Month: April 2018

In today’s post we come to the first principle in Bill VanPatten’s book While We’re On The Topic: Teaching Communicatively Implies a Definition of Communication.

I am tempted to way, “Well, duh!” But far too many people use terms as buzzwords without defining them for others or even knowing themselves what they intend the term to mean.

One constant irritant in this regard is the use of the term “rigor”. It is constantly bandied about in education circles, but few people give any sort of definition for it. “Courses need to be more rigorous!” is a great slogan or catchphrase, but what does that mean?

How many teachers have a coherent philosophy or approach to teaching or language teaching. How many can articulate even a broad outline of a philosophy? How many language teachers can define key terms – or is this, like language, intuitive (i.e. we know what it is, but we can’t define it readily)?

VanPatten opens the chapter with four statements and asks the reader to rate his or her ability as Yes, Sort Of, or Nope. Here are the statements:

1. I can offer a working definition of communication
2. I can describe the two major purposes of communication
3. I understand how the classroom is a “limited context” environment for communication
4. I can describe/explain how knowledge about communication informs choices and behaviors in terms of language teaching

How did you rate yourself?

Before I read the book, I rated myself very poorly, even though I have studied second language acquisition for years.

Fortunately, VanPatten provides us with an excellent working definition of communication:

Communication is the expression, interpretation, and sometimes negotiation of meaning in a given context. What is more, communication is also purposeful.

Meaning refers to the information contained in a message. This information may be the literal meaning conveyed by the words, but it may also be a “hidden message” beyond the literal. Meaning can be layered.

Expression refers to the production of a message, whether that expression is oral, non-verbal, or some combination.

Interpretation indicates that communication is not one-way. There is always a recipient.

Negotiation acknowledges that communication, i.e. the expression and interpretation of meaning, is not always successful on the first (or tenth) attempt. Participants on both sides of the interchange must work to establish and clarify meaning. We do this all the time.

Context refers to the participants and the setting.

Purpose indicates that there is a goal or objective to communication. As VanPatten puts it: “Just because someone’s lips are moving or their hands are gesturing down’ mean they’re communicating.”

Having defined his terms, VanPatten next addresses the idea of context.

Context places constraints upon our communication. That is, the people and setting (not just physical place) exert significant influence on what we say and how we say it. Important for the teacher is to recognize that the classroom is a context and places constraints on the communication that will take place there.

This concept fits well with the High-Leverage Teaching Practice of creating a classroom discourse community. If communication and language acquisition are to take place in the classroom, we must create a community within the context of schools and students.

The book then moves on to purpose.

The purpose of communication is, according to VanPatten, basically twofold: psychosocial and cognitive-informational. That is, we communicate to establish, maintain, affect, effect, and sever relationships and roles among two or more persons. Or we communicate in order to “express or obtain information, or to learn or do something”. (2017, p. 9)

These two purposes are not mutually exclusive, and they may both be in play at the same time, i.e. a communicative act may be both cognitive-information and psychosocial simultaneously.

VanPatten mentions one other purpose of communication: to entertain.

I believe he fails to give this purpose adequate consideration. Like the other two, it is not exclusive.

The author sums up this section of the chapter with the statement, “Language use without purpose is not communication.”

This leads to an important conclusion:

Language and communication are not the same thing.

On the one hand, we can use language without communicating. For example, if I an actor is memorizing lines for a play, language is being used, but no communication is taking place. On the other hand, we often communicate with a look, a sound, or a gesture that is not language.

The final major section of the chapter is a discussion of implications of a definition of communication for the classroom.

If we maintain that we practice Communicative Language Teaching (which VanPatten maintains is also Contemporary Language Teaching), then communication needs to be taking place in the classroom.

VanPatten asks to key questions:

1. How much time do instructors and students spend on the expression and interpretation (and negotiation) of  meaning?
2. Is there a purpose to this expression and interpretation of meaning?

ACTFL proposes that, ideally, the teacher and students spend at least 90% of their time in (and outside) the classroom expressing, interpreting, and negotiating meaning IN THE TARGET LANGUAGE.

