Suggestions for Students: Make Correction Count

Several months ago, I wrote about welcoming helpful correction.  I would like to add some more thoughts to that post in light of the particular problems facing speakers as they advance in a language.

The more time that a person passes in learning a language the more risk there is of developing fossilized speech: making the same grammatical, vocabulary, intonational, and pronunciation mistakes without realizing.  As learning progresses, so must the motivation and dedication to correcting mistakes.

Here are a couple steps I have taken in this direction:

1. A Correction Notebook: I am keeping a notebook dedicated to corrections I get in my writing and speech.  I prefer to write the correct word or phrase and underline the part of the word or phrase that I produced incorrectly.  Then I write a note beside it if necessary to remind me of the nature of the mistake.
Examples:
son édification
la pratique (pas de c)
constamment = répétitive, très fréquente (vocabulaire)
incessamment = sans délai, au plus tôt (vocabulaire)
possessifs (pronunciation "ss" pas "z")

2. During language sessions, I have started asking our consultants to take notes on mistakes that they observe rather than sharing them right away.  This again allows for a log of the mistakes (I then add them to my correction notebook) and for me it makes the corrections more meaningful and memorable since we can analyze them together without interrupting my train of thought during speech.

In Review: Thirteenth Week of French Language Learning

In Class:

• Oral Comprehension
• Subjunctive practice
• Punctuation
• Pronunciation
• Anglicisms
• Reading comprehension
• Register differentiation 
• Pet Vocabulary
• Relative Pronoun
• Public presentation and defense of an idea
• Jean de la Fontaine poem: "Le renard et le corbeau"

Language Sessions:

• Story-building
• Story reading: language helpers to us and us to language helpers
• Ear-training: vowels

On our own:

• Marathon vocabulary reviews
• Speaking practice: recording ourselves, role plays, ect.
• Listening comprehension: listening to Bible CD, recorded stories
• Watched cuisine DVD
• Watched French movie
• Working through French elementary school curriculum books for history, language, geography, science, etc. 

In Review: Twelfth Week of French Language Learning

In Class:

• Subjunctive Usage and Construction
• Article discussion on the theme of punctuality
• Cooking and recipe vocabulary
• Relative Pronouns
• Prepositions
• Oral Comprehension: Vacation Dialogue
• Discussion about current retirement debate in France
• Vocabulary surrounding the sense of hearing
• Vocabulary surrounding the sense of touch
• Vocabulary surrounding the sense of taste

Language Sessions:

• Story-building: playground busy picture
• Practice presenting our families and talking about family photos
• Information gap activity (Go Fish) to practice describing details
• Listening to stories read aloud
• Reading aloud: we began reading books (which we had heard read to us several times) aloud to our language helpers
• Thank you note writing

On our own:

• Always reviewing recordings
• Listening to stories read aloud
• Reading 

Suggestions for Students: Keep a Language Learning Journal

Things to track:

• Daily language learning activities
• Language topics covered in class, language sessions, or individual study
• Resources used
• Ideas for future language learning activities
• Self-evalutation notes: areas where you particularly observe a need for improvement or work
• Cultural notes

Any other ideas of things to track?  Let me know!

In Review: Eleventh Week of French Language Learning

In Class:

• Imperfect Tense Verb Construction
• Past Perfect Tense Verb Construction
• Vocabulary of will, plans, goals
• Punctuation
• Simple Past Tense Verb Construction
• Vocabulary surrounding the sense of smell

Language Sessions:

• Oral Comprehension of Numbers and Years
• Farm animal vocabulary
• Reading and discussing vocabulary and usage of words in low level children's books
• Timeline vocabulary
• Story-building: farm busy picture
• Recorded language helpers reading several children's books

On our own:

• Reviewed recordings of stories and vocabulary
• Sing intonation of dialogue recordings
• Reading at our reading level

Suggestions for Students: Repetition, Repetition, RECORD!

I am convinced of a comprehension approach to language learning.  Hearing natural speech over and over and over is the key to building a foundation for strong comprehension and natural production.  One of the best ways to get this necessary repetition as an adult language learner is by RECORDING.

My husband has been doing an amazing job of managing all of the recording during our language classes and sessions with language helpers.  He has several tips about what to record and how to organize the recordings, so I have asked him to share them with you in the next couple posts.

