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Let Learning Emerge

Complexity theory (CT) deals with complex, dynamic, and nonlinear systems. When I first encountered CT some 20 years ago, it was not in the context of language. However, I couldn’t think of many things that were more complex, dynamic, and nonlinear than language (Larsen-Freeman, 1997). And it soon became evident to me that CT had the potential to teach us many lessons useful in language teaching and learning.

It is important to note that in CT “complex,” “dynamic,” and “nonlinear” have different meanings from what one normally thinks of. Let me start with “complex.” “Complex” does not mean complicated. Although the components that make up a complex system may be many and may be different from each other, what makes a system complex is the quality of emergence. Emergence is “the spontaneous occurrence of something new” (van Geert, 2008, p.182) that arises from the interaction of the components of a complex system, just as a bird flock emerges from the interaction of individual birds.

The lesson from the emergence of complexity was brought home to me some time ago, when I read science writer James Gleick’s description of the dynamics of complex systems: “The act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules” (1987, p. 24). Now, Gleick was not writing about linguistic rules. However, reading this line from his book was an epiphany to me. I understood, contrary to my training as a linguist, that language was not composed of a finite set of fixed rules, but, instead, that the language system as we knew it was continuously emerging through speakers’ interactions. This suggested to me that our students would be well served by “playing the [language] game.” By this I mean that they should be encouraged to use the language meaningfully and purposively. In so doing, their language resources would change — becoming more target-like — if that was the goal.

The dynamism of complex systems is key to contributing to such an outcome. A complex system is about becoming, not being. It was this lesson from CT that helped me make a connection to the inert knowledge problem, which had troubled me for some time. The inert knowledge problem, given its name by Alfred North Whitehead many years ago, refers to the fact that students appear to be able to do something in the classroom at one time but not at a later time. In other words, what they have acquired has become inert — unavailable to use for their own purposes at a later time and place.

There are many factors responsible for the inert knowledge problem; however, I reasoned that if language were to be taught in a more dynamic fashion, students wouldn’t have to overcome inertia to activate what they know. Teaching students grammar by giving them rules and having them apply them in written exercises is a time-honored procedure, but perhaps it is not the most efficient way to overcome the inert knowledge problem. This led me to coin the term “grammaring,” a term I feel is more apt for what we teachers should be trying to achieve. Grammaring involves teaching students to use grammar structures accurately, meaningfully, and appropriately through dynamic tasks and activities (Larsen-Freeman, 2003).

As for the nonlinearity of complex systems, “nonlinear” means that the effect is not proportionate to the cause. For instance, if I give my desk chair on wheels a big push back from my desk and it only moves an inch or so, the result is nonlinear. Conversely, if I push the chair back gently, and it goes careening to the other side of the room, this is also a nonlinear reaction. What is the lesson of nonlinearity in language teaching and learning?

Well, one example is to think of the poor teacher who spends a great deal of time and effort getting students to learn some particular grammar rule perhaps never quite succeeding. The teacher in the next grade, though, has only to remind students once of the particular rule, and they immediately catch on. The second teacher benefits from the efforts of the first in a nonlinear way.

Another way that I think nonlinearity applies to language learning is through the power law of practice. The power law of practice reflects the fact that the effect of practicing something declines over time. In other words, the immediate benefits of practice of the right kind can be considerable, but as time passes, the effect of continuing to practice falls off dramatically and only makes a more modest contribution to proficiency. This is a nonlinear phenomenon.

There are many lessons that a CT perspective has given me, and I will be speaking of others in Portland. Let me elaborate on one final lesson before I conclude this brief introduction. Sometimes complex systems are referred to as “complex adaptive systems.” Calling them adaptive recognizes their capacity to change in response to a changing environment. One way that I think this characteristic applies to language is through what is called co-adaptation (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008). Just as children benefit from speech customized for them, second language learners can benefit from the modifications or adaptations that are made in speech to them in order to enhance its comprehensibility for them. But notice I wrote co-adaptation. The language resources of both conversational partners are changed by the interaction. I myself have experienced this many times as I accommodate to my students, such that over time, I can feel my own language use shifting — not an uncommon experience for language teachers.

A more practical lesson from the notion of language as a complex adaptive system is my proposal that we should not only be teaching students language, but we should also be teaching them to adapt (Larsen-Freeman, 2013a), i.e., teaching them to take their current language resources and mold them to new situations. One way that this can be accomplished is to use iteration: returning to an activity several times, but changing the activity a little bit each time (Larsen-Freeman, 2013b). For example, a well-known activity is asking students to tell a stories to their classmates. Teachers ask students to do so in pairs, where they are given four minutes to tell their story to a partner, who then reciprocates. Next, students change partners and tell their new partners the same story in three minutes. Finally, they change partners once again, but this time, they only have two minutes each to tell their stories. Through this progression, the challenge is renewed for students, and they are given the opportunity to adapt their resources to changing conditions. What is interesting is that not only does students’ fluency improve, but students’ narratives also get more accurate and linguistically complex. With iteration and adaptation, then, the students’ language resources change, not in an additive way, but in a way that transforms the language resources that students draw on.

There are many ways that CT has stimulated new thinking on my part. I believe that there are many lessons to be learned from it. However, I am not the only one who is enthusiastic about its transformative potential. No less an authority than the famous astrophysicist, Stephen Hawking (2000) has called the present century “the century of complexity.”

References
Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos: Making a new science. New York: Penguin Books.
Hawking, S. (2000). “‘Unified Theory’ Is Getting Closer, Hawking Predicts.” Interview in San Jose Mercury News (23 Jan 2000), 29A.
Larsen-Freeman, D. (1997). “Chaos/complexity science and second language acquisition.” Applied Linguistics,18, 141-165.
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2003). Teaching language: From grammar to grammaring. Boston: Heinle/Cengage.
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2013a). “Transfer of learning transformed.” Language Learning, Supplement 1, 107-129.
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2013b). “Complex systems and technemes: Learning as iterative adaptations.” In J. Arnold & T. Murphey (Eds.), Meaningful action. Earl Stevick’s influence on language teaching (pp. 190-201). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Larsen-Freeman, D. & Cameron, L. (2008). Complex systems in applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Van Geert, P. (2008). “The dynamic systems approach in the study of L1 and L2 acquisition: An introduction.” The Modern Language Journal, 92(2), 179-199.

