I still don’t get a clear picture of some of the approaches that are presented here. For example, the Task-Based Language Learning—how does this actually look in action? When I try to do something similar, like describing an animal or one’s pet in one form or another, or making a model house and describe it in the target language, the students just do the task thinking/speaking in mother tongue, and try to translate what they want to say into the target language and try to learn it by heart to report it to the class. Maybe they just don’t have enough basic language skills to do such tasks. (I teach Japanese in Australia, two lessons a week in each class)
TPRS—I’d like to try this, and I got hold of a booklet by Karen Lichtman “Teaching Proficiency Through Reading and Storytelling” but the whole process looks very ‘contrived’. How is it used in the Waldorf context? I would like to watch a video recording of a class in action or a transcript of the teacher’s and students’ spoken words in class.
I think we all knwo the situation that some pupils use their mother tongue during groups work phases in the foreign language classroom. I would like to point out two aspects: first of all we have to help the pupils by providing and practicing enough language (words, phrases, bits of dialogue) beforehand so that the pupils (at least theoretically) have the possibility to communicate in the target language.
Secondly, in the lower/middle grades (up to class 6) you can make it a game to stay in the language – maybe one pupil gets the task to just watch that nobody drops out of Japanese / French / English (whatever the foreign language might be) – you could make this one part of the task – and you could offer to help with words in case they need to say something they don’t know. From class 7 onwards I would also address the importance of staying in the target language in order to learn the language. I often use the picture of “swimming” – you can’t learn swimming theoretically and if you always get out of the water (here the language) it will take much longer to learn it. And then it also needs our trust! and our patience (we just remind them in a friendly way again and again:) And we acknowledge that it is difficult and we appreciate every little bit they can do.
TPR(S) – is a method called Total physical response (storytelling) and was created by Dr. James J Asher. It is very closely related to mother tongue learning and can well be adopted to Waldorf language teaching – epsecially in the first years. As every method “from the outside” needs some adjustment within the Waldorf context, so does this one – for example concerning the material. It would be interesting to hear from other colleagues who have had experience with TPR(S). Your suggestion about filming a class sound really good and tempting- however, data security standards in Europe present us with a big problem there for which we still have to find a creative solution. 🙂
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2 Comments
I still don’t get a clear picture of some of the approaches that are presented here. For example, the Task-Based Language Learning—how does this actually look in action? When I try to do something similar, like describing an animal or one’s pet in one form or another, or making a model house and describe it in the target language, the students just do the task thinking/speaking in mother tongue, and try to translate what they want to say into the target language and try to learn it by heart to report it to the class. Maybe they just don’t have enough basic language skills to do such tasks. (I teach Japanese in Australia, two lessons a week in each class)
TPRS—I’d like to try this, and I got hold of a booklet by Karen Lichtman “Teaching Proficiency Through Reading and Storytelling” but the whole process looks very ‘contrived’. How is it used in the Waldorf context? I would like to watch a video recording of a class in action or a transcript of the teacher’s and students’ spoken words in class.
I think we all knwo the situation that some pupils use their mother tongue during groups work phases in the foreign language classroom. I would like to point out two aspects: first of all we have to help the pupils by providing and practicing enough language (words, phrases, bits of dialogue) beforehand so that the pupils (at least theoretically) have the possibility to communicate in the target language.
Secondly, in the lower/middle grades (up to class 6) you can make it a game to stay in the language – maybe one pupil gets the task to just watch that nobody drops out of Japanese / French / English (whatever the foreign language might be) – you could make this one part of the task – and you could offer to help with words in case they need to say something they don’t know. From class 7 onwards I would also address the importance of staying in the target language in order to learn the language. I often use the picture of “swimming” – you can’t learn swimming theoretically and if you always get out of the water (here the language) it will take much longer to learn it. And then it also needs our trust! and our patience (we just remind them in a friendly way again and again:) And we acknowledge that it is difficult and we appreciate every little bit they can do.
TPR(S) – is a method called Total physical response (storytelling) and was created by Dr. James J Asher. It is very closely related to mother tongue learning and can well be adopted to Waldorf language teaching – epsecially in the first years. As every method “from the outside” needs some adjustment within the Waldorf context, so does this one – for example concerning the material. It would be interesting to hear from other colleagues who have had experience with TPR(S). Your suggestion about filming a class sound really good and tempting- however, data security standards in Europe present us with a big problem there for which we still have to find a creative solution. 🙂