Kids that did well in school did well in French, but nobody
really learned to speak French.
Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here, and, and today I want to talk
about what I would do, how I would teach language in a classroom.
Uh, remember if you enjoy these videos, please subscribe, click
on the bell for notifications.
And, uh, if you follow me on a podcast service, uh, you
know, please leave a comment.
I do appreciate it.
So I'm gonna talk about teaching language, a language in a classroom,
which is something that I have essentially never done, but I'm gonna
begin by telling two little stories.
Uh, first of all, I remember very clearly that we had a teacher in high school who
was originally from the UK and this was in Montreal and, uh, we were learning French.
He was the French teacher.
And I can remember that when we would try to speak French in class, sometimes
he would preface that by saying "all right, you guys, now we're gonna talk
frog language", which is maybe funny, and people chuckled a bit but it really didn't
inspire much enthusiasm for what we were about to attempt to do, speak French.
And then the second thing I remember was when I was, uh, a student in France, I had
a job I used to go twice I think a week I would go to a French family for lunch
and I was paid and I was given a small amount and I was given a, a wonderful
meal, much better than the student restaurant fair that I was used to.
And my job was to speak English to the kids and the family.
There were, the parents were there and they had two kids.
They all come home for lunch and I was invited.
And so I'd finished my lunch with, uh, a couple of glasses
of wine that they would give me.
And then I would bicycle halfway across Paris to, uh, the Agricultural Institute.
... I don't know, actually called whatever it was.
And I had to run in there and I had to start this language lab.
So now we're talking about 1966/65.
Okay.
That's a long time ago.
And so here are all these aspiring, you know, French farmers, I
guess, that we're studying at the ... or whatever it's called.
And, uh, so, and they would be listening to stuff on their, they had these tape
recorders, so it was a big language lab.
So there was like a big room.
There were people sitting at their tape recorder, listening to this stuff.
I can't remember what my function was other than to turn it on, or if people had
questions, but mostly they just sat there.
And one of the guys at the back of the class, he took his big earphones off
he slammed them down on his desk and he said ... in other words, I've been
studying French or English for 10 years, and I still don't understand anything.
So that again, I remember that quite vividly, becasue it, it made me laugh.
I remember that they had stuff in the text that they were listening to terms
that I didn't even know in English like stubble mulch, stubble mulch tillage.
I remember stubble mulch tillage.
So that's kind of my experience with the classroom.
And I, I would say that in, um, in high school or in elementary school,
the French was most uninteresting and, uh, you know, kids that did well
in school did well in French, but nobody really learned to speak French.
Uh, when I got to university I've mentioned before I had this Dr.
Maurice Rabotan who was a great professor who got me motivated to learn French
really inspired me to learn French.
And then my French took off.
So if I were a teacher, uh, if I've envisioned the classroom.
So you can have a situation where the teacher is a native speaker.
You can have a situation where the teacher is not a native speaker but speaks the
language that he or she is teaching.
Well, you can have a situation where the teacher doesn't speak that language
well, and you could even have a situation where the teacher doesn't speak that
language at all today in the modern world of the internet and MP3 and so forth.
And so I don't think it really matters whether the teacher, uh, is fluent speaker
of the language or not better if he or she is, I think better if he or she is a
native speaker, because I think that is, is more inspirational for the learner that
they're learning the language from the person who has that culture, that language
in them, but it's not a condition.
And there are so many opportunities for the learner to hear the language,
first of all, obviously, to read anything they wanna read in the
language and also to hear the language via MP3 files, to discover content of
interest, even to connect with tutors and rooms could be organized not like
that language lab, uh, situation in France in 1965, but where you people
could have direct contact with tutors in the language that they're learning.
So the teacher needn't provide that.
The language the teacher to my mind is first and foremost is a motivator
like Maurice Rabotan motivated me to learn French with tremendous
consequences because I went to France, I became fluent in French.
I acquired that confidence that I can learn languages.
So he had a tremendous impact on my life.
But a teacher, you know, obviously because Mr.
Rabotan was French that was part of what inspired me, but I think a very
good teacher, very encouraging teacher can stimulate students and inspire them
and help them, even if the language that the student is trying to learn is
not the native language of the teacher.
I think we need to look at the language classroom.
