Week 10 - From Comprehensible Input to Interaction

The readings of this course were all inspiring to me. I chose to register in this course at the very moment I was told I would be hired to be an Instructor for Elementary Portuguese at UNH this semester. I couldn't have done anything better! In this course, I learned the theories and was exposed to the discussions on teaching strategies and learning hypothesis.

Each reading was like a new world that was opened to me. I was so happy to know all the ideas these theorists discussed and with our class dynamics that I felt really lucky. I must confess that in my first readings of each of the articles, I agreed entirely with all of them. I was a complete naive in this field. Therefore, my first impressions of each argument was very positive. I was enchanted by Krashen's theory of Comprehensive Input and his weird way of explaining his ideas. Then, I was impacted by the PACE model with whole language approach, which made me reorganize my current Portuguese classes.

However, in the last weeks, when I was exposed to the Long's Interaction Hypothesis and Swain's Output Hypothesis, I freak out. I am a conciliator by nature, so I desperately tried to keep all the theorist tips and advice and mix all the arguments in one and only way of teaching. This way of teaching is what I am currently considering to my second semester as a Portuguese instructor. This time, I will have a decent amount of time to prepare a course. It will reflect all my conciliatory efforts to use a little bit of each of the approaches I was exposed to. I guess this is called the Teaching Philosophy.

I had lots of intuitions about second language learning from my experience of student of four different foreign languages, but now I am aware of which are the most important elements I have to focus when teaching a second language. I would like to thank Professor Lee for allowing me such an important experience.

Week 9 - Top-Down and Bottom-Up Strategies

The Top-Down and the Bottom-Up presentations of content are two strategies we can use when presenting a new content in class. Fluent listening depends of the use of both processes operating simultaneously. Therefore, regarding a second language class embedded with culture, both directions are productive depending on the material that will be presented. The material I presented in my lesson plan (and actual class) was a 1 minute video in Portuguese which is a trailer for a documentary series called “O Negro no Futebol Brasileiro”, focusing the black soccer players in the beginning of the 20^th century in Brazil. The video is spoken in Portuguese and has Portuguese subtitles.

According to Jack C. Richards, "When working with students with Comprehension, we have to make sure that we are not just working with words or sentences, but also activating background knowledge, encouraging students to make predictions, to guess what's coming, to draw on their knowledge to enable them to listen the way people do in authentic listening situations." (Video published by Cambridge University Press ELT, 2011)

My procedures were: show the video once and then ask the students to guess the main topic and some contents mentioned by the narrator and the three interviewed persons. Write in the board each word or sentence that the students say. Show the video for the second time, and then ask the students to comment about the images, connecting them to what they already guessed about the series. Write in the board the names of the visual elements on the video. Show images related to the topic, to boost vocabulary and the notion that soccer is something very present in all the country. Around 12 images of types of soccer fields, especially the informal ones in the rural areas, in poor environments, on the beach, and images of different kinds of shoes and barefoot feet (a picture of an infant’s feet), as well as various types of ground. Write in the board all this vocabulary, pointing to the images corresponding to each word.

Show the video for the third time and then stop in some sentences of the subtitles to analyse every word and the meaning of the complete sentences. Discuss the aspects of the history of the African-Brazilian people in the formation of Brazilian population, asking the students to compare and contrast with the US history regarding the African-American people when the slavery ended. Show the video for the forth time and give them a sheet with 7 questions about the video. The questions are written in Portuguese, therefore, take some time to scaffold their comprehension of the vocabulary in the questions. If someone needs, play the video again while they work in writing the answers. In this Lesson Plan, the first attempt is to show students an important aspect of the society formation in Brazil from the point of view of the historians’ approach to race issues in the beginning of the history of soccer as a sport in Brazil. 

To bring these elements to the class, it is necessary to activate the students’ background knowledge. This is the Top-Down process. The linguistic goal is to have the students exposed to the vocabulary and the sentences that are used to advertise the HBO documentary series “O Negro no Futebol Brasileiro” in the one-minute trailer. The use of a topic like soccer is likely to engage students because they usually enjoy sports in this age.

I consider this video challenging, but possible to show to Portuguese Language novice students. Scaffolding their learning by analyzing each sentence and clarifying each word is a Down-Top process. My intention is to scaffold their learning by coming up with comparisons and contrasts between the Brazilian and American history regarding the African people brought to both countries as slaves and what were the consequences of this historical fact. With the detailed study of all the sentences, the goal is to improve the students’ vocabulary and present to them complex sentences to improve the understanding of the Portuguese syntax.