That last portion of the statement is, unfortunately, necessary. A majority of teachers self reported in a survey that they spend less than half of their class time using the target language. Since we know that the brain is able to acquire a language only from receiving messages in the target language that are comprehended, then we should be spending significantly more time using the target language.

If the answer to the second question is “no”, then no communication is taking place – and neither is acquisition.

In accord with Glisan and Donato’s position that teachers need to abandon the IRE model of interaction and adopt the IRF model*, VanPatten advocates abandoning “display questions” intended to practice language (e.g. vocabulary, grammar points) because they are not communicative and asking “context-embedded” questions.

When I was a student teacher, my master teacher used to say, “Never ask a question that you already know the answer to.”

While this may seem extreme, the underlying principle is sound. If I already know the answer, then I am probably asking students to “practice language”. But if I ask students questions to which I do not know the answer, then we begin to have the expression and interpretation of meaning.

Of course, there are certain circumstances in which asking a question to which I know the answer is appropriate, but those are exceptions, and they have a communicative purpose beyond “practicing language”. For example, I may ask a rhetorical question to get students to think about a topic.

*IRE stands for teacher INITIATES an exchange, student RESPONDS, teacher EVALUATES the response;
IRF stands for teacher INITIATES an exchange, student RESPONDS, teacher gives FEEDBACK and moves the conversation forward.
See Enacting the Work of Language Instruction, “HLTP 2: Building a Classroom Discourse Community” (2017, pp. 42-45)

VanPatten reminds us that “… just because mouths are moving doesn’t mean something is communicative. For an event to be communicative, it must have a purpose that is not language-related but related to one of language use’s two major purposes: psychosocial or cognitive-information. ” (2017, p. 15)

I disagree with the statement only insofar as VanPatten omits the third purpose of language: entertainment.

At the close of his discussion of the first implication of a definition for communication, VanPatten asks the following:

It isn’t easy to imagine gossip in the classroom. But what about entertainment? Are there communicative events in class involving entertainment? (Simply playing music in class does not count.)

My response is that 1) this must be a difference between teaching high school and college, because I have no problem imagining gossip in the classroom; my students do it all the  time, and 2) I have spent significant portions of many class periods telling jokes and funny stories to my students in German. I will come to another entertainment piece in a moment.

The second implication of a definition for communication deals with the classroom context.

VanPatten maintains that the context is “fixed” because the participants (teacher and students) and setting (classrooms) do not change. That does not mean, however, that it is unchanging. Students come and go throughout the year, and not all students – or even the teacher – are present every day.

Within this context, VanPatten decries the use of role-playing, an activity that is very popular among teachers.

I disagree to an extent with VanPatten here, but only because I believe he fails to take a special form of role-playing into account.

It is obvious to me that VanPatten is talking about the kind of role-playing in which the teacher assigns  something like this: Pretend you are in a restaurant. One of you is the waiter and the other is a customer. You want a steak, but they are out of steak. Have a conversation.

As VanPatten rightly maintains, this sort of role-playing shipwrecks on two points: 1) it is not communicative because the purpose is to practice language, and 2) it is trying to turn the classroom into something it is not (e.g. a restaurant).

However, I believe VanPatten overlooks a special kind of role-playing: what we usually call simply RPG, or table-top Role Playing Games.

I have played RPG scenarios with my students and had a great time doing it. The purpose was entertainment – see why I think VanPatten does not give sufficient attention to this third purpose for communication? Students talk about how much they enjoyed the game even a year or more later.

So, the first objection is dealt with: the purpose is not to “practice language” but to enjoy playing an imaginative game. The second objection is also dealt with: the teacher structures the game in a way that takes into account the classroom context. The teacher remains the teacher while fulfilling the role of GameMaster or DungeonMaster, and students remain students while also being players / player characters in an entertaining game.

I have recently connected with other language teachers who are exploring this aspect of using the target language in the classroom. We may be making “adventures” available to others.

Two other games that can be used in the classroom are “Mafia/Werewolves” and “Breakout”. They, too, have the communicative purpose of entertainment and take place within the classroom context.