This article originally appeared in Language Magazine in March, 2014. At the time, Diane Larsen-Freeman was professor emerita of education, professor emerita of linguistics, and research scientist emerita at the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She was distinguished senior faculty fellow at the SIT Graduate Institute. She was also visiting professor of educational linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. She has written about SLA (An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research, with Michael Long, 1991), grammar (The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher’s Course, with Marianne Celce-Murcia, 3rd ed., forthcoming), language teaching (Techniques and Principles of Language Teaching, 3rd ed., with Marti Anderson, 2011), and complexity theory (Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics, with Lynne Cameron, 2008). She has also written about teaching grammar (Teaching Language: From Grammar to Grammaring, 2003), and she has directed a grammar series (Grammar Dimensions: Form, Meaning, and Use, 4th ed., 2007).

Dr. Larsen-Freeman received the Heinle/Cengage Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. Her book on complexity theory received the 2009 Kenneth W. Mildenberger prize from the Modern Language Association. Also in 2009, the Hellenic American University conferred on Dr. Larsen-Freeman an honorary doctoral degree in humanities. Dr. Larsen-Freeman was awarded a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the University of Innsbruck in 2010 and the American Association for Applied Linguistics’ Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award in 2011. She is a former editor of Language Learning and served as chair of the board of directors for the journal. On Mar. 29, 2014, she delivered the Saturday keynote address at the International TESOL Convention in Portland, Oregon. To address the convention theme of “Explore, Sustain, Renew,” she spoke about lessons we can learn from complexity theory in order to keep our language-teaching practice vital.

The ESL Makeover

Danny Brassell gets over himself to make learning fun for all ages

When I first began teaching elementary school, my principal asked me if I knew any Spanish. After I replied, “Un poquito (a little),” he said, “Good. You’re our new bilingual coordinator!”

Mind you, my school had over 950 students, and over 85 percent of them were English language learners. Handed a classroom filled with primarily ESL students, I turned to my new posse and congratulated them on knowing Spanish so well. I knew English, and I bragged that all of us were going to learn two languages that year. This was my introduction to working with ESL students.

I have been so blessed to work with a number of ESL students, ranging from preschoolers to rocket scientists. I can make those claims, as I wrote my dissertation based on a family literacy program I helped create at a preschool serving homeless Latino children, and I taught international engineering students at the University of Southern California. One of the greatest secrets I learned about teaching ESL students is this: what’s good for ESL students is good for all students. Teachers, hear my mantra: we’re fortunate to teach ESL students!

Of course, terminology varies wherever you may reside. I have heard people use a variety of monikers for their students, from ELL (English Language Learners) to ESOL students (English for Speakers of Other Languages) to one of my favorite terms for students because it recognizes the role of culture and dialects in language learning, CLD (Culturally and Linguistically Diverse). For simplicity’s sake, I will use the term “ESL students.”

I am a teacher, first and foremost. Whether you believe it or not, you are a teacher, too. The people we encounter watch our every move. Working with students of all ages, I have learned that strategies that work with older students may not necessarily work with younger students, but what works with preschoolers and kindergartners works for all ages. Translation: I don’t mind acting goofy when I teach. That’s why I love singing and dancing with students.

Every class begins with a song, poem, or chant. Here’s a scat my ESL students and I used to begin our morning meetings (each word means “hello” in a different language, and students repeat the words after the teacher; please note that the class stands to begin the scat, and I have used phonetic spellings for some words).
Do I sing and dance with middle-schoolers, high school students, and adults? As a matter of fact, I sing and dance more often with these groups than with my younger students. The minute folks can get over the fact that they’re not as cool as they think they are is the moment that real learning takes place.

I learned this about myself when I transitioned from working with secondary students to elementary students. When I initially began teaching little ones, I tried to teach them the same way I taught older students. I was a resounding failure. Eventually, I gave in and tried all sorts of silly things with my students, and my ESL students began learning English and having fun doing it. I called this the “ESL Makeover.” To implement the ESL Makeover, I have three ideas I’d like to discuss briefly.

First, good ESL teachers are “AWARE.” AWARE stands for “Always Watch Out for Administrators Evaluating.” Now, this is not a knock on school principals, assistant principals, and curriculum specialists. Believe me, my empathy for school administrators grows every day, as these folks deserve our kudos for enduring constant threats from their superiors that their budgets are being cut and they need to boost test scores. Good school administrators are worth their weight in gold, and one of the best ways I have seen them support ESL teachers is to leave them be. If an ESL teacher’s students are performing well, good administrators pat that teacher on the back. Why mess with teachers’ styles if they are effective? Some of my colleagues utilize totally different teaching approaches from me, and their ESL students perform remarkably well. I say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Now, if a teacher’s ESL students are struggling, this is the time for good administrators to provide guidance and coaching. It is my hope that the Common Core State Standards provide educators with a framework that shows them “what” to teach without emphasizing “how” to teach. In the schools where I coach the teachers and administrators, I have seen that an atmosphere of honest feedback and practical suggestions can work wonders. Nothing is more gratifying to me than seeing folks help one another out and be genuinely pleased by their successes.

Second, good ESL teachers “CARE.” CARE stands for creating “Comfortable Atmospheres and Relaxed Environments.” If we’re not making 25 mistakes a day, why are we at school? Let’s embrace glorious failures and shun environments that follow scripts without any risk-taking. My students giggle at my mispronunciations in different languages, and I laugh with them. When you meet someone who thinks he’s perfect, please introduce that person to me. I’ll point out one flaw: he’s in denial.

