Ep. 17: SLAyyy An Effective Long-Term Language Program

Gaslight
Course-End Exams
Vertical Alignment - To University and Beyond
Understanding Ordered Development
Setting Realistic Goals

Gatekeep - Gombert, W., Keijzer, M., & Verspoor, M. (2024). Long-term effects of structure-based versus dynamic usage-based instructional programs for French. Journal of the European Second Language Association, 8(1), 18–33.

Dynamic Usage-Based Programs vs. Structure-Based Programs
Homework and Accountability
Writing Complexity and Length
Changes in Accuracy Over Time

Girlboss
Let Novices Be Novices, Intermediates Be Intermediates, etc.
How Long We Have Our Students
Talk About Whatever, with Lots of Input
Read the Scoring Guides of Credit-Granting Exams
The Path of Pleasure Is The Only Path

References

Avant ADVANCE

Steve Smith’s Bluesky Profile (where we got tipped off about this study!)

AIM (Accelerative Integrated Methodology)

Conversations About Language Teaching - Podcast

Ben’s “Real World Homework” Template

Email us at info@slayyypod.com

Transcript

bill: 0:38

Hello and welcome back to another episode of SLA Second Language acquisition for everybody. This week we are Brian Less, unfortunately. So you were just with Ben and Bill

FishRod: 0:53

Listener you may be thinking to yourself. I thought they were gonna complete their infinity gauntlet of all the teacher of the year candidates from this last year, you would be correct. We are going to get Carlos next episode is the hope. So be on the lookout for our final teacher of the year, regional candidate coming to the pod. We are so lucky to have their wisdom and expertise. It has been such a joy talking to Kay and to Amanda, to Sarah and to.

bill: 1:18

It's been great to have, have those experts on our show with us. So this week let's get into it. We're gonna talk about an article from 2024 on a comparative study of a more traditional classroom and a more. Communicative based classroom and how they turned out on some what was the assessment specifically for? It was an achievement test.

FishRod: 1:50

An achievement test at the end of their secondary school study.

bill: 1:54

So since this was a comparative. Since this was a comparative study it kind of compared grammar based teaching and communication based teaching. So Ben, what do you think? Where do we maybe gaslight ourselves? What are some things that we do? In order to maybe work towards some sort of test, you know, in the US Anyway, we've got the AP test. We've got the national Spanish exam national French exam. I'm sure probably has one.

FishRod: 2:29

Yep. And there's the National German exam.

bill: 2:31

Yeah. And other, other tests like, at my school, we just finished up doing stamp, which we just do at the end of each year just to kind of check out how students are doing see how we are with like our goal setting for say Spanish four or, or whatever. And sometimes like we want to prepare our students for those kind of tests. But do we think maybe we're spending too much time on one thing, not enough time on another, all in like this, the efforts to get good scores? Thankfully for me, and I'll, I'll girl boss a little bit here, but I'll expand at the end. Like, since we do stamp I decided that I wanted to do the advanced training last year. And if you go check out the advanced training and look around at some videos, you might see the smiling face of one Benjamin Fisher Rodriguez as he talks about his experience with it. But that kind of like. Changed some of my teaching'cause I did kind of teach to a test, but I liked what the test was testing.

