It’s not about the speed…it’s about how deep.
I’ve really been enjoying what AJ has been posting about over at Effortless Language Acquisition.
He’s presently in the middle of teaching himself Spanish, and has been recording how he’s been going about this. What I really have been enjoying is seeing how the whole process is about deepness.
Learning is not about how fast you can go. It’s not how much you can cover. Sadly, at least in ESL, "learning" is about speed. One of the most frequent of all FAQ’s that gets asked is the classic: "How long will it take me to be fluent?"
Our industry then dives into a beautiful looking table which outlines what course books we use and when, and for what level. Each book is neatly packaged into say six month blocks of time.
We boldly, and quite falsely claim that in a year and a half or two years, you’ll be fluent. You finish a book, you finish a level. You acquire a chunk of English.
But if you’ve been at this for a while, and better yet, if you’ve had the joy of sticking it out with the same students for a long while, you’ll notice something very disturbing: You finish a level means you just finished a book. Little to nothing has happened to your student’s language.
Self-confidence goes up. Fluency, sometimes goes up. But I’ve noticed that many of my students seem to be riding a very slow acquisition curve.
The one guy, and I’ve blogged on him before, who is really experiencing a jump is the one who is going for deepness.
It could be that I am also starting to buyinto deeper, not the faster or wider mindset. My case in point is the "My Personal Story" project we’ve been working on for the past month or so.
Our work has been to have my students talk about what they studied in university and why, how they started working where they are now, what exactly they do, what they love about their jobs, what they do for fun and if they have hobbies, and their plans for the future.
The objective was to prepare a few of them for some upcoming interviews. (A couple of my students are preparing to go abroad to study Master’s degrees.)
The prep work took us a good month. We did a lot of planning on paper. A lot of brainstorming. A lot of writing the story out, and a lot of talking about expectations. We watched mini videos of people talking about their story - and noticed how they did it. What language they used. What grammar was commonly present. Vocabulary words and phrases that were useful. We went deep. We didn’t branch out into ten different topics or study points. We didn’t cover three or four more chapters in a course book. We just dove deep.
We had great results. We recorded their story in the last class, which was a fun project in itself. (If I get their permission, maybe I can post them here.) We had the chance to reflect on the exercise, which turned into my grand intro into blogging…and they all had very positive things to say.
They noticed how they talked. They noticed their areas of weakness. But best of all, they noticed where they did really well.
I had them do self-reflection, and then peer reflection. What did you notice about your buddy’s work? What did you like, and what would you suggest for them to improve on?
The comments were really amazing. Mostly, they were very uplifting and positive. Everyone left the room wearing a smile. But most of all, everyone felt they had done something important. Something meaningful.
We didn’t rush, and the result was something quality. It wasn’t bunches of chapters in some book. It was one skill done really well.
Effortless Language Acquisition: More Review, More Repetition
I would argue that your students picked up more usable language preparing for the interviews than any number of course books.
BTW did you video the students ? It’s agreat way to get them to reflect upon their performance. I usually do this when preparing my students for their ESL exams.
Just be warned they will hate it in the beginning,but eventually most will thank you.
I think it’s not a matter of breadth vs depth but rather learning to do something meaningful in the language instead going through the motions with a bunch of abstract exercises which don’t seem to have any real-life application .
Now that can be preparing for a university interview, writing a blog or playing a video game.
Comment by Craig — June 1, 2006 @ 12:07 am
I’ve read AJ post first, then yours. I agree with you both, and this reminds me ‘is it the road or is it the destination? , of course, what matters is the process.
Everybody knows that children need a lot of repetition to acquire new language, I guess adults are alike, in the sense that when they are taught new words, or grammar rules, they have to be exposed to diffetent contexts in which those new words are used - the meaning that gives the dictionary is not enough-. When it’s about grammar, they have to see it in different contexts to acquire it: what is this but repetition?
Apart from this, nothing is more meaningfull than a ‘real’ conversation, in which their interests are the target. In a book, the target is to acquire the rule, and the student’s interest is left behind.
I’m in favor of deepness rather than speed, which possibly leads you to a crash. Mercedes
Comment by Mercedes — June 1, 2006 @ 10:43 am
Deep learning rather than shallow studying - that’s really deep. No, I really like it and it’s definitely something I need to apply to my Korean learning.
Great post by both you and AJ.
Comment by EFL Geek — June 1, 2006 @ 5:22 pm