If you have not yet looked into using these sorts of games in your instruction, I encourage you to do so.

VanPatten closes the chapter with a reminder:

The definition of communication [expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning within a context for a purpose] informs what it means for a classroom to be communicative.

I hope it informs your practices.

Today we come to the end of our extended examination of Enacting the Work of Language Instruction by Eileen W Glisan and Richard Donato (2017).

The specific topic is the cycle of enactment.

Remember that this is merely one model of implementation or enactment. You may have a different model of implementation; the important thing is to implement your own program of professional development in collaboration with another or other teachers.

The cycle (or spiral, as I prefer to see it) consists of the following steps
1. Deconstruction of the HLTP
2. Observation and analysis of the HLTP
3. Planning to enact the practice
4. Rehearsal and coaching
5. Enactment of practice in the (PK-16) classroom*
6. Assessments of enactment by one or more fo the collaborative partners, including self-assessment and reflection

I put (PK-16) in parentheses because this cycle of enactment is valuable in any instructional setting, not just the school setting from Pre-Kindergarten through senior in college. That designation was limiting, but the cycle is applicable more broadly.

Glisan and Donato illustrate the model with a set of concentric circles. (2017, p. 166)

In the center is “Community of Practice”

In a circle outside of that are the steps of the cycle:
Deconstruction –> Observation and Analysis –> Planning –> Rehearsal and Coaching –> Enactment –> Assessment ⌊New Cycle⌋

The outmost circle consists of Reflection and Collaboration // Feedback and Discussion.

Although the authors do not explicitly elucidate their diagram, it seems that it is intended to convey the idea that “within a context of Reflection, Collaboration, Feedback, and Discussion, teachers create by using iterative cycles of implementation of the HLTPs a Community of Practice.”

In a truly collaborative context, this model has the potential for helping teachers improve their instruction. It is, once again, not the only model. The potential misuse is in making it an instrument of coercion in a misguided attempt to force all teachers to teach alike.

Glisan and Donato also note that, contrary to the way it is portrayed in the diagram, the phases of the “Cyclical Model for Enacting HLTPs” “do not occur in a static linear manner but reflect back-and-forth movement as learning is mediated and leads to successful enactment of the HLTP.” (2017, p. 167)

The next question, of course, is “What happens in each phase of the cycle?”

Phase 1: Deconstructing the Practice

Teachers deconstruct – or take apart – the practice after learning about it, either through oral presentation or reading. They identify the “instructional moves” that comprise the practice.

This could be a quite ambitious undertaking. The person just starting out will probably want to limit the scope and number of the instructional moves, recognizing that HLTPs like “creating a discourse community” and “facilitating target language comprehensibility” are quite complex and can be approached in a number of different ways.

Remember, this is intended to be an ongoing journey (to use another metaphor).

Phase 2: Observing and Analyzing the Practice

Teachers then watch a more experienced teacher – either live or on video – enact the practice. The “students” focus on observing, analyzing, and recalling the specific instructional moves illustrated in the model lesson.

Glisan and Donato include some very good advice here.

If the object is to analyze a practice – or series of “instructional moves” – then participants should not be both learners and observers.

At conferences and workshops, especially those that emphasize strategies that maximize comprehension, participants are often asked to experience the strategies as students. Then the presenter will have a discussion and de-brief. This is a good idea for introducing people to a strategy and showing its power.

However, that is not what Glisan and Donato intend to happen in the Cyclical Model. They want teachers to be able to analyze the practice and its “instructional moves”. To do this, the observer cannot be both a student and an observer.

The authors offer several possibilities for working around this situation:
1. Have participants observe a teacher and real students. (This is, btw, something that iFLT introduced into its conferences several years ago.)
2. Have a small group of participants be the students while other participants observe.
3. Make a video of the teacher teaching the entire group of participants. Then watch the video for the purpose of observation and analysis.
4. Watch a video of a teacher with a class of real students

I have been in situations in which each of these possibilities was used. The best experience was watching a live teacher with real students. Having a small group of participants be students while others watch and watching a video of a teacher with a class of real students were roughly equally effective and in the middle. The strategy that worked least well was videotaping the participants and then watching that video.