Finally, good ESL teachers “SHARE.” SHARE stands for “Supply Hordes of Amazing Resources in their Environments.” The most successful ESL students have plenty of learning resources at their disposal, from iPads to manipulatives, Elmos to books in multiple languages. A good ESL classroom should be an interactive Disneyland that excites students so much that they bang on classroom doors at 6 a.m. eager to get in, and they burst into tears when the final bell rings at the end of the day.

I take my job seriously, not myself. The more I can model laughing at myself in front of my ESL students, the quicker they will understand that it takes time to learn a second language. I want them to enjoy the journey. Following the three simple ideas of the ESL Makeover, I have found that everyone — teachers, parents, and administrators — can more quickly and efficiently produce ESL students who learn, and love, English.

This article originally appeared in Language Magazine in April, 2013. Dr. Danny Brassell is considered “America’s Leading Reading Ambassador.” He was part of the Invited Speaker Symposium, “Readin’, Writin’, and ’Rithmetic: Revisited Through the Common Core State Standards,” with Ruth Culham, Steven Layne, and Greg Tang at IRA’s 58th Annual Convention, April 19-22, 2013, in San Antonio, Texas. Danny (https://dannybrassell.com) also presented a session on building home-school reading connections.

Inspiration from Live Interaction

Going to a conference is like attending a live performance. It is interactive, a shared experience. The audience and the presenters are sharing time, space, and focus. Everyone there has dedicated his or her time to this particular event. A good conference will enlighten you and stimulate you to action like nothing else. Don’t have time to go? If you want to develop as a teacher, you don’t have time not to go.

One of the best reasons to attend professional conferences regularly is that face-to-face contact has much more impact. In the best-selling novel The Alchemist, author Paulo Coelho writes: “I don’t know why these things have to be transmitted by word of mouth, he thought… He had only one explanation for this fact: things have to be transmitted this way because they were made up from the pure life, and this kind of life cannot be captured in pictures or words.”

Some ideas are just best transmitted through oral language, by word of mouth. When we are in the presence of others, there is something meaningful exchanged that goes beyond the mere information. Perhaps it is subconscious body language or micro-expressions or even pheromones, but interaction with a live speaker is different. Attendees can all catch the same idea. It is exciting to be sharing ideas that you can use on Monday morning from teachers who will being doing the same thing.

Here is what you can expect to happen to you when you begin to attend quality conferences regularly:

1) You will begin to find your tribe.

You will realize that you are not alone. You will realize that you are amidst like-minded people. So often we teachers go into our classrooms, close the doors, and deal with only students day after day. This is a general sense that you belong here; that these people are like you. They may not all look like you do, but they think like you. They want to get better at teaching too.

There is great reassurance in finding that there are others like you.

2) You will quit kidding yourself.

We all go through plateaus in our development. We improve for a while and then we level off. On these plateaus, our teaching stays the same from year to year. That can become dangerous, because when we stay at the same level of development for too long, we begin to justify behavior. We kid ourselves into thinking that we know enough, that we are good enough at our jobs, that we do not really need to improve much.

We all have heard about the teachers who use the exact same lesson plans and techniques year after year. I once worked with a teacher who would photocopy the plans that his father had used 25 years earlier to submit for his weekly plan. You do not want to be that teacher. You do not want to have one year of experience and just repeat it for 20 years.

3) You will begin to make connections.

The more you go back to a conference, the more and deeper connections you will make. You may find a mentor. Not one person in a hundred will contact a speaker to follow up on an idea they heard at a conference session. But you can become that person. You might find a teacher like Colorado teacher Doug Bowman, who did his first presentation at our state conference 40 years ago. He is retired from the classroom, but he still actively presents innovative ideas all across the country. Teachers like Doug have seen a thing or two. They can help you.

You may also eventually find mentees, people whom you can help. This may take some time. But if you stay open to talking with new people, you will find someone who needs your help. Even if you are an early-career teacher, you will find someone who knows less than you do in some area. You can become the mentor that someone else desperately needs.

4) You will quit conforming.

Without regular contact with challenging ideas and colleagues, most of us will follow the easiest path. We will follow our old paradigms, the old conditioning. We become the product of other people’s habits—some good, some bad. We do not know if they are effective or not. We absorbed the feel of teaching as students, and when we are under stress, we will revert to that old programming.

But with exposure to new ideas, you will begin to adopt new ways of dealing with students, new ways to approach content. You will quit hitting the autoplay button when you are under classroom stress.

5) You will acquire the steps.

C. S. Lewis once commented, “As long as you notice, and have to count the steps, you are not yet dancing, but only learning to dance.”

Newbies need steps. Following the formula is how any new skill is acquired. Learning how to teach is like learning how to dance. It takes time and focused practice to develop the flow. Once the steps become ingrained, you can really start to perform, as a skilled dancer would. The teacher leads and the students follow. A good lead dance partner can make the other dancer better. We need to do that with our students. We get better at the steps of teaching by seeing good examples and through deliberate practice.

As you see other presenters showing off their teaching moves, you will begin to acquire the steps they are using. When you first begin teaching with a new technique or method, it can feel awkward, difficult, and uncomfortable. But learning the steps of the dance is appropriate for beginners; it is the only way of entering into the dance. Learning the steps opens up a reality where we can begin to master the method. The dance is worth learning and practicing. You must not abandon it for the fads and novelties of your previous experience or for personal preference.

6) You will catch a vision of what your teaching can be.

You will be open to new ideas. The different setting and the different people will be catalysts to change who you are and what you are capable of doing. Your expectations will begin to change. You cannot hang around with high-performing people without changing.

7) Some of your colleagues will think you are crazy.

When you start to get excited about what you are learning about teaching, some of your colleagues will. I have actually had co-workers snidely ask me how my teaching is going, as if that were the least interesting and most nerdy thing anyone could ever talk about.

8) You will be better equipped to deal with tomorrow.

