Tuesday, January 1, 2013

My New Year's Resolution

In 2013 I am going to ....

use Krashen's ideas to acquire some German.  This will be a real test of comprehensible input because I don't have the time or means or will to take lessons from a teacher.  If I could find a TPRS German teacher, maybe, but I also don't want the constraint of fixed times for lessons. 

I studied German in college, mostly out of curiosity.  I had already studied French, Spanish and Latin in high school and I even signed up for New Testament Greek. I happened on an excellent teacher who was using the Natural Approach, speaking only in German from day one.  This put quite a few students off.  They complained that they understood nothing of what she was saying.  I enjoyed the challenge and did get quite a bit of comprehensible input because I was motivated enough to make the effort required to guess at what she was saying. After two semesters our final exam was oral.  We had to go in and tell her a German fairy tale.  I had chosen the one about a fischermann who lived in a vinegar jug.  I passed with flying colors and was considering changing my major from French to German. But the following year the teacher accepted a better paying job in a bigger school and her replacement disappointed me.  Whereas we had spoken only in German in the first year, our second year classes were mostly in English.  The new teacher wasn't convinced we knew our declensions. After one semester I dropped out of the course with a B.

On a short trip through Austria and Bavaria in 1968 I realized I had lost most of my German and would have been totally unable to tell the story of the fischermann in a vinegar bottle, even if someone had wanted to listen to it.  About ten years ago I sat in on German lessons in my lycée for a while, hoping to get some of it back.  The teacher was a kind friend and did try to speak in German as much as possible, but also felt it was necessary to explain quite a bit of grammar.  I was able to attend only one out of three classes, so most of the time I was trying to figure out what had gone on in the classes I had missed.  But it was an interesting experience to be a student again, a student that was at a definite disadvantage. The following year my timetable made it impossible for me to attend any classes and the year after that my friend was assigned to a different school.

I think being able to speak and read and understand German (again)  has been one of those goals I've had in the back of my mind for many years, like learning to ride.  And you get to a point where you have to say, it's now or never.  I went back to horse riding after a 25 break in 2005.  I'm still learning, but today I can ride any reasonably well behaved horse. Recently on the moretprs forum someone who is not a teacher but has read up on Krashen's theories asked how he, as an adult, could learn Spanish, saying there were no TPRS teachers near him.

I replied that it's possible to learn a language through watching films with subtitles.  One of my granddaughters became fluent in English after watching Pirates of the Caribbeans 27 times and High School Musical almost as much.  I had a student whose English was so good that I assumed she had lived abroad.  She told me no, but she had spent the summer watching her favorite series through streaming.  Even as I sent off my somewhat glib reply to the forum, a little voice inside was saying, "Physician, cure thyself."

So this is my challenge for 2013.  I'm going to watch German films in German with German subtitles.  When I don't understand, I'll switch the subtitles to English and then go back to German.  I'll watch the same scenes over and over, until I feel I've acquired the language. A German teacher on the forum suggested "Errands for Angels" as an interesting film that has German and English.  I'm open to other suggestions, since I know next to nothing about the German film industry.  I guess I could watch old Derrick shows, but they always put my husband to sleep.  

Since I often advise my students to watch films in English, this will be a good test of how effective it is.  And I'll keep you posted on how well Krashen's theories work out in the process.

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Giving Private Lessons

A few years ago I refused to give private lessons.  Partly because I felt I needed all my energy for my regular classes and partly because I suspected private lessons would be boring.  For me and for the students.

Jokingly I said I was too much teacher for just one student.  It takes a certain amount of energy to confront a classroom filled with adolescents and channel all their emotions into a group activity. A good lesson involves a lot of interaction between students and the teacher, but also between the students. It's a challenge that can become an exhilarating drug when it goes well.  I couldn't imagine getting the same high from a private student.

Then life played one of its little jokes on me and the French Ministry of Education declared that they would kindly allow me to continue teaching to the age of 67, but then I would have to retire. If only I had had the forethought to lie about my age when I came to France, I would be getting a less miserly pension.  Since last June I've started taking on private students in order to supplement my income, and also because I don't feel ready to stop teaching.  I learn more from my students than they do from me and I'm convinced that every year I'm a better teacher than I was the year before.  To suddenly stop teaching and take up golf seemed a tremendous waste of everything I've learned in the last twenty years.

My first students were friends that knew me, then I began getting calls from people who saw my ads.  I now have about 30 students.  The youngest is in primary school and the oldest are retired.  Some are lycée students and some are adults who need English for their job or who want to be able to travel abroad.  The work is as varied as their expectations and motivations, and I find it very interesting.  I still miss the challenge of a class, but I have to admit that private lessons are much less stressful.  

Recently a friend asked me for advice because she's been asked to give private lessons.  I told her that I'm enjoying teaching with no discipline problems.  Basically, I plan what I want to talk about with my students, much as I would with a class, but I don't worry if we get side-tracked on something that particularly interests them.  It's personalization with a capital P.  I'm using Anne Matava's scripts but we also work on songs, learning the vocabulary with lots of PQA, or films.  Last week I gave two groups my recipe for a Christmas fruit cake.

I don't think that students have to have an advanced level to work with films.  We watch a scene with the subtitles in English (my target language), then we talk about it.  I tell stories, jokes, share my memories from growing up in the States or my life in Cameroon.  Basically, I see myself as being paid to have a conversation with my students and I try to make it interesting, to be a good conversationalist. 

Something that has worked very well is the graphic novel, "The Arrival" by Shaun Tan. There are no words, but the pictures tell a complex and moving story.  We look at each page, describe the images and then talk about what we think it means.  It takes several lessons to work our way through the book and by then I have a good idea of where my students are at and where we can go next.

Basically, if we have faith in Krashen, we can ensure that our students will progress by simply chatting with them, verifying that they understand, translating when necessary so their affective filters stay down.  Today with a group of adults we watched a scene from Shawshank Redemption in which one of the characters said, "He should have died in here."  Spontaneously one of the students who would have tested as A2 last year translated the phrase "Il aurait du mourir ici." She did it without stopping to think and I was so proud of her.

I guess the extra, unexpected bonus with private lessons is that you come to know your students better than you can in a large classroom and they become your friends, people that you enjoy spending time with and look forward to seeing.