciation is neglected, and this is sad because you may never sound like Antonio Banderas, but you don't have to sound like you learned Spanish at Walmart or Applebee's either. Here are some tips that may help you to sound more like a native speaker, even if you started to learn the language after the cut-off for acquisition (puberty):

1. Listen critically to how a word is pronounced. Where does a native speaker put emphasis? How do they make a vowel or consonant sound?
2. Watching a native speaker make sounds/say words is also underrated, but it will help you to make sounds if you see how natives form them. Look at how they hold their mouth, if they use their tongue or teeth. For example, I had a big breakthrough when I noticed that most Arabs don't move their upper lip all that much while speaking to form sounds. I was better able to use the language because I knew that more effort should be done by the positioning of the tongue and moving my lower jaw instead of my upper lip.
   
3. Practice manipulating sounds in your mouth. Change where you say the sound from the front to the back of your tongue, from the throat to the nose, using more tongue or more teeth, etc. Find where it sounds most like what you hear a native speaker saying.
   
4. Learn the geography of your mouth and locate how sounds are formed in that new geography. The alveolar ridge (the ridge on the roof of your mouth behind your teeth), the glottus, the lips, the tongue, the teeth, the throat, and the nasal cavity all play a role in proper pronunciation, and it will help you to mimic a native speaker if you understand how your mouth words. In Arabic, there are two different D, S, T, and K/Q sounds that vary based on whether you use your teeth or whether the sound is more in your throat or on your tongue. Similarly, there are three th sounds! It will impede you if you say them all the same, so you need to figure out what the difference is. Once you get that, you will be able to hear that difference better too.
   
5. The use of tone and expression of emotions varies across languages, and you need to be very careful not to use your native region's way of talking if you want to sound fluent in the target language. This is tough for me, as I am a very excited speaker and I use emphasis and inflection heavily. That said, doing that in Chinese completely changed the meaning of what I was saying because it is a tonal language that uses tone to change words (the inflection on the word ma can lead to five different meanings...and referring to a Chinese guy's mom as a horse will probably not be well received). Even in non-tonal language, an authentic sound requires expressing emotions differently. My default, hammy way of talking may work great for an emphatic language like Italian, but if I cross the border into France, I am immediately an outsider as French is a language that is smooth, streamlined, and does not have a bouncy, sing-song quality to it. The import of this smoothness is so great that French will have some silent letters pronounced if it will enhance the flow of words in a sentence. Some languages use different words to convey strength of meaning rather than changing the tone: in Arabic, there are forms of a verb that are more intensive and so I would use a different form of the verb to convey "to slice" than I would "to cut to bits." This is important if you want to understand the difference between slicing bread or Charles Mansoning your family (yeah, I verbed him).
   
6. Music, authentic conversations, immersion, multimedia and anything that allows you to practice conversing or listening or speaking will inherently be the best ways to hone your speaking and listening abilities, and thus your pronunciation.

Hopefully these strategies for learning a language will prove useful to you or to someone you know (or teach) that is learning an FL. And, to give everyone the catharsis they need after reading many of those pronunciation tips..."that's what s/he said."

There are some things that make the way we learn languages really problematic at a systematic level, but that you can't necessarily change as a learner forced into this setting:

1. Kids should learn languages starting in infancy when their minds will learn the proper sounds that make up a language naturally, you probably started learning too late because schools start in high school.
   
2. You learn on a block schedule and thus practice maybe 50 minutes a day if you are lucky.
3. You learn once or twice a week and thus have too much time between lessons to forget what you learn.
   
4. There is not enough speaking/conversation/listening built into the system.
5. Textbooks are poorly written or offer exercises that don't stimulate learning.
6. Your teacher uses ineffective strategies.

Knowing these problems exist and developing strategies to work around the system or a bad teacher will help you to be a more effective learner. If you have irregular classes (twice a week, say), create a space in between to avoid language decay.

Now, you also may have poor study skills or habits that are not just related to FLs and you need to identify and fix those (it is sad that more teachers don't help kids in this regard, as it is essential to their approach in any class):

1. You have bad study skills and haven't bothered to think about what conditions are most conducive and least conducive to your studies for a given subject (or all subjects). Libraries work for many people, but I can't study in an overly silent environment. Additionally, it is difficult to study a subject that requires you to speak and listen in a quiet environment. Write out a list of places, times, and conditions that work and don't work for you, and try to develop a plan for how to study in a way that works for you. Be aware that one condition may work for some subjects, but not for all subjects.
   