FishRod: 3:52

I think what you've just touched on is the reality for many teachers where they feel the pull between their professional organization and their professional publications advocating for a proficiency oriented approach that speaking front and center. All teachers, I think, would acknowledge that students want to be speaking the language that is ultimately their goal. So they feel this tension between. goal of being able to speak and use the language proficiently and the way that is packaged and sold in textbook, in district curricula. And there's a lot of tension between that. I think. I'm thinking, you know, from my personal experience, there has been tension in my work between setting students up for success in a specific course or exam versus. Setting them up for success in the language. So we sometimes, you know, I used to work in a middle school and I've also worked, you know, within, with same language colleagues. I'm currently now the only German teacher at my school, so I have to align to myself. But in other times when I had to align to higher level courses where the students would get passed along to different colleagues, there was kind of an understanding that you needed to get them ready for these upper level courses. That were super grammar and structure heavy because the colleague who taught it was very structure heavy, very grammar heavy. Or because they, that colleague or the set of colleagues who were teaching that upper level course felt beholden to whatever authority that they needed to teach these structures because that was the expectation. You know, I'm in, I'm in a school now that offers. Not ap, but mostly college and the high school courses. So dual enrollment. And I know that in these programs in my district and in my area that if they teach students with a proficiency oriented approach that. Lets novices be novice in their accuracy that lets intermediates be intermediate in their accuracy, which Bill alluded to the avant advanced training that really developed my understanding of what accuracy looks like holistically at each sub-level. That if we essentially let go perfect accuracy as one of those goals for our novices in low intermediates, that we would be setting them up for failure at the college level. Because the colleges that we align to, or that many of our students anticipate studying at are going to put them on a program of extremely structure-based learning. We know that to not be entirely true, that all, you know, that there are certain colleges that have really leaned into proficiency oriented instruction as well. We see these colleagues at our conferences. They might even be listening, hi. But this, that, that feeling beholden to some sort of a higher power, I. Is really a strong deterrent for many teachers to turn towards proficiency oriented practices because they see them as something that they have to slot in and that it has to compete with. The preparation for what students in quotation mark will actually have to do once they get to college, once they get to quote unquote serious language study. And so I, I felt that tension in my own work as a lower level teacher of a language and seeing it in my own district and in my own area, that especially the lower level teachers, sometimes what they do if they use a comprehension based approach. The, the upper level teachers will be like, well, they were just playing fun and games all the time, and now they're not ready for serious language study. And that just speaks to a lot of issues of alignment and common ground and common language when it comes about practice in general, but also just about misaligned goals. But, and in even zoomed out from that understandings of how language is acquired, what that development of language looks like over time. what ultimately gets the results that people want from layer language learning sequences, which is proficiency in the language

bill: 7:55

Yeah, I think it might've been, well first, sorry. First I really like what you had said about letting

FishRod: 8:03

I.

bill: 8:03

novices be novices, like we don't need to. Force them or don't need to try to force them to produce intermediate, mid proficiency level output if developmentally they're just novices, like they're just starting out in the language, they're they've gotta still build like a rudimentary system of where words even go in, in the sentence before. Like how long does it take for students to remember, or for it to start coming naturally? Even that like, adjectives come second in Spanish. Like I can say it as much as I want but they're still gonna say um, Casa. Um, Like it's just where they are. That's just where their brain has built the language together so far. I think sometimes we also put. Like, oh, if I don't expect perfect accuracy then I'm lowering my expectations. And, you know, we've talked about expectations before, but you know, I think it just bears repeating that like realistic expectations. Or like changing your expectations so that they are realistic is not lowering expectations, it's just making them realistic. cause if the goals are not realistic, you're just setting everyone up for failure. If I had to create a student learning objective or student growth measure, student smart goal, whatever, for Spanish one, I'm not going to make that measure something that I would expect from someone in Spanish three or four cause they're not gonna be able to meet that goal. And then I'm gonna know that they weren't gonna meet the goal and nothing to do about it. So it's, but that wouldn't be lowering the expectation. It'd be making it reasonable for. That particular student.

FishRod: 10:26

It kind of comes from our perspective

bill: 10:27

And then,

FishRod: 10:28

Go ahead.

bill: 10:29

And then I was just gonna say like, I think it was, I think it was Bill Van Patton diva that had said something about like, you know, we really need to. Like when at, at in department level meetings or whatever, you really need to make sure that you have the same goal. If you're not all working towards the same goal, then there's just going to be different outcomes and then just, sorry, one more thing. I was scrolling on the tiktoks and I came across this video of some guy talking about best way to learn Spanish and pulled out dustino. Right. Talked about, like, talked about how great Dustino was and, and like even talked about some of like the theory behind it. But anyway, so there's a, a little BVP shout out.