“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” – American social philosopher Eric Hoffer

When you are isolated in your classroom every day, you may get better at certain skills. You may even get better throughout the day as you tweak your lessons. But without infusions of new ideas, methods, and techniques, you will not be prepared to deal with the future.

9) You will start doing old things in new ways and for better reasons.

You do not become a better teacher by doing certain things but by doing things in certain ways. You will begin to realize that it is not always specific activities but the intent behind the activities, the spin and emphasis that you put on them, the deeper reasons behind what you are doing. As you begin to absorb the deeper principles behind your classroom practice, you will cease to be the kind of teacher that Alfie Kohn describes in Punished by Rewards: “The overwhelming numbers of teachers… are unable to name or describe a theory of learning that underlies what they do.”

This article originally appeared in Language Magazine in April, 2017. At the time, Bryce Hedstrom was a teacher, author, teacher trainer, and president of the Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers. He still wants to be a better teacher, and to help others who are working on that same goal. He has free materials to help teachers, a blog, and professional products on his website, brycehedstrom.com.

Speaking Spanish

First, let us take a look at what students are hoping for, what we are hoping for as teachers, and why speaking in class might not happen as spontaneously as we might have hoped.

Students, even those who have not necessarily signed up for a world language class because of their own intrinsic interest (“My friends are all in this class”), usually say what they hope to get is the ability to speak with young people and make friends. That touches on what we want, too. Being sympathetic and knowledgeable, we use our friendly tone to warn them that they will not be able to speak fluently right away, that they should be ready to take risks and not be perfect, and that we are there to help them so they can make new friends all over the world. Why, then, does all that not get and keep students talking?

While we could spend a lot of time on adolescent psychology, goodness knows, we can sum up both students’ needs and students’ blockages with three words: survival, belonging, and competence. In the hierarchy of needs, these three come in order.

The students in our classes are adolescents who already have a native language; they have survived and do not need this new one to stay alive. So we can encourage, set up an immersive environment, and so forth, but the need to communicate is not linked to survival. Next, adolescents’ brains are wired so they really do feel like they will die if their friends reject them in any way. So, if taking a risk and failing loses them the group they belong to now, our promises of a larger group to belong to in the future provide little comfort. Even if students thread their way through these first two visceral needs, the very nature of learning a new language with an adult brain means they notice they sound like babies (lack of competence).

With these three strikes against adolescents, it is a wonder they speak at all. Yet there is hope, for these young-adult learners will respond to a corresponding trio of gifts we can provide them that will, indeed, get them talking. We can immerse them in motivation for the short term (so they can survive), in purposefulness for the long term (so they belong), and within personalization always (so they are competent). These three aspects are key no matter what instructional programs or resources are being used, and Vista Higher Learning’s Senderos program was specifically designed to address these key aspects in its instructional design, in its content, and in the integrated digital environment which was developed specifically for language acquisition.

Motivation short term for speech comes from a safe environment to explore without judgment, while receiving immediate feedback. It is like providing each individual student a flashlight to illuminate a pathway in the darkness. Motivation is the purpose and design around the student-directed learning approach of our program, both in print and online.

The first step we can take to invite motivation for speaking is to break the broader language topic into comprehensible, manageable language chunks. We tap on students’ successful survival in the world, as it were, by activating their prior knowledge, experiences, and opinions and then connecting each aspect to the material they are about to learn. Students go to their password-protected personal course on VHLCentral.com, where they begin in the Explore activity sequence. Through audio, text, photos, and media in storyboard video-clip format, students figure out where they “fit” in their new language, in a safe environment where they get immediate and private feedback without judgment. Their participation, not their performance level, is key. Just like using the flashlight on the pathway, each student can walk at the pace he or she wants. Comprehensible input is paired with self-pacing. Students feel like they are still in control of their lives: they can relax; they can survive.

Motivation for that short-term, daily support next comes through our shifting and leading students from purely receptive to interactive learning. The powerful Learn activity sequence of the online environment, for example, provides embedded quick checks which give students immediate, personalized feedback as they begin to speak, without grading (and thus demotivating) them. In the important area of vocabulary development, Learn is a cyclical learning sequence that moves from listening and repeating (“How does the word look and sound?”) to matching (“Which photo represents the word?”) to saying it (“Do I know how to recognize the photo and say the word?”). Students develop a sense of hope and confidence as they proceed in (literal) baby steps in learning how to speak, without peer judgment, and spending as much or as little time as needed for personal success.

Next, we lead students toward the deep end of the pool, as it were: actually saying something, but—here is our motivational goal—receiving immediate, appropriate feedback. Notice here that the feedback does not always have to be positive. In fact, students understand that real feedback in small doses, with pathways to improving personal performance quickly, respects them as adult learners. Such feedback is more “real” and more motivating than our well-meaning “Well done!” in any language. In Senderos, such instant and specific feedback is provided by the unique speech-recognition feature embedded in the presentation of vocabulary, pronunciation, and media sections. Developed for Vista Higher Learning by speech-recognition experts in the app world, this feature identifies student utterances, compares them against those of hundreds of native speakers, and provides instant thumbs up/thumbs down feedback. For digitally responsive adolescents, this is a captivating challenge and a game they utterly buy into.

And even though they may not know this, students intuit the reality of their experience with this software: they do not have to sound exactly like the native speaker in order to be judged understood (thumbs up); small things they may not have noticed as they first started learning can make the difference between being understood and not (thumbs down); and small efforts on small tweaks make all the difference (thumbs up). In other words, yet again students learn that they can stay in control and that mistakes can be overcome—and quickly and at low levels of effort.