2. You don't set goals for yourself and don't measure those goals. Why do you want to learn the FL? What do you want to get out of the studies? What do you want to be able to say? By when? What steps do you need to take? How will you know you've succeeded? If you can answer these questions, you have come pretty far in articulating a plan of action that will help you to measure progress and identify areas where you are struggling more to better focus your efforts and areas where you rock to encourage you to press onward.
3. You don't take the subject seriously or find it personally useful. Stop being an ass. Find out how this will benefit you and how you can use it (and you can often use an FL) and remind yourself of it when you get discouraged.

Speak out!

- Do you have a strategy for overcoming a language learning difficulty? Post it!
- Can you think of examples for some of the suggestions I gave above? Post them!

Act on it!

- Go back to a language you've given up on and try some of the above strategies and see if it yields better results!
- Learn a new language!
- Try out your Spanish at Chipotle or the bodega on the corner. Try out your Amharic the next time you go out to eat Ethiopian. Revive that rusty language study that is lurking in the cobwebs of your mind.
- Are you a teacher? Try to provide some of these tips to your students and add your own. Start your students off right by helping them to identify their study style and to set and realize goals (and measure progress). It is a lot more useful to them to measure on their own terms rather than based on test scores. Intrinsic rewards, rather than arbitrary numbers will win every time.
- Are you a parent or friend of a language learner? Help them by giving them strategies and reminding them that they are just as big a part of success as their teacher is. Work with them to develop a study plan. Serve as their student so that they teach you and thus learn more. Take them to places where they are more likely to be immersed.
- Do you speak a foreign language that someone in your community doesn't speak? Teach it! Volunteer as a tutor, teach ESL (English as a Second Language), answer a question, offer constructive feedback to a non-native speaker that makes a mistake (see my previous post on language teaching to do it in an effective, specific and non-discouraging way).

Improving Foreign Language Teaching

One of the most disheartening and sadly common things I hear is, "I'm just not good at foreign languages." This attitude kills me, and it reflects the large failures in how we approach learning and teaching foreign languages.

I have no special aptitude for foreign languages: Nobody in my family speaks a foreign language; and, I started learning after age 13, which is considered a "cut off" for fluent language acquisition. That said, I managed to learn four languages to a highly competent level and speak two others conversationally. So, when people marvel at my impossible facility for languages as if it were an impossible innate talent, I want to shake them by the lapels. I have some advantages that arise from my circumstances: I do have a good ear for music which probably helps with languages; my school did randomly teach Latin (which I do not speak) which may have served as a place-holder; I grew up in a Mexican neighborhood; and I was a total geography dork. That said, I think far too much emphasis is placed on some supposed innate skill and not enough on the failures of language teaching.

Foreign Languages (FLs) are a passion of mine--not only have I learned several, but I taught English as a Second Language (ESL) in both Panama and the U.S.--so, I would like to see more people succeed in what is often an investment of 2-4 (or more) years. I think that the reason why so many people leave four years of Spanish class unsure whether "¿Cómo estás?" means "How are you?" or "Where is the bathroom?" is because of severe failures in how we approach the teaching of FLs and a complete failure in how we learn them. For this reason, I want to start a conversation on strategies for improving the likelihood for language learning success by first looking at failures in the approach to FLs, then looking at problems with how they are taught and some fixes I see. In a separate post, I will offer advice on how to better approach language learning (I know, to be continueds are the worst!).

Obviously, the way you approach anything is a big determinant in your level of success, and I am convinced that the approach to FLs is erroneously thought to be "word for word translation" taught by compartmentalizing vocabulary and grammar structures. If you think about how you communicate and how you learned your native tongue, you should have an intuitive sense that something is wrong with such a strategy. For one thing, you picked up your native tongue by babbling about experiences, hearing what those around you were saying, and by mimicking...not by segregating content or carefully applying what you learned. Additionally, direct translation defies the key point of communication: being understood by others. If I say I haven't drank anything for hours or if I say I am thirsty, you get the general idea. I could probably even tell you that without words. The following are the grave consequences of our translator's approach to FLs:

1. No two languages express all words or concepts in the same way or words, so expecting direct translation will often result in getting stuck.