Do you think this lesson plan is effective? Is this class dynamics interesting?

Week 7 Teaching culture embedded in language

I tend to agree with those who say that it is impossible to teach the culture of a target country in class while studying a foreign language. They claim that only going to a field trip or study abroad program and being hosted by a local family it is possible to fully understand the other culture.

However, as a graduate student from Brazil currently living in the US, I begin to consider some thoughts about this topic since I started to teach Portuguese language at the university. I think we cannot teach and deliver to American students the full comprehension of what culture looks like in Brazil. But we can introduce the students to some differences that they may encounter when going to Brazil. It may seem funny, but these cultural differences could represent a kind of warning to them, aiming to reduce the cultural shock with common everyday attitudes in Brazil.

Regarding the three P's of Culture described in the US National Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 12th Century, some of each cultural manifestations can be presented in a language classroom, preferably embedded in the language teaching through authentic material. The first P is Product, the easiest to present: food samples, art, dressing, architecture, and cities' urban design. The second is Practices, which comprises the forms of celebration of festive dates, the social interaction, body language and informal expressions. The third is Perspectives - which is underneath the two others - that are the beliefs, taboos, and worldview.

Certain items of Products, of Practices and, as a consequence, the Perspectives of the target culture can be shown to the students before they go to the studied country. For example, in Brazil, we don't need (or don't care about) a big private physical space around ourselves, as Americans do. So, in daily situations like shopping in a grocery store in Brazil, people can come near you, or stand in a line closer that an American would usually accept. There are some funny videos of Americans reporting these kind of situation.

In Brazil, in rush hour, the public transportation may be extremely crowded. It is not comfortable to anyone, but it is normal. So, even in these uncomfortable situations, people can talk to strangers, have fun and laugh a lot during the trip, standing literally stuck to other people in a crowded bus or subway car. In Brazil, we are really noisier that Americans. I think we share this characteristics with all Latin-American cultures and even with people from Italy, Spain and Portugal. Beyond speaking louder in daily social situations, people walking in the street may scream to a friend that is in the other side of the street and have a complete conversation in public, often using friendly curses.

Therefore, I think that some aspects of Brazilian informality and life-style should be mentioned, so the student won't freak out when someone that s/he never saw before run into her/him and in 5 minutes tell all his/her life-story in a blend of drama, privacy and comedy. Don't you think it would be really useful to know in advance that in Brazil you should not arrive in some kinds of parties in the exact hour indicated in the invitation, as well as other aspects of the cultural practices that have its roots in the traditions and perspectives related to social interaction?

Reference:
National Standards for Foreign Language Education Project. (1999). Standards for foreign language learning in the 21st century. Lawrence, KS: Allen Press, Inc.

Week 6 - I saw a radical acculturation

Once I had the opportunity to verify by myself the real meaning of the concept of acculturation. A friend of mine that is Austrian had spent one year in Brazil, living in a southern city where some of my relatives live. We met a couple of times during her exchange study year, because she was close to my family. In the end of the program - in which there were around 15 high-school students from Austria - they all met in the airport to go back to their home country. This was the opportunity: I went to the airport to say goodbye to my friend and witnessed a surprising phenomenon.

Each of the young Austrians went to a different state of Brazil. And all of them were immersed not only in the Portuguese language, but also in the culture. I could see that they were opened to the local culture in a way that each of them reassembled the people of those different states. As I knew about the culture and accent of each of them, I was astonished by the similarities that each of them acquired, from the way of speaking to the cultural views and habits of communities in which they were immersed for one year.

Their acculturation included the taste for music, for food, the likes and dislikes about celebrations, about what to do in the free time and so on. For example, one of the girls was in a small town of the state of Minas Gerais, and she was incredibly speaking and looking like a "mineira", calm, contemplative and kind of hippie. The boy that went to a small city in the state of São Paulo, was all about rodeos and Brazilian Country music (Sertanejo). The girl that went to the northern part of Brazil, the city of Natal, had like the others her strong accent in Portuguese and was all about sports and leisure related to beaches and dunes, seafood recipes and northern songs and traditional dances.