Let us now combine the frequent motivation sequence we have explored (and which allows students to feel they will survive if they talk) with the longer-term purposefulness aspect (which will ensure students know that they will belong in the world). Purposefulness is more than a periodic bow to “relevance.” It is, as it were, the pathway all lit up, leading a student forward with confidence. Purposefulness comes, in a classroom setting, from instructional design that replicates natural human language development and use in the world. The stages are: (1) life context (personal experience); (2) vocabulary as a tool (target-language building blocks in that familiar context); (3) shared experience (in instructional settings, through media which bridges the language and culture of the student to the target in the same context); (4) target experience in the life context (linguistic and cultural target perspectives and practices in the context); (5) grammar as a tool (gaining communication complexity and accuracy in the context); and (6) synthesis (gaining linguistic and cultural fluency in the context). These inherent human steps focus students’ attention on meaning and community, versus personal performance, and help them feel they belong.

We have gotten students to know they can speak. How do we keep them speaking? How do we ensure they keep on talking? We make sure that, throughout all the contexts in the instructional design where they are talking about contexts in which they have experiences, being asked about their reactions to things they see and hear, are comparing their lives (products, practices, and perspectives) to those of their target peers and doing activities that use vocabulary and grammar as tools to talk about their own situations. That is, as much as possible, every activity is personalized. Students know themselves best and apply their daily practice and longer view to their own real interests. Confidence building is a feedback loop of its own. Again, in this matter, Senderos focuses on this truth of human psychology and learning, carefully constructing scaffolded activities that personalize each context and experience.

We are almost done in our consideration of how to get students to speak. But there is one more element: you, the teacher. You are motivated as you see students engaged daily. You see purposefulness as you achieve your course objectives. And, using good tools and good approaches, you are able to integrate your objectives into your style and your personal dreams, making your work easier and more effective. That is also a key goal and purpose of Senderos, both in its student content and in the teacher resources, course setup templates, and digital planning, teaching, and assessing tools.

That is how you get and keep students talking—for life.

This article originally appeared in Language Magazine in July, 2017. At the time, Norah Lulich Jones, M.Ed., was professional development liaison for Vista Higher Learning (VHL). She had been a teacher for multiple decades of Spanish, French, and Russian in public and private schools, a member of and trainer for NADSFL, a keynoter and workshop presenter for conferences and school districts, and a writer of student and teacher materials for VHL and (historically) several other publishing companies.

Babies Can Link Language and Ethnicity

Diverse babies sitting on the floor

A recent study from Canada’s University of British Columbia (UBC) suggests that eleven-month-old infants can learn to associate the language they hear with ethnicity.

The research, published by Developmental Psychobiology, found that 11-month-old infants looked more at the faces of people of Asian descent compared to those of Caucasian descent when hearing Cantonese but not when hearing Spanish.

“Our findings suggest that by 11 months, infants are making connections between languages and ethnicities based on the individuals they encounter in their environments. In learning about language, infants are doing more than picking up sounds and sentences—they also learn about the speakers of language,” said Lillian May, a psychology lecturer at UBC who was lead author of the study.

The research was done in Vancouver, where approximately nine percent of the population can speak Cantonese.

The researchers played English-learning infants of Caucasian ancestry sentences in both English and Cantonese and showed them pictures of people of Caucasian descent, and of Asian descent. When the infants heard Cantonese, they looked more at the Asian faces than when they were hearing English. When they heard English, they looked equally to Asian and Caucasian faces.

“This indicates that they have already learned that in Vancouver, both Caucasians and Asians are likely to speak English, but only Asians are likely to speak Cantonese,” noted UBC psychology professor Janet Werker, the study’s senior author.

The researchers showed the same pictures to the infants while playing Spanish, to see whether they were inclined to associate any unfamiliar language with any unfamiliar ethnicity. However, in that test the infants looked equally to Asian and Caucasian faces. This suggests young infants pick up on specific language-ethnicity pairings based on the faces and languages they encounter.

“Babies are learning so much about language—even about its social use—long before they produce their first word,” said Werker. “The link between speaker characteristics and language is something no one has to teach babies. They learn it all on their own.” “The ability to link language and ethnicity might help babies with language acquisition. We are now probing this possibility. For example, does a bilingual Chinese-English baby expect Chinese words from a Southeast Asian speaker and English words from a Caucasian speaker? Our preliminary results indicate that indeed, babies are using their expectations about language and ethnicity as another source of information in language learning,” added Werker

Welsh Speakers Urged to Create Digital Recordings

Welsh flag with suited figure in front of microphones.

Welsh speakers worldwide are being asked to help safeguard the future of the Welsh language by recording their voices using Common Voice, an initiative run by the free software community Mozilla to improve digital services in the Welsh language.

The aim is to help technologies including phones, computers, and other electronic devices understand how people speak Welsh in order to make voice recognition open and accessible for speakers of the language.

If enough people commit to recording their voices, satellite navigation and systems for those with disabilities and visual impairments are some of the programs that will eventually be able to recognize and provide Welsh language services. The Welsh Government has a long-term strategy to achieve the target of a million Welsh speakers by 2050.

Common Voice was launched in 2017 and the data is used to train algorithms to power the voice interfaces of the future. Having started with only English, Welsh was added in 2018 after Mozilla consulted with Bangor University on the benefits of offering Welsh as one of the language choices.

In a film launched last month by the Welsh Government’s Minister for the Welsh Language, Eluned Morgan AM, Welsh speakers are asked to dedicate two minutes of their time every day to record their voices. The Minister has recorded her own voice for the project.

Eluned Morgan AM said: “With more and more of us using voice recognition software every day, we need to make sure the Welsh language has a place in its future. To make this possible, we need thousands of voices from all parts of Wales and further afield. So, to reach this goal, we are asking people to give two minutes of their time every day to help build the most comprehensive database of Welsh voices as possible. I want to encourage as many Welsh speakers to take part in this very important and exciting project!”

Common Voice can be downloaded as an app or accessed online and Welsh speakers can contribute from anywhere in the world, at any time, making the program accessible to everyone. People are asked to read five sentences in Welsh or to validate other peoples’ voices. All contributors need to do is record themselves reading five short sentences, or just listen to and validate other people’s recordings.

