My question is as followed: As a learner or a teacher, what are the greatest limitations of success in learning/teaching a foreign language?
Personally, I believe that time is one of the greatest limitations on FL teaching and learning. How can we expect a teacher to teach students to comprehend and produce a language proficiently in a few 50-90 minute sessions a week for a few months? Can students truly pick up on a language with any sort of mastery in this amount of time? Even for students who take a language each school year, the break in between their study can be detrimental.
On average, my answer would be no. There simply is not enough quality time spent learning and interacting with a language in most school settings (High-schools or university classes that meet a few hours each week per semester.) Even students who learn the language in an immersed setting (like a study-abroad, or if they have moved to a new country) take many months of nearly 24/7 practice to become skilled in the language.
Students need to spend class-time learning new grammar forms and complex vocabulary, about which they probably have many questions and truly require the input of an instructor. There is hardly enough time to cover this material, which leaves little time for instructors to review or practice the material in a meaningful, interactive way.
I believe that assigning homework is one way that instructors can supplement and review the material they have learned in class, but it is difficult to make up for face-to-face learning. Languages are interactive, and though homework can be beneficial to comprehension/memorization of form and vocabulary, it is almost impossible to replicate in-person instruction. Though technology might be able to bridge some of these gaps, some still seem to wide.
Though I am not sure whether or not there is any way to change the fact that classroom time is too limited to produce effective communicators in a FL under normal teaching conditions, perhaps our expectations should change. Education administrators/evaluators often seem surprised to learn that most students retain little of their FL instruction, and that few become actually proficient in the language after they finish their studies (especially at the HS level).
I would attribute the success of some students to master a language during their educational career to their own supplemental learning—for it is nearly impossible to achieve within the classroom.
I made a quick survey on SurveyMonkey, please share your thoughts:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GR6P92Q
I think having FL class everyday without long breaks would be the greatest recipe for L2 learning, though unfeasible. I believe that the brain can only take in so much learning per subject in one day. I don't know if this theory is already stated somewhere, but if not then I am claiming it. :) This is why you have to practice vocab lists over a course of days and not just the night before the test if you want an A. This is also why going abroad does not make you magically advance multiple levels in a few months even though you are receiving a ton of input. I believe there's a limit to how much you can actually take in per day per subject. This limit is not a percentage of the input, but rather a fixed amount. This is just what I believe, and so I still think daily FL classes can do a lot under the right circumstances.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that most students seem to gain L2 fluency/proficiency through their own supplemental learning. It seems as though students would be able to learn and retain more of their L2 if class periods were devoted more to actually using the language (or at the very least listening to it) than reviewing grammar and vocabulary. Your most makes me think of the inverted classroom that we discussed earlier in the semester, in which students do the majority of their vocabulary and grammar learning at home in order to spend class periods speaking the language. This seems like a really interesting, and potentially quite effective idea, as it would truly immerse students in the target language. Unfortunately, as we all know, this tactic will not work for all students, and especially those who do not really want to learn the language, as it require a lot of independence and pro-active learning. Immersion classes, similarly, may offer a somewhat "authentic" experience, but run the risk of losing disengaged or uninterested students. Do you guys think that the inverted classroom or immersion style learning are effective approaches to L2 teaching? Is there a method that will work for the majority of students?
ReplyDeleteI think that inverted learning is probably the best way to help motivated students who have an aptitude for the language achieve proficiency; its flaw is that is will most likely lead less skilled/motivated students to be less proficient than with traditional classrooms because they will most likely neglect their independent learning.
DeleteI think the solution, as it is with most things, is a compromise. Some "self-taught" vocab and grammar at home to allow for in-class practice, and sometimes the reverse.
Exposure to the language and culture is the best thing we can do for students in the classroom. The language learning part can only be encouraged so much. I think the students have to find their own reasons to motivate themselves to learn the language with the ultimate goal of spending time in the target culture in order to use that language.
ReplyDelete