FishRod: 11:19

Some of our hangups about expectations like that come from our perspective as someone have, you know, bill and I are l two learners of our languages. And so we have spent a lot of time polishing and perfecting our own language skills for a variety of reasons, you know, to use in professional settings, to use in school settings. And we come at our students now who are, you know, my students are 14 to 18 and we want that. Polish for them so that they can show off so that they can feel the same sort of sense of accomplishment that we have. But we're setting, again, we're setting a crazy goalpost. I think of, I, you know, something that just came up in my mind was that I have been running a lot for exercise like three times a week. And I've been running in little races like five Ks and 10 Ks trying to improve my speeds and things. If I set the expectation for myself a slay, if I set the expectation for myself. That I'm gonna run like an Olympic runner, I am gonna be disappointed. But if I set the expectation for myself that I'm gonna do what a beginning to intermediate runner might do, I'm gonna meet that goal and that's going to be what motivates me to keep going with my running. Much as we setting, setting realistic goals for our students is gonna be what motivates them to keep going. also of like the theory of how they think this happens, like how some teachers think this happens. this is alluded to in the article as well, that many teachers still treat language as they treat skill building so that there is periods of learning the skills, explicitly practicing the micro parts, and that they all come together with fluency through automatization. And and I and Brian come at language learning from more from an approach that. Language learning is built via acquisition, which is a piecemeal, abstract process via the comprehension of communicatively embedded input. And if you, again, have different understandings or philosophies, I'm not sure what quite the right word is here, if you have different to how people learn language in the first place. Then yes, you are gonna be horrifically misaligned, with ultimately what you want your students to be able to do, whether that is perform on a specific test well, have proficiency in the language, which might be two different paths.

bill: 13:49

And I think that kind of encapsulates, that's the wrong word. Encapsulates it. Encapsulates, I don't know,

FishRod: 13:58

that was good.

bill: 13:58

That, yeah. I think that kinda encapsulates the reason that. You, Brian and I even like, started doing this anyway, like this podcast, we like reading research stuff and we think it's helpful. And if more people. Understand it, then, like we can set realistic expectations for our students which in turn is going to lead to more positive outcomes just within our programs and more more proficient speakers. So like you know, just. Thanks for listening and letting us do this and whatnot.

FishRod: 14:42

The one final thing, and it is just on the, it's on the front page of the study, is talking about how teachers who pursue these form focused courses of study instructional programs for their students. up regretting the overemphasis on the written forms that they gave in their instruction. And I think that that made me harken back to when I was gaslighting myself as a younger teacher, that the way that I learned language, that I was so into learning language via the structure was the way that all students were gonna be successful in learning the language that way. And that I found myself experiencing exactly that, that I. Knew that ultimately the kids wanted to speak language, but I was so caught up in the way that I had learned language, that when students were not able to handle the language out of the context of like a workbook page, that felt very disappointing and confusing and disorienting that when I, you know, when on the page they could do the little grammar transformations, but then I'm like, and they're like. My students were able to do workbook pages and do the little grammar transformation, but as soon as I asked them like, Hey, all of a sudden their brains would 4 0 4 error page not found, the Spanish language didn't exist in the part of their brain that was responsible for just chatting with their teacher. made me feel sad. I wanted to be able to shoot the breeze with them. I wanted to be able to exchange experiences and opinions all the sort of functions that we. Have in language and in language teaching in proficiency based teaching. wanted to be able to do that. But you know, a structure proficient student does not a language user make. I, do you have any final moments, moments of guest lam before we jump in?

bill: 16:34

No, I think I think that's good. How about we move on into gatekeeper? We've read the research so you don't have to.

FishRod: 16:45

Let us un gatekeep the article we're reading today and that we'll link in the notes is called Long-Term Effects of Structure Based Verse, dynamic Usage Based Instructional Programs for French by Gumbar, Kaiser, and Vepo. produced for the Journal of European Second Language Acquisition. Nice to hear from our European colleagues on this one is lovely. I believe we found this. Study because it was shared by Steve Smith on Blue Sky. So shout out to Steve if you're listening. And if you're not thanks. Anyways, this study to me was exciting because it is a rare longitudinal look at language proficiency based on the type of program. And there are so many factors that you have to control for when you're doing research about

bill: 17:27

Hey Ben, what's longitudinal?

FishRod: 17:32

So a longitudinal study is one in which they look at the effects

bill: 17:36

Oops.