2. Translation is a special, difficult skill because it tries to most faithfully communicate the exact meaning in another language. If you try to do this in everyday conversation, however, you tax yourself and limit the amount of things you convey because you've divided your brain's activities between creating and evaluating material simultaneously (which you know is a bad idea if you've ever tried to edit a paper you just wrote at 3am the day before it was due). It also is laborious to your listener to wait for you to get something out.



3. Think of all the times you forget words in your language. Do you give up when you can't remember the name of a saw? No! You take what you know and remember and engage in what I call negotiating meaning, which 99% of the time works perfectly. ("I used that thing that cuts wood to make a 2x4" is just as effective as "I used a saw to make a 2x4." NOTE: I am not a carpenter.)



4. Languages are not like a calculator where you put the elements in and get the right answer. Languages are like putting on 3-D glasses, giving you a new way to see the world and changing how you interpret what you see. Some things need to be learned through context or experience because there is no direct equivalent. Some Inuit cultures have several different words for snow because it is so relevant to their reality, but others have none. My friend complained that even though Argentina was big on beef, they did not have as refined a system for ordering meat as rare as he liked because it wasn't done there. He had to negotiate meaning to communicate what he wanted.



5. Language is culture. To ignore that Arabic was codified in the Qu'ran means that you don't understand the limitations of the language to its religious roots or its temporal context. This becomes really important when you think of dialects, as the fixed translation approach will make you unable to get on a bus in rural Panama until you realize that the "chivo" is actually public transit not it's literal dictionary translation as "goat."



6. Language does not have isolated concepts. You can divide in math without knowing how to calculate the area of a triangle and vice versa, but not so in a language. Words and structures flow across one another to form a web that you use to convey and interpret your reality.



7. Non-verbal communication should not take a backseat to verbal/written communication. Ask any Italian speaker. Most of what we understand is from context clues like tone of voice, expression, gestures, and you are cutting out 2/3 of language understanding by treating it as a fixed translation concept.

This failed approach accounts for a lot of the issues we see in FL teaching. Let's look at some of the biggest problems with FL teaching and some possible solutions (I welcome your additions and corrections, too!):


Problem #1: Almost every FL book you will read begins each lesson with a vocabulary list that prompts brute memorization, rather than webs of understanding or context-based understanding of usage.

Solution 1: Use pictures wherever possible so that the learner associates the foreign word with its meaning, which goes a long way in promoting communicating without translation because you don't associate árbol (Spanish), shajjar (Arabic), or albero (Italian) with an English word but rather with a big wooden plant with lots of leaves or thistles that populates a forest (you now can say _____ in three FLs without me telling you the word).
Solution 2: When you have a word, use it in a sentence before giving the English meaning. Students are more likely to retain a word that they guess and they are better able to reproduce it because they have seen it in action, not in isolation (I did this in solution 1).
Solution 3: Try to link related words and concepts to things a student has already learned so that they form associations and thus stick better. Nets catch more than wires do.


Problem #2: Concepts taught in isolation create a fractured approach to language and inhibit the learner's ability to use them together to convey the meaning they need. How many times have you taken a Spanish or French test that often blatantly says "use the correct form of the subjunctive to complete the following sentences" or "pronoun quiz?" There is a reason why you can properly use the past perfect tense in English without knowing that that's what you call it.

Solution 1: Encourage students that pull from future lessons or outside sources by helping them to identify generally what that is and let them play around with using the concept (even incorrectly). Eventually, children move from "I goed to the store" to "I went to the store," and so too will your language learner.
Solution 2: Test understanding and context and reading and writing rather than multiple choice or fill-in-the-blanks about a single concept. Mix it up! If you really want to test their knowledge of a concept, don't tell them the concept or they will do a robo-fill and not learn on the test (tests are actually a learning tool not a torture device; done well, they reinforce learning). Give them an example sentence and then ask them to do something similar by giving them a couple of words and asking them to create a related concept. (for example, if I am teaching the subjunctive, I might give a sentence that says Quiero que vayas al supermercado. and then give my student two verbs (Esperar, entender) and ask them to create a similar sentence. Be careful not to mark students wrong if they don't create the subjunctive and instead say "Espero entender la lección," if they have made a grammatically correct sentence.)
Solution 3: Remember to weave in old concepts and words regularly into new lessons so that the student (a) doesn't forget, (b) builds linkages, and (c) builds off a base rather than reinventing the wheel.