In Review: Tenth Week of French Language Learning

In Class:

• Dictation Practice
• Conditional Tense Verb Construction
• Weather Vocabulary
• Reading Comprehension: article summary

Language Sessions:

• Ear-training: vowels
• Oral reading comprehension: language helper reads story aloud and we discuss it together
• Story-building with farm picture
• Game for describing things

On our own:

• Reviewed recordings
• Began reading low level books at our reading level (80-100% vocabulary comprehension)
• Anthropological Observation: Mapped the Saturday market; tallied social groupings at the market; tallied hat usage at the market

In Review: Ninth Week of French Language Learning

In Class:

• Learned culturally significant French songs
• Simple Future Verb Tense
• Weather vocabulary
• French Geography
• Learned a cultural recipe
• Opposites
• Learned about "Asterix" a very popular and cultural comic strip
• Indirect Pronouns

Language Sessions:

• Clothing vocabulary
• Entered Story-building phase Yeah!!!!
• Story-building with a messy bedroom busy picture, and a clean bedroom busy picture
• Fruit and vegetable vocabulary
• Story-building through a dining room busy picture, and a supermarket busy picture
• Input Flooding: vowel recognition
• Story-building through a bathroom busy picture
• Story-building through Creation story pictures

On our own:

• Reviewed language session recordings
• Listened to Bible Stories for children

How To: Information Gap Activities

An information gap activity is any activity in which one or more participants have information that the other participants do not have and they must communicate that information to the others using only words.  This is helpful for language learning because it requires the participants to use language in order to negotiate for understanding.

Some ideas for information gap activities might be:

1. Picture Gap: One participant has a picture that he/she explains to the other participants who draw the picture according to the explanation.  At the end of the activity the pictures can be compared to see where mistakes in explanation or understanding were made.

2. Go Fish

Some Go-Fish cards.  There are two of each square, and many of the squares differ only by minute details, therefore, much explanation is necessary (as you will be able to tell from the video below).

The video below was taken during one of our language sessions in which we played a variation of "Go Fish" using the cards picture above.  My husband is on the left, and a language helper is on the right (I am taking the video :).

3. Guess Who

4. I Spy - can be played with busy books (where's waldo, or I Spy books, etc.)

Suggestions for Students: Welcome Helpful Correction

You may have lots of people around you who correct you, or you may not get corrected very often.  Either way, you may be able to improve on welcoming correction.  The goal in welcoming correction is not simply to get a lot of it, but rather, to get helpful correction.  The most helpful correction allows you, as the learner, the opportunity to observe your errors.

Below is a list of some activities that encourage this sort of correction:

1. Make a recording of yourself telling a story, listen to it with a native speaker and have him/her make corrections.  Record those corrections.

2. Read aloud to a native speaker and have him/her correct your pronunciation mistakes.

3.  Have a native speaker ask you questions, record your answers and the corrections from the native speaker.

4. Listen to these correction recordings in order to observe the differences between your speaking and the native speaking.

In Review: Eighth Week of French Language Learning

In Class:

• Reading Comprehension
• Hobbies
• Job Interviews
• Demonstrative Pronouns
• Ear-training and pronunciation: liaisons, consonants
• Oral Comprehension
• Storying with imperfect verb tense
• Adverbs
• Pronoun "y"

Language Sessions:

• Input flooding for rhyming words
• Input flooding for minimal pairs
• Categorizing pictures vocabulary items by grammatical gender
• Soliciting the vocabulary for describing daily activities in the present tense
• Comprehending description of daily activities in the past tense
• Soliciting the vocabulary for describing the process of making crepes
• Soliciting the vocabulary for describing the process of washing dishes
• I Spy with busy pictures
• Listening to self-recordings of ourselves describing our daily activities, language helper gave corrections to our mistakes
• Soliciting the vocabulary for situational dialogues (e.g. first meeting someone, accidentally running into someone, giving condolences at a funeral)

Note: all our soliciting of vocabulary happens through the use of pictures with the help of some negotiating in French; soliciting vocabulary should not be a translation exercise.

On our own:

• Guided tour of the historic district of our tour
• Watched the children's cuisine DVD (we understand more every time)
• Reviewed language session recordings
• Reviewed class recordings
• Self-recordings
• Attended a small group Bible Study
• Watched a children's movie twice
• Listened to children's songs

In Review: Seventh Week of French Language Learning

In Class:
Imperfect Verb Tense
Use of "il y a"
Use of "pour"
Pronoun "en"
Sentiments
Letter writing
Reading comprehension

Language Sessions:
Input flooding of person and number agreement for verbal conjugation in the present tense
Kitchen vocabulary
TPR with kitchen, living room, and basic verbs (with language helper giving lists of instructions which we then have to remember and follow)
Reverse Role Play: Welcoming guests into home
Dining Room Vocabulary
TPR acitivites - setting the table for dinner, clearing the table, etc.
Possessive Pronoun and noun agreement practice: language helper said "at my house I have my..." and we echoed "at your house, you have your..." 
Categorizing pictures of vocabulary items into groups according to grammatical gender