FishRod: 17:37

over the long term. It's got the long in it, right? So instead of just doing a treatment like, oh, we're going to teach the kids using this grammar lesson and then give them a test afterward and see how they do on that test. going to do whatever their intervention is and then follow those students who receive that intervention over time. To see what the, the long-term effects are we get a better picture because we know that language proficiency develops over long periods of time. want it, want to know how those, how the choices we make in those first year classes play out all the way through their, in this case, 60 year class. so here we go. The study took some schools in the Netherlands who were teaching French as an additional language had them implement what they call the DUBA di Dynamic Usage based Approach. This would be, this, based on my reading of it, is roughly in line with comprehension based communicative language teaching as we talk about all the schools did it for about three years, then some of the schools felt that they were not preparing. The students for the secondary school leaving exam essentially with, by not emphasizing grammatical accuracy. And so some of the schools changed to a, what they call an sb, a structure-based program for language acquisition. However, one of the schools was like, actually the, the, you know, the comprehension based one was pretty sick and we were into it, so we're just gonna stick with it. And so that school continued while the others pursued a more tructure based programming. And so we ended up with students who got the same first three years base, but then had three additional years in two different kinds of programs. And so we're able to see then what effects those might have. The group is kind of, as we've already described, they're looking for automatization of grammar rule application, that they're able to learn the rule, practice the rule, apply the rule. So PP, P, present, pr, produce, practice, produce. Whereas the, the DUB, the dynamic usage based group was really looking for using high frequency colocations using associative learning. Understanding that learning comes at an individual pace in terms of accuracy, using lots of chunks of language. So functional groupings of words that you would see usually together. The idea being that if you learn in those chunks, you're more likely to produce those chunks, understand those chunks and you're gonna produce more fluent language instead of having to analyze the function of every single word, you're using groups of words as tools to fulfill a function within what you're trying to communicate. So. The study made some hypothesis before they started about which group would be kind of better unquote in one skill versus another based on the emphasis if a structure-based program is really emphasis on reading and writing. The hypothesis was that. The students in those final exams, the secondary school leaving exams would show stronger reading and writing scores. But that the group that was dynamic usage based, which had been receiving far more oral input of the language, lots of input, interaction in the language that they would have stronger listening and speaking, because that is a lot of how they had acquired their language was through oral. Oral input conversation, you know, interaction with written and oral input. They were using a specific method, which I have heard about before, but not done a lot of research into, which is a IM accelerative integrative methodology. so we'll put a little link. They have the website linked here and the. goal of AIM was to give students in from the article meaningful, multimodal, authentic exposure, means that they

bill: 21:41

You would say that that was their aim.

FishRod: 21:43

boo. They were hoping not to have focus on the forms, but rather on the functions of what was happening in the input and in the conversation and the interaction. So all the students received the same amount of instruction, and indeed, the. E even both groups were kind of prepared for these final exams in a similar way in terms of this is what the exam looks like and you're, you know, we need to make sure that you get you know, the preparation for the speaking tasks or the writing tasks in a similar way. But where the structure-based, go ahead.

bill: 22:15

Sorry, and I don't wanna like like cut you off if you were gonna say this already, but wasn't there also something about the dynamic usage based group just not being used to this type of testing anyway, like the multiple choice, comprehension

FishRod: 22:34

Yes. That they didn't,

bill: 22:35

kinds of.

FishRod: 22:36

over the course of their years of study, been doing those sorts of tasks that they had been doing

bill: 22:43

Right. So,

FishRod: 22:44

an article, watch a

bill: 22:45

so even,

FishRod: 22:46

about it. Yeah.

bill: 22:47

right. So they did get like test taking skills but it was just like before the test.

FishRod: 22:56

Yeah.

bill: 22:57

Yeah.

FishRod: 22:58

The, the part that I found interesting too is that in addition to, obviously the instruction in class is gonna look very different. The structure based one is gonna be focused on, I. learning of grammatical structures and practice of those and production of those. The homework is then grammar drills and transformations and things like that. The homework for the dynamic usage based group they were asked to listen to French media and read authentic French magazines. Without completing any reading comp questions or grammar drills. so I found that, I found that very interesting because they, in quote unquote, had no accountability, but they were getting more exposure to natural input in the wild that they might want to absorb as users of the language anyways. And I thought that an an, an intended or unintended side effect of this might also be that students would discover something that they like and then stick with it. I. I found that I was a huge nerd for German news media and I just stuck with it. I just listen. I still listen to news podcasts in German. And that was the result of zero accountability. No one was telling me to do that. Finding something I enjoyed and sticking with it. The.

