A year ago I wrote a post on my other blog (now dormant) about ACTFL 2016.
It’s hard to believe that another year has come and gone, and it is time to reflect on this year’s conference, which was held in Nashville, Tennessee.
In contrast to last year, I took a day flight to get here. While it was more comfortable than a red-eye flight, I did not arrive until nearly midnight after a very long day. By the time I got to the street, the only transportation available was a taxi to the hotel. When I got to the hotel and checked in, I was pretty tired.
The next day I had to get up early to meet with the crew that would be working in the Fluency Matters booth. Once again, Carol Gaab graciously paid for my registration in exchange for “booth time”. Once again, I enjoyed the time interacting with other teachers and talking with them about ways to make their instruction both more comprehensible to and more enjoyable for their students.
Here are some items from this year’s conference.
- In contrast to some years, I found more sessions of interest. I don’t know if it was because of a providential confluence of my interest and the sessions or if it was some other factor, but I thought most of the sessions I attended provided me with valuable information and ideas. These sessions included “Murder Mysteries and Crime TV in the German Class”, “Trend Alert: Escape Room for WL Classrooms”, “Beyond the Play Button”, “Experiencing Culture in Literacy”, “Literacy, Graphic Novels, German Culture”, “Game-based Learning”, and “Gaming the System”. You may notice some common threads.
- Once again I was able to connect with people I do not see regularly, and this was very enjoyable. In particular, the teachers who work with Fluency Matters (website at www.fluencymatters.com) are a great group of people to hang out with. In addition, some of the younger teachers are lots of fun and have excellent ideas to share. Finally, seeing my fellow graduates of the St Louis University Madrid Campus program was enjoyable.
- I had the opportunity to help a younger teacher plan his entire second semester. Following the sessions on Friday evening, he and and went out for a drink (mine was Coca Cola), and he asked me about what I do in my German 3-4-AP class. I talked about the virtual tour project that I do in which we go to Vienna. He took notes and told me that I had given him enough information and ideas for his entire second semester. It is gratifying to be able to help younger teachers.
- I also re-connected with one of the Klett USA representatives. We have known each other for years now, and she has helped me with my books and other projects. I didn’t expect to see her, so that was a nice surprise. We had a nice chat on Friday afternoon (I missed a couple of sessions to do that, but I think the personal connection was more important), and she showed me some new things. Personally, I think that Klett is one of the best publishers for German materials. I use some of their materials designed for German students, in particular the Octopus series, and they are very helpful. I also like their readers.
- On Sunday morning, I joined a group of people Skyping with Dr. Bill VanPatten about a new ACTFL Special Interest Group he is proposing. If it comes together, this will be a SIG dedicated to Comprehension-Based Communicative Language Teacher that will interact with other SIGs to promote communicative teaching that is based on comprehension. We also talked about the submission process for proposals to present at the ACTFL conference. I plan to submit a proposal for ACTFL 2018 in New Orleans. We’ll see if my proposal is accepted.
- Nashville was interesting, even though I didn’t see a lot of it. My hotel was about a 20-minute walk from the convention center, so I did see some – mostly restaurants and bars playing country music, but also the arena where the Predators play ice hockey. On my way back to the hotel on Saturday evening, fans were arriving for a game against the Avalanche. I almost went, but it was cold and rainy, and I was tired, so I just kept going to the hotel. The Predators won 5:1, though.
- On Sunday I helped take down and pack up the booth, since I delayed my departure until Monday – another full day of flying. I hope to get a lot done on the plane.
Before the conference, I had been doing a lot of thinking and some research on games in the language classroom. By that, I don’t mean games as activities that are intended to teach a grammar point and last only a short time. I’m talking about longer games that are for fun but use lots of language to play. In fact, I’m scheduled to present a three-hour workshop on Game Theory and Games at the California Language Teachers Association conference in March 2018.
Last year, my advanced classes played an RPG (Role Playing Game) and had a lot of fun. It was part of our unit on the Middle Ages, so students had to take on characters based on the medieval time period and learn about life, geography, and cities in the Middle Ages. I used GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System) for the basic structure of the sessions. I have also played the game “Mafia / Werewolves” (it goes by both names) with my students. Now I want to try out creating an Escape Room and perhaps even design a murder mystery experience.
All of these ideas have in common that they use language for genuine communication, i.e. the expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning in a given context for a purpose. They can be compelling, and they are primarily input based. Those are all pluses.
If it comes together, I’ll be blogging some more about them.
They also tie into my thoughts about the importance of Play in the language classroom (any classroom, really). For some of my thoughts on that, check out my Facebook page. I think it is intuitive to plan language classes for acquisition around interactive, dialogic Tasks rather than grammar instruction. Now if we could only get more people on board with teaching language comprehensibly …