Problem #3: Teachers often correct things that are correct or that are incorrect but not terribly problematic. You need to strike a balance here, as you want kids to learn a given concept, but if you discourage them when they are right, you'll never have the opportunity to correct them later. Likewise, if they say several incorrect things, overcorrection could dishearten them and thwart them from persisting.

Solution 1: If they haven't used the concept you want them to use, ask follow up questions or encourage them to expand on an idea as best they can to try and prompt it rather than just saying "Remember we are using the preterite!"
Solution 2: If they made a boatload of errors, focus on the key errors. Don't necessarily just correct them, but rather ask them questions and try to lead them to identifying and correcting the error themselves. Additionally, you focus too much attention on one student all at once, which can embarrass them and can deprive others of a chance to try their FL skills out in class.
Solution 3: Whenever a student makes a mistake, make them repeat the correct version of what they said or wrote to commit the correction to memory. The extra attention may make it stick out in their mind the next time and having corrected it means they'll have an example in their head. Too many times a teacher corrects a student and they say "ok" and then they continue focusing on the rest of what they are trying to say rather than committing the correction to memory.
Solution 4: Abolish negative feedback like "wrong" from your correction strategy and replace with questions. Saying "no, that's wrong, Peter" is much less effective than saying, "Okay, Peter, you want to say you went to the store. Let's see if that's what you said. Is 'to go' regular or irregular in Spanish? Okay, do you remember how we say it in the past? No? Okay, well, do you remember how we say 'I was' in the past tense?" In other words, guide them. Feedback should always be specific (teaching anything, not just an FL) and actionable.


Problem #4: Teachers use WAY too much class time on writing, reading and worksheets. These are solitary activities, which makes them ideal for doing and correcting outside of class. Wasting class on solitary activities cuts into the already limited time students have to practice their listening and speaking skills.

Solution 1: Assign as much reading and writing and worksheets (which are often way less effective than you think) as homework or extra practice and do the corrections as your prep work. I know, this makes your job a lot harder, but you are really doing your students a solid.
Solution 2: Vary what students are assigned to read and have them talk to each other about it in class. That way, they are learning new words and structures and teaching each other rather than you having to do all the teaching. It is very empowering for them to be able to teach something, they are much more likely to remember it, and I've saved you some prep time to use for all the extra writing you'll be correcting outside of class time.
Solution 3: If you want to correct things in class, this can be made effective by making it an oral, student-run exercise that aggregates mistakes you notice the class making and leaves time for additional questions that may arise. Nobody is embarrassed and the class works together to improve their understanding/communication skills.


Problem #5: Pictures, music and video are often used much less than books and articles (ever have "Lab day" only once a week?), but this means you are using tools designed for reading/writing skills which will inherently move your instruction style toward those less communicative, interpersonal skills that should be the focus of class.

Solution 1: Invert it! Make 3 days a week lab days or conversation parlors and only use one for direct instruction or reading or writing (and try to make it as oral and interactive as you can so as to improve communicative pillars of language in class).
Solution 2: Prepare supplements that use pictures or music that cover words or concepts from a lesson (let's face it, cumbersome textbooks aren't going anywhere soon) to correct for the deficiencies of the tools you have as a teacher in a budget-scarce school.
Solution 3: Use these tools to elicit more than just the stuff in your lesson. Shakira taught me all sorts of body parts and verbs while reinforcing things I already knew. She has songs that use words for nose (which you are likely to learn earlier on), but also for elbows (how often do you talk about elbows?). To this day, I associate her with body parts...and not in the same way that most people do.


Problem #6: Teachers often neglect the cultural aspect of a language, but that is the most exciting part that will capture a student and remind them that no group of people is homogenous. Panamanians don't eat guacamole!