George Roter, director of Open Innovation Programs at Mozilla said: “Welsh is among the first languages that we have launched and our aim is to encourage inclusion, embracing culture, and enabling everyone to participate in technological advancements. Common Voice is built through global collaborations with the time and efforts of highly engaged volunteers, researchers, developers, and startups. By working in collaboration with our partners in Wales, we hope to democratize speech data and lower the barrier for global innovation.”

Delyth Prys, head of the Language Technologies Unit at Bangor University said: “After working closely with the creators of Common Voice, we ensured that Welsh would be one of the first languages featured on the app. We need thousands of people to record their voices to ensure that voice recognition can understand the Welsh language and we’ve already seen an improvement since more people have been taking part. We look forward to seeing more coming in over the next few months.”

To contribute, visit: https://voice.mozilla.org/cy or download the app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/project-common-voice-by-mozilla/id1240588326.

The Human EdTech for Diversity

LeiLani Cauthen argues for the symbiosis of teacher connection and technological advancement 

Vector illustration

Technology dominates the education landscape discussion. It can bridge language-learning gaps and increase access with automation so fine that it can literally speak to a student and correct pronunciation and context, while removing any sense of embarrassment because it can be done privately anywhere. Uber-like language apps can even connect anyone to a native language speaker anywhere for immersive learning. Language learning has never had the wealth of digital assistance that it has now, but can it aid with diversity goals?

Diversity in education recognizes the need to create learning environments that are safe, inclusive, and equitable for as many identities as possible through increased understanding, sensitivity, reflection, and language. While digital tech, like movies, can make people cry and come to new emotional maturity, there are other “techs” for language learning and diversity that are often overlooked. One of them is love.

Love, the New Literacy

To teach when surrounded by technological innovation, it is more necessary than ever to understand what life is doing in order to enhance it to survive among machines and even compete with machines. Even the ability life has known as creative inception, or “thinking,” is now being infringed upon by augmented intelligence technologies made of complex algorithms that mock thinking increasingly well. EdTech that pretests for Lexile level then offers a range of books and monitors page progress has the ability to pinpoint possibly misunderstood material using such algorithms. It may even suggest which words or phrases need remediation. It can do so with encouraging highlighting or instant pop-up formative assessments that are welcomed because they could mean more “points” for a student. It can’t, however, offer love.

It is important to note that despite the EdTech transition, teachers will always be relevant because love may be the greatest ability of life, which machines will never have. Love is an invisible but discernable outflow of emotion whose basic ingredient is admiration. People tend to characterize the feeling of love as a warmth, a welling up of something. By definition, it’s the “motion” of “e.” Unlike in the tech industry, where “e” is “electronic,” in “emotion,” it’s “excite,” signifying that motion is present but not always seen. Love is the built-in algorithm of teachers and the obvious main ingredient in any diversity program. Machines can only ring chimes, tell you “good job,” and hit you with a show of bursting stars on screen. 

We all know that this business of living-while-human is a deeply involving, contributive, rigorous activity, and we often need to talk about it because we are so into it. Yet there is an interior complexity to our individual minds that is bottlenecked in connecting exteriorly. We need a bridge. We need language. Language is the concept-symbology bridge between minds. 

We are without an ability to directly mind-meld with any other human coherently or completely, with the volume and nuance paralleling the actual intricacy of a mind. Machines, on the other hand, can transfer code packets at the speed of light, but nuance and what educators fondly call “tagging”—the way a human might file something in his or her own mind under infinite categories—is hard to do digitally. 

Digital tech is a sort of brute force in that regard. Amazon has full-time linguists just to formulate how digital tags will go for the cataloging of women’s shirts as long-sleeve, flutter-sleeved, sleeveless, three-quarter-sleeved, bell-sleeved, and so on. All their suppliers must comply with this linguistic policy because even in high-tech areas, linguistics count, and many highly paid language analysts are employed. 

Additionally, the mind uses a good story to escape its present time environment on merely the wings of thought, with no other conveyance required. If it can’t, it’s not a free mind and is to that degree “illiterate” on another level beyond reading comprehension. A trapped mind would be a mind that thinks only like a machine, linearly, without the ability to “jump the rails” with creative inception and fly. 

The biggest driver for most teachers is the saving or freeing of such minds. They didn’t usually sign up to be testers, compilers, researchers, or discipliners, but to help others find freedom of mind. 

When most other fields are attempting to drive consumption of things and solutions to various problems and are therefore selling minds a mere accessory—or worse, selling a problem that must have their solution—education as a field provides an expansion and freedom when it is truly causing learning. It is the truest solution there is for humans.

Technology that is leveraged to allow the ingestion of the data students need to master, while letting them participate in a real experience obtaining it, has the promise to bring the mind-expanding freedom sought more efficiently, and with exceptional personalization. Yet it will be all for naught if it’s delivered without love. 

The Urgency

Learning Counsel’s 2018 National Digital Transition Survey of 406 schools and districts in the U.S. indicated trends worth mentioning. First, diversity issues in all learning, and especially language learning, are becoming more important in the drive toward personalization of learning. Second, social-emotional learning is the single biggest tech trend in software. 

Seattle Public Schools has recently announced a major initiative to address diversity in its schools, and Dr. Aleigha Henderson-Rosser, executive director for instructional technology at Atlanta Public Schools, also mentioned equity of access as a major concern. Most of the major public school systems are finding themselves wading into the deep end of diversity and equity issues. 

EdTech solutions do abound for addressing both equity and diversity, but schools and teachers must have the will to employ them with a heaping helping of their own humanity and love. Schools everywhere are experiencing massive attrition rates.1 Opting out to charters, private schools, and a massive homeschooling movement utilizing a plethora of online resources custom built for consumers are making inroads at an alarming rate. 

Schools in Southern California have said their attrition to alternatives has already reached 30%, and many major cities in the northeast experience similar levels. The reasons to not attend public schools keep piling up. Possible shootings, bullying, arguments about bathroom policies, disagreements about female athletes being undermined by transgender athletes identifying as female, perception of shaming one culture while exalting others, and sex education at very young ages are all reasons many parents say no to public school.