Phases 3 and 4: Planning and Rehearsing the Practice

In this section, Glisan and Donato advocate for something that is not frequently done in teacher training programs and even less frequently once teachers are in the classroom. Nonetheless, planning and rehearsing can be highly beneficial.

First, the teacher plans a lesson / instructional activity that incorporates the target HLTP. This can be done in collaboration with one’s peers.

Then, the teacher practices with peers as students while the leader (or professor) coaches. This form of coaching involves stopping the lesson and asking the teacher to repeat, change, vary, revise a segment of the lesson.

A few years ago, I had the great good fortune to present a series of workshops with Jason Fritze, an internationally known teacher, presenter, and teaching coach. As part of the workshops, I demonstrated several practices in a series of lessons that Jason and I had prepared. In what was in many ways a “Master Class”, I presented to the workshop participants who played the role of students. Jason would have me stop and do something slightly differently or repeat what I had done, and then he would explain what the participants had experienced and invite discussion and questions.

I am certain that the participants benefitted from the workshops, and we certainly got positive feedback. However, I am convinced that I received the most from this experience. It had a profoundly positive impact on my own teaching, even though I was presenting as an experienced teacher.

From personal experience, then, I can attest to the value of these steps.

Phases 5 and 6: Enacting and Assessing the Practice

The last two phases are coupled together because of their close relationship to one another.

After deconstructing, observing, analyzing, preparing, and rehearsing the practice, the teacher enacts it in the classroom while a colleague or master teacher observes and assesses the enactment. The teacher also self-reflects on the enactment of the practice. This should lead to a collaborative dialogue between the observer and the teacher that results in increased understanding and facility with the High-Leverage Teaching Practice.

Challenges of Implementing the Enactment Cycle

Glisan and Donato identify two challenges to implementing the cycle, and these are mentioned primarily in relation to New Teachers (i.e. those in a teacher-training program or their first two years of in-service teaching). I believe there are other challenges.

One challenge is simply expectations and emotions. Most teachers do not expect to be stopped and interrupted while presenting and can have emotional reactions, even anger, when this happens.

My own experience with the workshop series I mentioned earlier makes me aware that the groundwork needs to be done well. Jason and I had already worked together for some time, but we sat down and discussed what would happen during the workshop. I had to be ready for Jason to stop me and ask me to do something over, do revise something to a lesser or greater extent, or even do something completely different.

I can tell you that it takes trust, humility, flexibility, and the proper mindset for this to work.

The second challenger that Glisan and Donato mention is the need to situate the practice in a relevant instructional activity (lesson). This is indeed a greater challenge for New Teachers than for in-service teachers, who know what is happening in the classroom.

One piece of advice in this section is highly relevant:

Increasing comprehensible target language use and interaction during instruction cannot be carried out if the learners are uninterested in what is being said or in what they are being asked to express.

Other challenges that I see but are not mentioned by Glisan and Donato include those I noted above, and these challenges can be insurmountable.

The first challenge is trust. If I do not have a relationship of trust with my peers, then I will not participate in the cycle of enactment. I have to trust them to have my best interests at heart, not simply try to make themselves look better than others, to know the HLTP well enough to be able to analyze and assess its enactment, and to have sufficient discretion not to discuss needs for improvement with others. Unfortunately, trust is often a rare commodity; people do not learn to trust one another simply because they work in the same school or building or department. We need to be deliberate in building trust.

A true Professional Learning Community does not come into existence merely because an administrator decrees that teachers must meet, collaborate, and work together.

The second challenge is humility. Many teachers have large egos and view their classrooms as their own little empires. They are unwilling to submit themselves to scrutiny and constructive criticism – and often because they consider themselves to be exemplars of their craft. Pride on the part of either the observer or the practitioner can shipwreck the process and make it impossible to proceed.

The third challenge is flexibility. Flexibility is related to the other challenges of humility and trust. The less trust I have in someone, the less flexible I will be when around them. The same goes for humility and the lack thereof. There can, of course, be other reasons for lack of flexibility, but for the cycle of enactment to work, teachers must be flexible enough to try something new, both in the practice and in the process of enactment.