bill: 24:05

that real quick on, I forget if, I don't know if it was their most recent episode, but Diane and Reed on, I. Conversations about language teaching. Just talked about like the finding interesting like on topic media as a language learning tool, like for independent study which was like, just great to hear them say that because that was like kinda validation of. This little, this little page on our class course that I've put up a bunch of different, like, YouTube channels that are in Spanish, but like, they're like, crash course in Spanish or like how it should have ended in Spanish or what's another one? I a bunch, a bunch of different ones. So students can just like find things that. Are gonna be interesting to them, and then they're gonna get that vocabulary, that language. So that was just like a, a side note as well that other people are talking about it.

FishRod: 25:08

Yeah. Well, and, and

bill: 25:09

Good stuff.

FishRod: 25:10

just engaging with someone online about

bill: 25:11

Mm-hmm.

FishRod: 25:12

do. My, in my upper level classes, especially, I have them do what I call real world homework, which is find something out in the real world that allows you to. Enjoy German and go do that. And I got

bill: 25:23

Yeah.

FishRod: 25:23

through Minecraft. Let's play sort of videos where they're just watching some German dude play Minecraft and comment on about what he's doing.

bill: 25:30

We're in like

FishRod: 25:31

learned all the words for all the materials. And you're like, neat.

bill: 25:34

tiktoks or Instagrams like we watch like some TV shows in class. So like we've checked out their Instagrams, like, of the actors and like go follow them and like. Find what they repost. If you like it, then like, you know, find that community elsewhere as well.

FishRod: 25:53

Yeah. I just, I just thought that this is, that was kind of like an aside into the actual study, but I found that like I. Again, this is kind of we in here, in the United States, we have the community standard, which is, you know, continue lifelong learning of the language for personal and professional goals. And again, like, oh, my homework was to like find something that I like and, you know, find articles that were interesting to me. Find media that was interesting to me and just enjoy it. that is something that you can build a habit of doing and then becomes that lifelong learning, which begets more language proficiency in the long term. Anyways.

bill: 26:28

Yep.

FishRod: 26:30

The exams that they use to, to test students after the fact. So again, to to recap, they got three years of, everyone got the dynamic usage based, very input focused associative learning, multimodal input, sort of learning for about three years. And then the schools diverged where some went towards a structure-based and where some stuck with the kind of input forward. Dynamic usage space approach. But at the end, all students were accountable to the Netherlands required central exams for reading and listening, which were, you know, it looks like they were multiple choice tests, basically. Pretty straightforward, you know, listen to this thing and answer some true false close and multiple choice sort of stuff. And then the writing exam. They, all those students across the programs had received the writing intervention that I kind of mentioned, which was essentially the test prep component, which was kind of talking about interesting academic topics. Starting with input on those topics, so, you know, articles and videos about those topics and moving towards free response tasks, like debates and discussions about those tasks. So then the writing exam was to prepare. For one of those topics, but then also for one where they had to produce more spontaneously. So there was a mix of prepared and spontaneous. To do speaking skills. They used something called the Student Oral Proficiency Assessment Protocol. Essentially, it sounds a lot like the the actual OPI where essentially subjects are introduced to the student in a kind of very safe, easy warmup sort of way. And then the, the conversation develops more towards talking at length about the chosen topic using more extensive language and open-ended questions. Fairly similar in terms of the structure of the OPI, as I understand it. And so you have, again, I feel like I'm recapping every four seconds, you have standardized multiple choice reading and listening. You have somewhat prepared writing and you know, OP iLike speaking. What were those results? Did they get the results that they thought? Did they get. The strong reading and writing for the structure base as they expected with the stronger speaking and listening for dynamic usage base. Well, let me tell you, in terms of reading and listening scores the dynamic. Usage based groups. So using more of a comprehension based approach scored slightly higher. The effect was not as big in reading but definitely higher according to their results. So that did not meet their hypothesis even though the structure-based group had been doing a lot of. I don't wanna say paperwork to reduce it, but a lot of, you know grammar transformations via worksheets and that's in workbook sort of stuff. They weren't necessarily the stronger readers in that situation. And of course, the dynamic usage base did better on listening because they had been exposed to more oral input in terms of writing the scores, the holistic scores were actually roughly the same. And so even though there was a such a strong eff e. Emphasis in the structure based on writing and on the grammatical accuracy and all that sort of stuff. holistically, the scores were almost the same when you, they broke it down into the components of complexity, accuracy, and fluency. the complexity is roughly samey, although the dynamic usage based, comprehension based group longer average sentences. The accuracy was actually pretty close. The subject verb agreement was slightly better in the dynamic usage based group, whereas the determiner now in agreement was like slightly lesser in the dynamic usage based group than the structure based group. But the, those in the, the dub, the DUB group, were producing more words in general. Their texts were longer. They were using more chunks of language, so groupings of words that they learned altogether. That fulfilled some sort of function terms of oral proficiency. The students were given scores on each of the, you know, four tasks that they were given within this kind of oral proficiency interview, the students in the dynamic usage based group. So the comprehension based group scored significantly higher according to my reading of it. And so as it, as it played out. The benefits that we thought that structure-based students would have in writing and reading did not really materialize. They were either more or less the same or with like slight advantage towards the dynamic usage-based group, which again, is more of a comprehension based communicative approach as we understand it. And then the speaking and listening scores were so stronger that it kinda leaves you asking what's it what's that all about? What are these programs doing?