Education is experiencing a sea change in the same way other markets have as they mature in their use of technology. It’s not simply about nifty tools in the classroom; tech is a disrupter of epic proportions. A duality is born. Tech creates a rift, offering alternative modalities and efficiencies of function that humans used to cover while at the same time forcing human roles to streamline into perfected humanity. As the most glaring operational inefficiencies fade into the background through tech, human issues come into focus. We may think that something about humans has cropped up just recently, requiring greater focus on diversity and equity, but the antecedent is tech change. The issues have been there for a very long time, perhaps forever. 

When books were the distribution of knowledge, equity meant everyone had the book. Diversity meant desegregation and inclusivity. Now equity means mobile access with machines allocated, internet, and abundant resources for all. Diversity now means more than what most schools often tout it to mean—it actually means personalization. This is because the same cultural lesson for all could be a recipe to offend or be labeled a plot to indoctrinate or insidiously imply perpetual victimhood. At worst, it could instill resentment for one group while encouraging others to act up. 

A certain finesse is required of the human teachers and administrators on the scene, a finesse only well executed when the teachers and administrators themselves are conscientiously personalizing learning lovingly.

Tech as Diversity

The other tech for language learning and diversity is the all-ness of available knowledge through tech distribution itself. The open internet is a treasure trove of viewpoints. Professionally wrought, discrete digital-learning objects, digital curriculum, courseware, and digital collection sites number in the tens of millions.  Monolithic curation that narrowcasts viewpoints has a losing hand against both the wealth of these available resources and the open internet—where it’s anyone’s bet what a student might find. Using professional-grade resources, often with animation and embedded video, and ensuring a multiplicity of viewpoints with various sources is the winning hand. 

Tech itself brings needed diversity in this way but has the unfortunate aspect of appearing even more authoritarian than a lone teacher if the portrayal through the tech is overwhelmingly biased toward one viewpoint contraindicated by some religious and cultural belief systems. If students find their homegrown views roundly trounced, they are even more likely to search the open internet for an equal amount of counterintelligence and form a disinclination to believe their teachers or feel welcome in the institution. It encourages lack of sensitivity by demonstration of insensitivity, the exact opposite of the desired outcome.

An understanding of the power of tech to both substantiate and undermine authority repositions human teaching as guiding, helping students to synthesize and granting individuals the space to hang on to belief independently of “facts,” while still informing about facts to achieve greater sensitivity. 

Authoritarian facts interfere with love anyway, which is, again, an emerging main asset for the survival of schools. Love has bloomed from one human for another all through history, crossing language and cultural barriers willy-nilly to form the unlikely love stories handed down through the ages, seeding especially strong roots when there was no reason at all for them to happen.

References

Sacramento City Unified School District to Cut Teacher Jobs (http://www.capradio.org/articles/2019/05/08/sacramento-city-to-lay-off-170-teachers-and-district-staff/)

LeiLani Cauthen is an everyday philosopher and author of The Consumerization of Learning. As CEO and publisher of Learning Counsel (https://thelearningcounsel.com/), a research and news media hub for K–12 education focused on digital transition, she produces leadership training events in 30 U.S. cities annually. She is also the founder of Knowstory (https://knowstory.com/), a new social media site just for education.

College Language Enrollments Down Ten Percent

A young woman sits alone on the steps.

Total enrollments in languages other than English declined by 9.2% between fall 2013 and fall 2016, but there were enrollment gains on nearly half of all language programs (45.5%), indicating that the institutions with well-constructed programs were attracting students, according to Modern Language Association’s (MLA’s) latest report on language course enrollments in colleges and universities in the U.S.

Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Summer 2016 and Fall 2016: Final Report documents changes in enrollments in the fifteen most-studied languages as well as trends for less commonly studied languages.

More than half the programs in the following languages were stable or  increased in overall enrollments: Arabic (51.5%), American Sign Language (53.4%), Biblical Hebrew (53.8%), Japanese (57.4%), and Korean (75.0%). And the following languages had close to half their programs reporting stable or increased enrollments: Portuguese (40.5%), French (41.5%), Modern Hebrew (41.6%), German (47.1%), Latin (47.1%), Chinese (47.5%), Russian (48.6%), and Ancient Greek (48.9%).

One-third of the programs in Italian (33.2%) and Spanish (36.3%) reported stability or growth. In advanced undergraduate enrollments (courses in the fifth through eighth semesters), of the fifteen most commonly taught languages, all but Spanish showed stability or growth in more than half their programs. And in graduate enrollments, all fifteen languages showed stability or growth in more than half their programs.

Of particular concern is the 16% drop in enrollments at two-year institutions. The total number of language programs offered in fall 2016 was down by 651, or 5.3%, since 2013, whereas between 2009 and 2013 the number of offered programs declined by just one. This figure includes commonly taught languages such as French (which fell by 129 programs), Spanish (118), German (86), and Italian (56), as well as less commonly taught languages such as Hindi (which declined by 8), Yiddish (5), and Thai (3). Twenty-three Indigenous American languages that reported enrollments in 2009 or 2013 were not taught in fall 2016. Staffing for less commonly taught languages tends to depend on non-tenure-track hiring, which makes those languages especially vulnerable to budget changes.

The report concludes that investments are needed in language education, and features case studies of successful programs on which change can be modeled.

Going One on One

Jeanne Beck and Katt Simms describe how Chromebooks are dominating the 1:1 English learner landscape

Step inside today’s K–12 school and you’ll find English language learners using 1:1 devices, primarily Chromebooks, in conjunction with digital cameras, SMART boards, 3D printers, and more, taking student engagement and learning into the 21st century.

