Wow, I managed to talk about the previous chapter in Enacting the Work of Language Instruction; High-Leverage Teaching Practices by Eileen W. Glisan and Richard Donato in only four posts rather than the seven that the discussion of “authentic texts” took.
Before taking on the chapter about Cultural Products, Practices, and Perspective, let’s review a little bit.
I began my discussion of the book back in November, shortly after I returned from the annual ACTFL (American Conference on Teaching Foreign Language) conference.
The first post covered two High-Leverage Teaching Practices (HLTPs): Facilitating Target Language Comprehensibility and Building a Classroom Discourse Community.
The teacher implements the first HLTP by creating comprehensible language, creating contexts for comprehension, and creating comprehensible interactions with students. Glisan and Donato provide many good suggestions.
Building a Classroom Discourse Community means creating a class identity that engages in Interpersonal Communication – genuine conversation, i.e. the expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning in the classroom context for cognitive-informational, psychosocial, or entertainment purposes.
To accomplish this, Glisan and Donato advocate getting away from the traditional IRE* model (teacher Initiates interaction; student Responds; teacher Evaluates response for correctness) and moving to the IRF model (teacher Initiates interaction; student Responds; teacher provides Feedback that moves the conversation forward).
*This model is well named because it has produced a great deal of ire among generations of students.
These two practices, when implemented well, can be transformative within the school setting.
Comprehensibility and Discourse Community can be transformative within the school setting
The third HLTP, “Guiding Learners to Interpret and Discuss Authentic Texts”, required more discussion – in part because of the controversy and lack of clarity surrounding the idea of “authentic texts”. In fact, it took seven posts to cover the HLTP, and I had areas of disagreement with the authors. See the first post in the series here.
I had even greater disagreement with the fourth HLTP, “Focusing on Form in a Dialogic Context Through PACE”, even though it took only four posts to cover it. The first post in the series is here.
One area of disagreement was with the PACE model, which is a variant of the old Present, Practice, Perform model, although it has been “modernized” a bit. (Ask me about “modernization”; my school has been undergoing the process for over three years.) I also disagree with the emphasis on “Focus on Form” and agree with Bill VanPatten’s contention that “… focus on form is not pre-planned or purposeful. It arises incidentally during a communicative interaction.” (VanPatten 2017, p. 103)
In choosing the PACE model as their vehicle, Glisan and Donato reveal their alignment with those who maintain some sort of skill building and explicit instruction (“noticing/Attention”) is necessary for acquisition. This stands in contrast to the research of Krashen and VanPatten, who provide strong evidence that Comprehensible Input is the sole sufficient cause of language acquisition.
Comprehensible Input is the sole sufficient cause of language acquisition
Now we come to “Focusing on Cultural Products, Practices, and Perspective in a Dialogic Context” – HLTP #5.
The goal of the chapter is to provide an explanation of the HLTP in order to “… enable teachers to explain the relationship of cultural products and practices to cultural perspective with their classes in comprehensible target-language interaction … in the discourse community that they have created …” (Glisan and Donato 2017, p. 115)
To illustrate one way to accomplish this, the authors choose the IMAGE model. We need to remember that, like the PACE model, IMAGE is merely the vehicle that the authors have chosen to illustrate the HLTP; it is not integral to it.
Glisan and Donato begin with a discussion of Theory and Research that support their position. They view culture as a system that is dynamic, rather than a fixed and static body of knowledge, and that is located in activity.
While I am not prepared to debate the definition, I do wonder whether it is possible to teach learners a system before they have concrete information that goes into the system.
In addition, Glisan and Donato, like so many others, connect language and culture. Culture is embedded in language, and language expresses cultural perspectives.
Teachers should aim to develop “cultural know-how” in students by helping them analyze, understand (observe, identify, interpret, and analyze cultural patterns leading to acceptance of differences), and participate in other cultures. Students learn how to be and feel in a new culture (attitude, curiosity, openness, sensitivity), how to understand cultural differences, and how to engage with other cultures while evaluating critically and rationally their own cultural perspectives. (2017, p. 117)
These are lofty goals indeed.
Before deconstruction the practice, Glisan and Donato discuss four Considerations About the Teaching of Culture:
- Student attitudes: Students go through stages (or may remain stuck in one stage) of acceptance of cultures – Resistance (often expressed as finding the culture “weird”); Curiosity [though Glisan and Donato do not discuss this explicitly]; Understanding; Acceptance.
- Target language ability: Teachers need to design a lesson that works – Instructional objectives are appropriate to language ability; language used is comprehensible (and not L1); language scaffolding and discourse strategies support student understanding.
- Culture is not isolated facts: Culture permeates language, so “all language instruction must be embedded in cultural contexts” (2017, p. 118)
- Don’t rely on textbooks for cultural instruction: textbook readings might provide a starting point for presenting culture.
One consideration that the authors do not present is the reminder that we cannot expect students to achieve the level of cultural understanding that the teacher has. The teacher has developed a cultural understanding over years of exposure, but the student is merely beginning the journey of discovery. Thus, part of making the lesson appropriate is remembering to limit the amount of new information that the student must handle.
This post is a bit shorter than some other ones, but we will leave a description of the IMAGE model for the next time.