bill: 31:16

So something to. Note just looking at the sample size that they've got here the Stan the SB group has 55 students in that group versus the 73 and the DUB group which like in these data that. They use the mean they use take averages. Like that's kind of showing that like more students were still scoring that much higher,

FishRod: 31:56

Yes. A larger group of

bill: 31:58

like overall.

FishRod: 31:59

those scores

bill: 32:00

Yeah. Which they do talk about at the end, like, you know, they didn't have an experimental group, which, sorry if I stepped on your toes there, but they didn't have an experimental group here. So they don't want to generalize their findings. At best they were talking about like, it's really, really, really good data for this specific location. But. Looking at it from like a, a broader view. Still pretty cool.

FishRod: 32:32

Yeah.

bill: 32:33

Still pretty cool stuff. Like in in, in this competition, it looks like dynamic usage based teaching. Got the dub.

FishRod: 32:41

Ooh. Part two, the, the discussion I found really great is that again, they all, they got the same speaking intervention, so like they were prepared for those speaking tasks kind of equally wealth or for in 30 hours, which to me is a pretty substantial speaking intervention when you consider, I don't know, I see my kids for roughly. Four-ish showers a week, four or five hours. That's, you know, a couple weeks of preparation on this sort of thing. So they were theoretically re you know, this, the preparation that happened before, because this is only, you know, such a small percentage of the overall program. The preparation that happened before is what caused the dynamic usage-based students to feel so much more prepared for those speaking tasks and for oral proficiency and for using the language which need. I remind everybody, including myself, is, is what students come to our courses for. They provided a quote that talked a lot about how the use of the language in communication is what to more proficiency. And again, I think it, I speak for Bill and Brian when I say that we're we studying the language as an object in class at all times. We are instead using it to learn about each other in the world. And that is what in this study. Allowed students to achieve higher levels of oral proficiency, even if the focus in communication was on comprehension at times. And not always on production and not always on super accurate use of the language. Another note that they mentioned is that the dynamic usage based group took more time to achieve the writing accuracy that they achieved, that those effects achieved with the time that they had the students in the structure-based group. initial strength in accuracy, like producing the forms very accurately compared to the dynamic usage based group. But tho those differences, essentially those pluses leveled out over time. As the dynamic usage based group got more input and interaction in the language. I highlighted a quote right at the end of the discussion that I think nice. And I quote, apparently, an implicit approach to the teaching of grammar. In our case with an aim approach, with a carefully built up program lots of repetition and corrective feedback is as effective as an explicit approach to develop writing skills. After six years, it has the added value that without time spent on explicit grammar, there is ample time to promote spoken and written fluency skills. That, to me, kind of, I was like, oh, damn, they, they really? Mm-hmm. Really slammed the, the football down in the end zone there. They don't do that in Europe. They really, they really played soccer. I don't, I know a good metaphor. Anyways. They really, they.

bill: 35:14

Sorry.