The fourth challenge is mindset. I have, unfortunately, worked with teachers who saw no reason to do anything that would improve their teaching. They had completed their teacher training and were in the classroom. Unless they were being paid for “professional development” they saw no reason for it. Yes, they would go to district in-service workshops (at which they often spent most of the time on their computer or mobile phone), but they would never go to a conference or out-of-district workshop. They had a fixed mindset and may have felt threatened by presentations of new practices and challenges to allow others to observe and assess them. They failed to realize that no matter how good you are, you can always improve.

Any one of these challenges can block implementation of a potentially valuable tool for improving instruction. That would be unfortunate

Final Thoughts

Glisan and Donato end this chapter and the book with a brief review of what they have presented and the hope that it will serve as a catalyst  for discussion of HLTPs and teacher education in general.

I also hope that what I have written in response to this book contributes to the discussion.

Both as individuals and as a profession, we need to remember that what has brought us to where we are will not take us beyond that. If we are to get past the generations of students who have taken two t0 four years of a language but are unable to understand or speak it, we must change what we do.

I don’t have all the answers, but I want to be part of the conversation.

Let me know what you think.

We have come to the last chapter of Eileen W Glisan and Richard Donato’s book Enacting the Work of Language Instruction (2017, ACTFL).

In this chapter, Glisan and Donato provide suggestions, as the chapter title states, for “Putting HLTPs into Practice: A Cycle of Enactment”. Enacting the High-Leverage Teaching Practices is not a one-time act but an ongoing process in which the novice or in-service teacher returns time and again to the practice, reviews and deconstructs it, analyzes application, then carries it while being observed by a sympathetic colleague with whom the teacher then discusses the implementation.

I believe that Glisan and Donato provide us with a useful model for collaboration. I also believe that it is, unfortunately, a bit idealistic and unlikely to be adopted in most school settings for a variety of reasons. Some of those reasons include lack of time because teachers are usually overwhelmed by their duties and responsibilities; lack of perceived need for this kind of collaboration; lack of training on how to implement this sort of collaboration; lack of clarity on instructional objectives and the place of HLTPs in instruction; significant differences in perception of objectives, scope, and sequence in instruction; and rivalries within departments. (The last one is particularly sad, but true.)

Nonetheless, where teachers are willing to trust one another and work with one another to improve their teaching ability, the collaborative study and deconstruction of an HLTP, mutual observation of its implementation, and subsequent discussion can prove highly beneficial to those who participate – and to their students.

Glisan and Donato call this a “Cycle of Enactment” and discuss iterative rounds of investigation and practice. If done properly, this is actually a spiral rather than a cycle, since the practice should improve with each iteration. But that is a quibble.

One important aspect of implementation for this model is the idea of specific Instructional Activities. Rather than trying to do everything, practitioners focus on “specific instructional activities (IAs) that limit the context of the practice so that novices [and in-service teachers] can draw upon specific knowledge and moves as they make judgments about how to interact with their students within the construct of the high-leverage teaching practice …” (2017, p. 164) [Emphasis in original]

Where I disagree with the authors is what the specific Instructional Activities ought to be.

This disagreement reflects earlier disagreements when discussing various HLTPs, especially the focus on grammar, the seeming limitation to authentic texts only, the focus on form through PACE, and certain aspects of Oral Corrective Feedback.

Glisan and Donato provide the following suggestions. I note that they are merely suggestive and not exhaustive – but their suggestions could have been better. For example, rather than simply stating “Telling a story”, they could have suggested ways to make a story comprehensible and engaging, such as MovieTalk, Watch and Discuss, Read and Discuss, Story Listening, and many more that are known throughout the TCI community.