Like if, if it were me, I would encourage, I would encourage my students
to listen and read, obviously, uh, I would encourage them to use uh, if I
were a teacher in a classroom, I could have 25 kids and I could set aside, you
know, a range of content, 20 stories that I know are suitable for them from
a number of different perspectives and they can choose whichever one they want.
And I would be able to follow how active they are, how much
they're reading, how much they're listening, how many LingQs they're
creating, how much they're writing.
Uh, I could organize for them to talk to look if I'm a native speaker, fine.
If I'm not, or if I'm not very fluent in that language, I can arrange for them
twice a week to have online contacts or maybe small group of them to have
online contacts with, uh, a teacher, a native speaker from the country.
Uh, and they could talk about things, uh, about the country or
about whatever the students are, uh, reading and listening to.
And I wouldn't have to create content all the time.
I wouldn't have to create lessons.
I wouldn't have to prepare like a lot of teachers spend a lot
of time preparing their lessons.
Uh, I could follow exactly what they're doing.
Also I wouldn't test them.
I would rely on keeping track of how active they are because I, as I've said
before, many times, what matters is how active are they with the language.
Some are gonna do better than others.
I don't want to discourage the ones that are, you know, don't pronounce
as well or don't they don't seem to do as well for whatever reason they
might start doing better later on.
So if they're struggling at an early stage, why would I discourage them?
Rather I would want to control, I'd wanna see how active they are
and if they're not very active, how do I make them more active?
Is it because the content is of no interest to them?
Uh, I'd have to try to find out with each of these students, if
possible is not always possible.
How do I motivate them to become more active?
The goal is to make them more active.
And so once you accept that the teacher doesn't have to bring
the language to the student.
So the teacher doesn't have to be native.
Doesn't even have to be proficient in the language.
It now opens up the possibility that many more schools can offer
languages which they now don't offer because they don't have an
accredited teacher in that language.
So you could offer five languages in the classroom and encourage them to
go off and study, or even sit in the classroom and listen and read right.
They're in the classroom.
Uh, if the classroom is only in one language, of course we can have
conversations in the classroom and the kids can talk about what they have been
reading and, uh, they can even talk about words that they've been saving,
that they don't fully understand, and other kids can comment on what they
think the word means and how it's used.
And we can have examples of how that word is used.
If everyone is studying the same language, it's much easier.
Uh, however, If in fact, some people in that classroom, you
know, don't wanna study French.
And I've said before in Canada, you know, it's like your civic obligation
to, to patriotic obligation.
If you're an English speaker, you gotta learn French, but maybe the
kid doesn't wanna learn French, but maybe he wants to learn Spanish or
he wants to learn Chinese or Russian.
So then if we can set it up so that maybe out of 25 kids 15 are gonna do
French, but another 10 are gonna study other languages of interest to them.
And we set it up so that they can do that.
And then of course, we have to come up with activities in the
classroom, which at the very least can be listening and reading.
The difficulty is if there's so many different languages, then
some of these activities would have to be again, solitary.
Uh, such as this, um, putting the sentences back together again,
that I'm now doing in beta, uh, at LingQ and we might devise
other activities for the kids.
Obviously it's easier if everyone is studying the same language, not ideal,
if you have, uh, different languages, but then we have to compare that to
the alternative, which is to sort of force people to learn a language
that they're not interested in.
Uh, because motivation is such a, an important part of language learning
that it was the case with me.
I think it's the case with most learners.
And we see the example in the Canadian English language, school system
where unmotivated kids learning French in fact, don't learn French.
So I think we have to strike a balance.
So it may not be, be ideal, but again, I'll be the first to admit that these
ideas may not be practical, but, um, I throw those out there as ideas.
If we look at where language instruction was in the sixties, when
I was learning French at school, or even when I was, or in the fifties,
I was learning French at school.
Or in the sixties when I was with these, uh, students learning, you know, at
the , as you recall, in, in France, so many things have changed the internet
MP3 technology and a whole bunch of other, uh, technologies and resources,
language, resources, and so forth.
So maybe the way languages are taught in schools will continue to evolve.
And perhaps some of the ideas that I've mentioned here may have some
relevance, uh, for the classroom.
And I will leave you with, uh, two older videos where I talk about the
classroom and individual learning uh, and you'll see that, uh, maybe some
of my ideas have evolved over time.
So thank you very much for listening.
Bye for now.