But what most chocked and, at the same time, interested me was that each of them have had a so extreme experience of immersion and acculturation in different places that they were sure that their own experience reflected the true Brazil. I was lucky to have the chance to see them discussing about which was the real Brazil. At that moment, my friend was also observing, maybe because she had the chance to travel a little through the country and meet with people from other states, what made her more aware of the diversity within the country. Maybe her intellectual maturity and the interest in the country as a whole made her understand that each experience was unique and necessarily different from the others.

At the opposite extreme relies the Alberto experience, described by Schumann (1976) in the article Second Language Acquisition: The Pidginization Hypothesis. Schumann studies the way a 33 year old Costa Rican named Alberto relates to the American environment to where he moved. He relates mostly by denial: he does not show interest in learning English. He works and lives only with Spanish speakers and listen to Hispanic music. So, the few times she needs to speak in English, he uses a mix of works in English adding to them grammar rules from his mother tongue. Alberto evidenced very little linguistic development during the 10 months during the observation research upon him. This use of language with poor vocabulary and the overlapping of mother tongue grammar over foreign language is called Pidginization.

The Pidginization Hypothesis "predicts that where social and psychological distance prevail we will find pidginization persisting in the speech of second language learners" (p. 406).
Pidgins are always second languages, used mostly for communication. Pidginization produces an interlanguage that is simplified and reduced. However when this blend of languages becomes more complex, a creole language may occur, such as the Haitian Creole, mix of French and Western-African languages used by the African people brought to Haiti as slaves.

Week 5 - Foreign Language Teaching Methods

I could venture to say that grammar instruction is the most used L2 teaching method in schools in Brazil. Also, in universities, there are foreign language classes available (but not required) to undergraduate students that are known as "Curso de Língua Instrumental" (instrumental language). Usually there are options in English, French, German and Spanish, This kind of L2 instruction in the universities is meant to teach students reading tips regarding the structure of the foreign language, so they can mainly read texts in the target language. Usually, this is need when there are important books or articles in the students' field of study that are not translated to their native language.

In these kind of instrumental language courses, there is no level progress, only continuous practice of text analysis aiming comprehension. Needless to say that there is no speech required from the students. Only the instructor reads the text in the target language, to explain the meanings through grammar in their L1.

The reason of the instrumental language is quite acceptable, the need of having tools in the foreign language to decode texts in the foreign language. In this case, there is no need to learn how to speak the target language. But how about the schools teaching a foreign language to students using only the grammar instruction model? Since 2019, English is required in all private and public schools since the 6th grade. Before, it was taught mainly in the high school grades, but not in all schools. 

I guess there will be less English teachers than the need with the new law. But beyond this problem of qualified professionals, I wonder which teaching method will be used by this huge number of new teachers. Until now, everyone in Brazil would agree that at school English classes nobody learns English. Only in private courses someone would learn. The reason is that usually at school the method used is the grammar instruction, with no or few interaction. The focus on written language makes it more difficult to learn how to pronounce the different sounds of the foreign language.

While reading the article about Teaching Methodologies, I recalled all the language courses I made. I think I had all kinds of experiences described in the article. The most effective probably was the blend of Direct Method with the Audio-lingual Approach, with some Communicative Approach added. As far as I can remember, these three methods were used in the private English course and in one of the private French class I tried. In others, sometimes too much focus on culture made the course less a language class than some other event.

However, what made enthusiastic to keep experimenting in the classroom was the article about Whole Language Approach to Teach Grammar. Using the PACE model seems to me entirely meaningful and effective. After reading the article, I feel it had to be intuitive, but as we all know, it is not so easy to find a way of teaching a second language without experimenting a lot in the classroom. Some of my classes as an instructor were similar to the method, especially those with a song serving the base of vocabulary and grammar instruction.

Week 4 - Theories on Second Language Acquisition

Isn't it fascinating that babies worldwide go through the same stages of development in learning their mother tongue no matter what language they are leaning? Research show that children know a lot about what works and what doesn't work in a language since they are very young - around 2 years and 6 months. This leads us to the conclusion that the language is innate. But only spoken language; not written language.

If the validity of Chomsky's theories of the Universal Grammar and the Language Acquisition Device are still being discussed, maybe it would be interesting to contrast them with the humans need to intentionally learn to read and write. The written language learning is not innate. This ability is not provided in our brains and doesn't happens naturally like spoken language acquisition.

Research with babies growing in 15 different languages show that the babbling is basically the same for all of them. The babies usually use labial sounds like "p" and "b", and blend them with low sound vowels, like "a" and "ee". So, the way that kids make sounds and the way they pick up words are the same worldwide, in any language. They have the ability to recognize any nuances of sounds they hear.