FishRod: 35:15

but I think that again, they emphasized that the test that they, they did not develop some sort of wacky, experimental, like only used for this test

bill: 35:24

Mm-hmm.

FishRod: 35:25

to see the effects of these programs. They were using tests that are already available and widely used and have to be used, you know, required usage in the Netherlands to assess these students' oral proficiency boom, the students in the dynamic usage based group performed as well or better in all of the different domains. I.

bill: 35:43

And they also brought up another meta-analysis that was done on, like to find out if there was bias towards like, explicit groups or ex explicit instruction groups as well. So like, just pointing out that this like assessment tool that they were using. Yeah. It wasn't just a, like a constructed for research sake. It was like an actual real world assessment. Anyway you wanna talk about how we've girl lost this

FishRod: 36:21

I think to me

bill: 36:22

concept?

FishRod: 36:22

this, the, this, what the lessons that we can take away from are that when we're breaking our brains over our first and second years, you know, in American high schools, I get my kids if lucky, I. For four years. And so the

bill: 36:38

Mm-hmm.

FishRod: 36:38

that they were describing, they were describing 700 plus hours of lessons in the language. And I'm like, oh boy. I'm lucky if I get in the, you know, you know, 500 ish range over, over

bill: 36:50

Mm-hmm.

FishRod: 36:51

and many students only take it for two or three. What can I achieve? It reminds me to kind of let go of any. Quibbles I have about their accuracy and just celebrate all their language use and just, you know, be their biggest cheerleader for whatever language use that they can accomplish in the time that we're together. And also, I don't know, enjoy them as humans. Like we're using the language to, like I said, learn about each other in the world. if that's the case, then we can just enjoy that time in class and let accuracy lie for a while because these students, again, were given six years of lessons. To develop that proficiency. We just have less time. And so, you know, set realistic expectations. Enjoy the humans that are in the room and whatever language that they come up with during that kind of compressed time, and use an approach that gets away from this structure-based learning, which has its effects in the moment that then dissipate over time. The study kind of laid out some previous research on that about, you know, some of these explicit teaching interventions show. Effects right there and then in the moment and you feel good'cause you're like, wow, everyone is so accurate.'cause of the cool accuracy thing I did. then as soon as, you know, time passes that those gains disappear. Whereas an approach based on comprehension and language use sticks around much longer. Those effects stick around much longer. And I, I, you know, that's what we want. That's what, that's what we're doing. That's what we're shooting for, is that kids actually can use the language.

bill: 38:17

And something that I carry around. Or that I've been carrying around with me for a while as like a reminder is that like, you know, if, if we're leading with comprehension and we're making sure that we're not, or we're doing our best to do, no harm to the students in front of us or their pers perspective of the world, then do whatever else but like give a lot of input. Do our best to be kind, then whatever else really like you, whatever else you think is gonna work for your students is what's going to hopefully work for your students. I know that I have like gone back and forth with like, weighing the importance of accuracy and whatnot in my classroom, and like thankfully, I've stumbled upon some ways to do that. Like I. Structured input activities or like, just even just thinking about the principles of input processing, like knowing that students don't pay attention to words that don't carry meaning. So like in Spanish, we've got the personal ah, which is like, you could say veil, I see a dog. But you have to say like, veil. Ah. Ben, I see Ben. The ah doesn't carry any meaning, but it's there because Ben is a person. Even like circling keeping those things in mind. while circling questions or whatever, like break or thinking about where I break up sentences so that the first thing that students hear is what's going to be like the most important thing that I want them to hear. So like something that I do with subjunctive, for example, like. Does Ben's, I don't know does Ben's husband want him to cook dinner or does Ben's husband want him to,

FishRod: 40:31

Do the dishes.

bill: 40:32

don't know, clean the house, do the dishes? What does Ben, what does Ben's husband want him to do? Clean the dishes or cook dinner using the appropriate subjunctive forms there. But like that's going back all the way to like episode two, right? Like question strategies. But like there's all these things that we can do to keep language as comprehensible as possible while still also focusing on or being aware. How to manipulate the language that we as teachers use to most benefit students.