Solution 1: Look for amateur troops or cultural associations in your locality and bring them into the class (many are more than happy).
Solution 2: Assign readings and assignments from the arts, literature, or culture sections of news outlets. Get them to replicate cultural practices as an oral assignment or have them write a song/rap/play in the style of a famous performer or group.
Solution 3: Celebrate holidays from the cultures that speak the target FL. Because holidays usually involve celebrating, food, and social interaction, a lot of great vocab and expressions are lurking there. Plus, if your student goes to a country where that FL is spoken or meets someone who speaks the language, they have some credibility and something exciting to engage about.
Solution 4: As I noted before, music is amazing. Walking people through a song can help them learn new words and appreciate a new artist. Additionally, if you get them translating, you will very quickly reveal to them how bad one-for-one translations are.


Problem #7: Don't cut your students off or finish their thoughts! You want your kids to be Macgyvers: maybe they don't have a lock-pick, but they can get the door open with a credit card. That is to say, they need to be able to navigate around words they don't know and use what they do know to make themselves understood.

Solution 1: If they are stalling for a long time, ask them questions to see if you can help them to find new words or to say it differently.
Solution 2: If they are stuck on a word, have a policy where they can "phone a friend" in the native language. They shouldn't be able to get out of using the language saying "How do I say monkey in Spanish?" They should be asking for help in Spanish. Then make them repeat the entire sentence once they've completed it to cement the new word. You may wish to give these trouble words an appearance on an upcoming assignment or quiz to reinforce them.


Problem #8: Don't let your best speakers dominate conversation OR self-segregate. You have to be careful here, as you don't want to dampen their enthusiasm, but you need to be sure that the weaker speakers get MORE practice to improve.

Solution 1: Pair strong and weak speakers in group/pair work, as your strong speakers will get a chance to teach and feel good about their skills. They will also reinforce concepts that the weak speaker gets wrong. The weaker speaker will gain from learning new words and structures from a stronger speaker. CAUTION: Be careful that you structure the conversation enough that both students/all students must engage to complete the assignment. If you do "two truths and a lie" and force both to present on their partner, neither can dominate or slack to complete the assignment."
Solution 2: Socratic method cold calls rather than hand-raising keeps people on their toes (which sometimes prompts more studying), ensures equitable distribution of answering opportunities, and doesn't allow people to count ahead and prepare for a specific question.
Solution 3: Do skills stations and consider carefully how you divide into groups. This allows you to pick off the students that need help in a given area and you can rotate slower or faster based on how much help is needed.
Solution 4: Oral tests. So often, the bulk of testing is written, so you can't blame students for putting effort into writing over speaking/listening. It shows that speaking and listening are important skills worth testing, not a tack-on to a written test.


Problem #9: Teaching that there is one correct answer. I cannot belabor this point enough, there's no wrong way to eat a Reese's and there's no wrong way to express yourself unless it is not understood. You can make grammar or usage errors, but if you someone says something correct but not in your lesson plan, encourage them! Further, if a student gets clever and says something raunchy, only correct it if they say it incorrectly (e.g. If you want to teach went is the past tense of "to go," it should be just as good for them to say "My mom went to the store" as it is to say "My prostitute went to the brothel." Either way the concept is conveyed and it is correct.).

Solution 1: Always remember and stress to yourself and your students that the point of learning a language is to express an idea in a way that is understood. Correct grammar, not content.
Solution 2: If you want to check comprehension of a concept, ask leading questions to get them there rather than saying, "ahem, this is past pluperfect time, not preterite!"
Solution 3: Ask them or someone else if they can think of another way to convey the same idea. This underscores how one approximates meaning and navigates a language to get the idea across without punishing correct communication.


Talk about it!
There are many more than 8 problems, but I wanted to focus on some big ones. I'd love to hear more about some of the problems you've had from your FL classes, what fixes you can think of, or additional solutions to (or critiques of) the problems I posted above.

Act on it!

• If you are in a position to teach someone an FL, whether in the formal setting of the classroom, while volunteering, or while helping a neighbor with a second language, try to take some of these ideas into consideration.


• If someone you know is learning an FL, ask them about some of these problems and suggest some of these (or other) solutions to their teacher.

Heck, post your replies in a foreign language as best you can to practice!