The only way we can learn the second language nearly like we learn the first language is when young children are exposed to a second language before learning to read. My son has had this experience since last year, when we moved to the US. He had to learn only by listening and having to respond to everyone at school in English, entirely immersed. At home we keep speaking Portuguese. Like my experience with English, it an immersion but not complete. It would be different for my son if he had moved after having learned to read. In this case, the written language, grammar and other literacy aspects of learning would interfere in the learning. 

To learn by listening before being able to read makes the learning similar, but not the same as first language learning. The main difference is the whole phonic systems of the first language, which may interfere in the beginning. In this context of learning, as well as in older students L2 classroom, input is the most important element of teaching a foreign language. What learners mostly need is to be exposed to meaningful language situations to internalize sounds and word sequences, making sure they are following the meaning. I can see the difference between my son’s language acquisition mainly in pronunciation. While I am still stuck in my fossilized pronunciation due to the written language interference, he is internalizing the precise sounds of the second language more naturally.

Week 2 - Second Language Proficiency - my saga with foreign languages

Standardized tests represent a recent interest in my studies on Education. My personal experience with them is little, but I had tried some. I studied English from 13 to 18 years old in Brazil, in a private language course. I remember to have developed a good fluency, with not very large vocabulary, but with relatively good conversation skills after finishing the 5-6 years course. Only to check my learning level, I took one of the most renowned tests in Brazil, the Cambridge, and had my Proficiency approved.

Then, I decided to study French, while in College, again in a private course. I fell in love with the French language! In a few months all my journal notes were in French, I spoke to myself in French, and so I remember to develop a good fluency after 2-3 years studying the language. I was highly motivated, always listening to music and trying to sing or at least to sound the lyrics, trying to read French poetry and so on.

After a couple of years, I decided to study Italian in a semi-intensive private course. I made the entire course at the Italian Consulate in Rio in two years, but did not develop fluency, even though I could easily understand much more of Italian than the other languages I have studied before.

I don’t know exactly why, and I would like to ask if you have any guess. Maybe because Italian is very similar to Spanish, that is a language I did not formally studied but which I can read and have a good listening and comprehension because besides being similar to my mother tongue (Portuguese), my father always recited poems in Spanish and we have been listening to Hispanic music during my childhood and adolescence.

English kept being my first studied foreign language, and I had a few chances to practice, mostly reading complex texts on Literature Theory in my Ph.D. courses in Comparative Literature and in a few quick trips to Europe to film festivals, where I spoke basic English to communicate. During my Ph.D. years, I still made some translation from English, French and Spanish to Portuguese on different topics in the Humanities.

Continuing my saga, after around 20 years with rare opportunities to effectively practice any foreign language, I decided to move to the US. Before moving, I took a few months to awaken my English language skills, listening dozens of TED Talks on Education and correlated themes. I made the TOEFL Exam and my grade was not very promising - 81. Just for comparison, my daughter made the TOEFL too, and her final grade was 98.

The highest TOEFL IBT (Internet Based Test) score is 120, among the 4 tested areas, 30 points for each: reading, writing, listening and oral expression (we either listen to oral exercises and also record our voice responding to questions in the test). Even with my poor grade, I was happy that I got what I needed, since UNH defines the minimum accepted grade as 80. Among the US universities I researched, the proficiency requirement range between 70 and 110.

When I arrived in New Hampshire and started the classes in the Education Department Master’s Program, I felt like my English skills did not arise, instead, they seem to have vanished at all! I noticed that I didn’t have vocabulary to say what I wanted to say, and, worse, I didn’t really get the sense of the Professors’ instructions, despite I was understanding all the words and sentences they were saying. 

Since the beginning, I enjoyed the classes, but I was uncomfortable with my lack of ability to express myself. However, in face of the challenge I had voluntarily put myself in, I had no choice but to accept my limitations and try to speak, even sounding like a young child misplaced in a Graduate level class.

Here I am after one year of partial immersion in English (because at home I speak in Portuguese with my children and my husband). There were many funny moments with language issues, and I enjoy being constantly learning in a fast pace while attending to classes, reading a lot and writing in English an insane amount of texts to the courses’ assignments. I am glad I can be a student in this course on Second Language Acquisition, either because I always had many thoughts about L2 learning and because this semester I became a Portuguese Language Faculty at UNH.