FishRod: 41:11

Absolutely. I'm with you. The, like you said, going back to the questioning strategies episode that we talked about, about how to get more input into students' brains purely by the questions we ask. I. But I think that Bill, I think this is, we, we've had a burden for a long time that we need to do an episode just about sort of structured input interventions. More, you know, that we talk more explicitly about that because are a lot of things that we can do to manipulate input to make. These features meaning more salient. There's a lot of things that we can do

bill: 41:39

Yeah.

FishRod: 41:40

Like you said, break up sentences in a way that emphasizes those grammatical differences.

bill: 41:45

Input enhancement might be a common enough term, but a lot of times we see see this when we like bold a word or we emphasize something in our speech to draw attention to it. And that is a great reminder for me. Like if I bold something, if I bold a new word or bold a new phrase in. Something that we read together as a class. I try my best to like bold that the entire way through the text so that when we read it, I'm reminded even if it isn't like doing anything on the student side.'cause I know like there's debate on the effectiveness of input enhancement. I like it. But if, if not for anything else, because I can be reminded of. Hey, I wanted to make sure that students were getting this word, so or getting this kind of phrase. So let me bold it each time so I make sure that I ask a lot of strategic questions, either using that new word or using that structure. I said the word priest 16 times the other day so anyway, that's just like a tip. Ben girl bossing from you. And to wrap us up,

FishRod: 43:03

Another way to Girl Boss is to really, with maybe with

bill: 43:07

I.

FishRod: 43:08

too, you know, if there's a, we talked about misalignment of goals and expectations. there's a way to sit with colleagues and look at the ultimate, bearing exams that you use in your area. That might be a sobering or a realistic conversation. I'm thinking of like how the AP exams are scored. If you're able to go to an AP training with your colleagues and discover where the accuracy measure lies in each level, a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 you'll find that there is a little bit more generosity for errors than we are afraid of and that students can do well. I had, you know, I had students who passed the AP exam after a diet of comprehension based language teaching. Their accuracy was fine, but they were able to pass based on not without me having to emphasize that sort of stuff. There are stories of people who students accomplish these things without that heavy emphasis. The same goes for in my state. You can use the stamp exam like Bill said to get credit for the seal of Biliteracy. You can use the Apple exams, et cetera. And you'll find that. The score ranges that students need to fall in to get that seal of Biliteracy credit to get those high school credits or whatever it is, actually do have a lot more wiggle room for, quotation marks, grammatical inaccuracies than we might think. And that, you know, this maybe makes it sound that these, you know. Our comprehension based students are all willy-nilly with their grammar and everything is like wild and crazy. But there are a lot of students who, who come out producing very accurate forms because they've had exposure over time to useful chunks of input that they just are hearing and using over and over again. And it becomes, you know, part of their system because they got a lot of input in it. so I think again, if you look at those exams, if you look at something like Stamp, using that training that we talked about, it was so powerful for that reason. Is that I'm like, oh, I could get a kid to accomplish a, a score of a five or a six or whatever. With this level of accuracy just in the present tense is really powerful because it speaks to how much they can do in the language. and it also speaks to just kind of how we use language in the real world anyways, that people make. Mistakes in speaking their first languages, their second languages, their third languages all the time. And yet the world turns on and people understand them and the conversation can continue and learning and interpersonal interactions can continue quote unquote despite these errors. So I think that, you know, the overemphasis on structures and grammatical perfection. Is so at this point it's boring to me'cause I'm like, come on man. But I get that the, those outside pressures at the same time as we've seen with this study, you could do the more joyful, more long-term, efficacious route. Get the same slash better results. I think it was, maybe it was crash. And at one point who says the pla path of pleasure is the only path when it comes to language learning. And I stick with that. I'm like, I think it's more joyful for me. It's more likely to get kids into. Types of input that they will stick with over time kind of like we talked about earlier. And it's, it's just gonna be less painful for everyone involved and we'll get better results. Like, I'm like, come on man. This one feels like a, feels like a dead ringer. I.

bill: 46:18

All right. Well if nothing else, thanks for joining us again for another episode of SLA. Go out there and slay. Bye.

FishRod: 46:29

Hi.