Innovative teachers are making headway with 1:1 technology, taking advantage of the 1:1 infrastructure within their schools to support English learners (ELs) in ways that were once only imaginable. In Missouri alone, 1:1 Chromebooks can be found in EL classrooms in rural and urban districts statewide, from Moniteau County R-I School District, a rural district in central Missouri, to the Parkway School District in St. Louis. 

Teachers and administrators at these districts prefer Chromebooks due to their versatility, numerous apps and extensions, and how they mimic computers students will use throughout their education and careers. For ELs in particular, 1:1 Chromebook implementation is beneficial in leveling the playing field with native-English-speaking peers. 

“We want ESL students to have access to apps that assist with their learning, whether that be translation software or learning apps,” said Dwight Sanders, superintendent of Moniteau County R-I School District. “Too many times classrooms are limited to a textbook, but we want to broaden our students’ perspectives and bring in worldwide learning opportunities and collaboration.”  

With a district population of 1,400 and an EL population of 110 students in California, Missouri, Moniteau County R-I was an early adopter of 1:1 Chromebooks in the region and has reaped the benefits. For newcomers to the district, like Max from Brazil, receiving their own Chromebooks can be a shock at first. “I was surprised because I never had such technology in my school in Brazil, we just had papers,” he said. Max, who has excelled in both ESL and content-area classes since arriving in January, particularly enjoys using Quizlet Live in his classes. “I could study and remember stuff by playing games in a fun way,” he stated.

These districts are capitalizing on Chromebooks’ open-source features for their ELs, catering to students who are both technology natives and learning an additional language. “I hope the functions in a Chromebook, such as the translate functions, allow the ESOL population greater equality and access to the curriculum,” said Greg Bergner, assistant principal at Parkway Central Middle School (PCMS). Parkway, with 1,000 ELs from over 50 countries, has been 1:1 with Chromebooks since 2017. “I see Chromebooks as a valuable learning tool—that could replace textbooks and worksheets,” Bergner remarked, stating that educators need to be part of 21st-century learning.

Thanks to Parkway’s 1:1 Chromebooks, teachers have gravitated toward using more technology, organizing their materials and assignments in Google Classrooms and providing students with documents, articles, and hyperlinks. Online education sites like Clever, Schoology, and Blendspace are commonly used in place of textbooks; ELs can usually translate these sources, supporting their first- and second-language growth.

Parkway content teachers have seen the benefit of 1:1 devices for their ELs, noting improved class participation and assignment completion. For newcomer and refugee students, the use of adapted English materials is beneficial; however, students seem to understand more when they can translate the material and follow along. “One-to-one levels the playing field. ELs can translate, find pictures online to make connections, and it allows them an opportunity to communicate with their fellow peers—all in real time,” said PCMS eighth-grade American history teacher Bryan Britts. “[ELs] become more active participants in the classroom.” 

Seventh-grade math teacher Tina Miller agreed by adding, “ELs with one-to-one devices get to go at their own pace. Online review videos, through Blendspace, provide additional exposure and practice to students when needed. ELs get help translating when needed, and when appropriate, to better improve their understanding.” 

Across the state, at California Middle School in Moniteau County R-I, Amelia Elliott takes full advantage of 1:1 Chromebooks in her eighth-grade English language arts and reading classrooms by utilizing flipped learning. “I feel [ELs] benefit from the Chromebooks because, through flipped learning, it allows [teachers] to diversify instruction and adapt materials to their individual learning needs,” Elliott said, who has many long-term ELs in her school. Pear Deck and Edpuzzle are helpful for ELs, as she can see students’ understanding in real time, filling in any gaps in knowledge.

For all ELs, utilizing Google’s G Suite apps to write papers and create projects provides opportunities for language learning. In urban and rural schools alike, one will find ELs writing reports in Google Docs, presenting in Google Slides, and even analyzing data in Google Sheets. ELs and teachers alike find document sharing, the comment feature, and the editing and suggesting feature helpful for language learning and collaboration. Paired with voice typing and the accessibility settings, teaches can level the playing field even more.

Even with the benefits to language learning, 1:1 devices are not without challenges. ELs have similar behavioral issues to their native-English-speaking peers—opening distracting links and apps, misusing educational devices, and not recharging the batteries. Newcomer ELs can become overly dependent on translation apps, such as Google Translate, instead of attempting the classwork in English, and some students will change their computer settings to their first language. When teachers give corrections or comments in Google Docs, students may click “accept suggestion” without taking the time to learn from their mistakes. To counteract these measures, teachers are setting up firewalls and using lockdown features to prevent distractions and cheating. Good teaching strategies, such as establishing expectations and monitoring students’ use, help mitigate issues as well. 

The introduction of 1:1 devices has aided ELs in their language development and aided teachers in preparing them for their futures. Teachers and administrators agree that 1:1 Chromebook access is improving student language progress and are supportive of the continued use of technology in the classroom. As the number of English language learners grows, teachers will need to find more ways to engage and equitably serve students through 1:1 technology.

Jeanne Beck is the ESL and technology teacher at California Middle School, a rural school in Missouri, and will be pursuing a PhD in applied linguistics and technology at Iowa State University this fall. She has taught all ages in the U.S., Japan, and South Korea and presented on educational technology at TESOL, MIDTESOL, and JALT.

Katt Simms is an ESL teacher’s assistant (TA) at Parkway Central Middle School in the Parkway School District in St. Louis, Missouri. Simms has recently earned her MA in TESOL from Webster University, after teaching abroad for several years. Having previously worked in South Korea and Japan, she taught ESL to students in the K–12 school system up to undergraduates and adults.

Univision and Twitter Sign Spanish Accord

Univision Communications and Twitter have agreed upon a partnership “to better serve the Hispanic community” by enabling Twitter to distribute Univision’s Spanish-language entertainment, sports, and news content. It will include coverage of the 2020 U.S. elections, “the buzziest real-time red carpet” content from the Premios Lo Nuestro and Premios Juventud awards, and soccer highlights from the Liga MX and UEFA Champions League, according to the announcement.

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