Facilitating Target Language Comprehensibility:
– Telling a story by making it comprehensible and actively involving learners
– Introducing new vocabulary or grammatical structures within an engaging context

N.B.: I disagree with this second one, not because we don’t teach new vocabulary or structures, but because this places the emphasis on the teaching of new vocabulary and grammatical structures. The vocabulary and structures should arise out of the engaging context rather then being pre-determined and then having a context created to fit them. There are, of course, many ways to make a story comprehensible, and it would have been nice for Glisan and Donato to provide an example or two.

Building a Classroom Discourse Community
– Facilitating a whole-class discussion based on a shared context such as an … event, popular media, or an important social issue

N.B.: The classroom itself is a shared context, and many teachers already do activities such as discussing plans for the weekend or what students did over the weekend, important social and world issues, birthdays and other celebrations, school sports, and much more. They should be encouraged to see these discussions not just as an activity but as a High-Leverage Teaching Practice that helps build a classroom discourse community. Again, strategies for leading a whole-class discussion would be helpful.

Guiding Learners to Interpret and Discuss Authentic Texts
As noted previously, my first disagreement is in the limitation of interpretation and discussion to “authentic texts” only, as well as the inconsistent understanding of the word authentic in most discussions. Here I agree with Bill VanPatten’s idea of authentic as being whatever is consistent with and part of the classroom context.
– Guiding learners through a(n authentic) reading via tasks that elicit literal comprehension followed by interpretation
– Leading class discussion based on a(n authentic) text

N.B.: Aside from my disagreements about “authentic”, I find these two Instructional Activities beneficial for language acquisition because they focus on comprehensible input, both in the form of the text itself and in the discussion that follows. Teachers will need various strategies for supporting a discussion based on the language level of the students.

Focusing on Form in a Dialogic Context Through PACE
– Presenting an authentic story … that features a grammatical structure occurring naturally within a meaningful context
– Guiding learners in dialoguing about and co-constructing  grammatical from …

N.B.: Creating a lesson around grammar takes us backward in our application of knowledge about second language acquisition. However, helping students deal with grammatical forms on a spontaneous, need-to-know or inquiry basis, can be very helpful. That’s why I am willing to give the second IA a “meh” rating.

Focusing on Cultural Products, Practices, and Perspectives
– Making use of engaging images of a cultural product or practice as a launching point for [discussion of] cultural perspectives
– Making use of … data of various kinds for reflecting on the cultural meanings of products and/or practices

N.B.: The quality of this IA is, of course, dependent on the choice and use of the materials. That does not negate the fact that this is one of the better examples that the authors give.

Providing Oral Corrective Feedback to Improve Learner Performance
– Facilitating a whole-class discussion in which oral teacher feedback plays a role to support student speaking …
– Conducting an oral extension activity in which learners use a grammatical structure … and are guided by teacher feedback.

N.B.: The second of these IAs once again takes us back to an emphasis on grammar rather than communication, even if Glisan and Donato put “to make meaning” into the description. It is still “practicing” the language. The first of these two IAs gets a “meh” because it depends so much on whether or not the teacher is forcing student speaking or simply supporting student speaking that is natural and unforced. The authors leave this distinction entirely too vague.

The great weakness of this chapter lies in the paucity of suggestions for accomplishing the “Instructional Activities”. While the book cannot be all things to all people, it would have been helpful for the authors to include some examples and suggestions of strategies to accomplish their suggested IAs.

Next week we should finish this chapter and the book by taking a look at the “Cyclical Model for Enacting HLTPs” itself, challenges of implementation, and some final thoughts.

I hope this extended look at a potentially significant publication from ACTFL has been helpful.

Leave a comment.

With this post, we come to the end of the sixth High-Leverage Teaching Practice but not to the end of the book Enacting the Work of Language Instruction; High-Leverage Teaching Practices by Eileen W. Glisan and Richard Donato, available from ACTFL.

As they do with all of the teaching practices they present, the authors close off the chapter by deconstructing the practice, providing tasks to rehearse the practice, assessing the practice, and putting the practice into a larger context, as well as providing suggestions for further reading.

Last week I included a “flow chart” (in quotes because it wasn’t really a chart). This week I have it in chart form. Let me know if you have difficulty reading it. The font I can work with; Continue reading “Providing Oral Corrective Feedback … – Part 4”