On our own:
Guided tour of an historical castle in our town
Guided tour of our town's courthouse
Guided tour of our town's library: specifically their process of rebinding historical books
Reviewed recordings from language sessions
Reviewed recordings from class
Listened to children's music

In Review: Sixth Week of French Language Learning

In Class:

• article noun agreement
• reading comprehension through cultural journal articles
• common time related adverbs
• ear-training and pronunciation exercises for vowels
• past tense verbs
• expressions related to time

Language Sessions (with language helpers):

• Living room vocabulary
• basic action verbs 
• TPR activities with the living room vocabulary and basic action verbs
• Restaurant dialogue (arriving, being seated, ordering)
• Reverse Role Play Restaurant
• Hair Salon dialogue 
• Reverse Role Play Hair Salon
• I Spy with a living room picture
• Map and Town Vocabulary
• Information Gap activity with a picture of a town

On our own:

• Reviewed recordings of classroom vocabulary
• Reviewed recordings of language session vocabulary
• Watched Cuisine DVD
• Listened to children's songs (over and over)

In Review: Fifth Week of French Language Learning

In Class:

• Conversation practice
• Verb conjugation review
• Cultural phrases
• Polite question asking skills
• Conditional verb tense
• Shopping vocabulary: prices, types of stores, services

Outside of Class:

• Re-watched a children's cooking DVD
• Relistened to children's CDs (over and over)
• Went to an interactive museum 
• Reviewed vocabulary recordings
• Spent an afternoon with a French couple who helped us review introduction vocabulary, and directional vocabulary

Resources: Audio-Guides

A couple weeks ago, we had to go to a nearby city to register with the immigration office.  The visit gave us the opportunity to see a new place in France, so the first thing we did when we got to the city was to stop by la Maison du Tourisme to pick up an audio-guide.  They gave us what essentially is an MP3 player and a map with numbers that correspond to the tracks on the MP3 player.  We asked for the guide to be in French, of course, and the sight-seeing activity quickly became a wonderful language learning experience.  At each stop along the way we were able to observe what the guide was talking about, the guide was animated and articulate, and we were able to re-listen as many times as we desired.

In Review: Fourth Week of French Language Learning

In Class:

• common past tense verbs
• family vocabulary
• direction vocabulary
• possessive pronouns
• near future tense verbs
• supermarket dialogue vocabulary
• directional prepositions
• adjectives

Outside of Class:

• Reviewed vocabulary recordings
• Re-listened to children's CDs (over and over)
• Listened to children's books on CD

In Review: Third Week of French Language Learning

During the third week of French language learning, we did the following in class:

• Discussed an article 
• Grammar: Article and noun agreement
• Grammar: verb conjugations
• Partner dialogue practice
• Writing exercises

Outside of class, my husband I did the following activities to supplement:

• Listened to children's songs.  We got children's CDs from our public library around the corner, and we chose CDs with songs about daily routines, numbers, the alphabet, and family members.  Children's songs make for great music to start with because the singers articulate very clearly, and the songs are written with the purpose of teaching vocabulary and culture (this is how we brush our teeth, these are the magic words to say, etc, etc)
• Listened several times to the same children's books on CD that we had listened to the week before.  
• Reviewed class recordings
• Reviewed the same info-mercials we have been watching now for three weeks.  

Situation Ideas for Reverse Role Plays

The following is a list of reverse role play ideas to get you started in your language learning:


          Native Speaker               Learner

• Client                              Bank Teller
• Client                              Hair Stylist
• Customer                        Cashier
• Patient                             Doctor/Nurse
• Church Member              Pastor
• Client                               Taxi Driver
• Guest                               Host
• Host                                Guest
• Client                              Waiter
• Student                            Teacher
• Guest                               Concierge
• Traveler                           Embassy Worker
• Customer                         Baker
• Customer                         Butcher
• Phone: Caller                   Phone: Answerer
• Phone: Answerer             Phone: Caller

How-to: Reverse Role Play for Language Learning

A reverse role play is a role play in which the native speaker/ language teacher plays the role that the learner would usually have in everyday situations.  For example, in a supermarket role play, the learner would play the cashier and the native speaker would play the customer.  This turns a speech-led activity (the common role play) into a comprehension-led activity in which the learner receives an opportunity to hear natural speech for his/her everyday roles.

The following video is an example of a reverse role play in French with the native speaker playing the role of host, so that the learner can learn by example.

Suggestions for Students: Be Curious

"Judge a person by his questions, rather than his answers." - Voltaire

"I have no special talents.  I am only passionately curious."  - Einstein

A good dose of curiosity will protect your mind from jumping to conclusions, resting on previous assumptions, or forming long lasting stereo-types of your new world.