A Project Plan - The Time and Effort Involved in Acquiring a Language

I am glad we are putting lots of effort to teach our language to our kids. A noble effort. We want them to understand, speak, read, and write our language. A great goal. We need a workable plan. I discuss what it takes to acquire a language; the order, effort and time. Is what we are doing enough to meet this great goal? How to say? Let us compare with a benchmark. The benchmark is how we all acquired our first language. Using this as benchmark, we will be able to tell if we are investing enough to expect the expected return.

First let us understand the five stages of language acquisition. Please watch The Five Stages of Second Language Acquisition.

Here is the stages we went through when we acquired our first language. (the numbers can only be an approximate since the start time, and amount of time taken varies from kid to kid).

Stage#	Period	What happens	Rough Actual Time (in hours)	Notes
Stage 0 - Initial Stage	0 - 9 months	Surrounded by Language Language Exposure Parents and relatives talk to them They just listen and keep acquiring words and meanings	1000 hours	Awake 4 hours a day
Stage 1 - Preproduction Stage	9 - 12 months	Understand and respond to simple commands Has minimal comprehension Does not verbalize Nods "Yes" and "No" Draws and points	600 hours	Awake 6 hours a day
Stage 2 - Early production Stage	12 - 14 months	Very first words Has limited comprehension Produces one or two words Uses keywords and familiar phrases Uses present tense verbs	600 hours	Awake 4 hours a day
Stage 3 - Speech Emergence Stage	14 - 18 months	Use lots of words Makes lots of grammatical errors. Has good comprehension. Can produce simple sentences Makes grammatical and pronunciation errors Frequently understand jokes	500 hours	Awake 8 - 10 hours a day
Stage 4 - Intermediate Fluency Stage	?	Uses lots of sentences Makes few grammatical errors. Has excellent comprehension.	500 hours	Awake 8 - 10 hours a day
Stage 5 - Advanced Fluency Stage	?	Have a near perfect level of speech.	?	?

Only after mastering so much of language skill, we went to school to learn to read and write. This is the way the brain acquires the language and this is what it takes to acquire a language. Are we doing something similar to teach a second language or something else? If you are doing the same thing, congratulations. Otherwise, what is the reason?

Of course we can not afford the same luxury, time, and effort in teaching a second language in schools. But, that does not mean we can alter this order or take a short cut. It simply does not work.

There are techniques that will help us to replicate the first language experience in teaching second language and get the result close to the first language competency over time. If we are teaching our language in a different way, or that goes against the way the brain acquires the language, how do we expect the learners to acquire and master language skill?

காயை அடித்து கனியாக்க முடியாது அல்லவா?

"A language learning machine (a kid) , that can master a language effortlessly on it's own, struggles to acquire even the basic language skill from school that too with the help of an experienced language teacher." -- a very interesting quote.


நன்றி
லோகு

The Two Primary Approaches to Language Teaching

Introduction

I here discuss two approaches, skill based and language acquisition based. I may sound like one is good and the other is not. That is not my intention. My objective here is to share what I learned about the approaches and what I believe about each of them. My intention is not to say we should abandon one approach and completely move over to another approach. I do believe language is too complex to teach with just one approach. As the linguistic expert Prabhu says there is no one single approach that can meet the needs of every language teaching situation. Use the approach as applicable to your need.

I understand there are primarily two language teaching approaches. Skill Development and Language Acquisition. Interestingly these two approaches take opposite view of language teaching and go in the opposite direction. What I mean is if one approach says "do A and you will get B", the other approach says "do B and you will get A".  Example: Skill Building approach says "learn the language elements and you will be able to use it in the language", but the Language Acquisition approach says "use the language in communication so you will be able to master the language better". This key difference motivated me to learn more on this.

Check the following video (from xx:xx to yy:yy). Dr. Krashen outlines the main differences between the two approaches. I here summarize the two approaches, the differences, and the values.

Skill Development

The skill based approach is about teaching language element one by one and  help the learners to use in the communication. We give them vocabulary, grammar rules, letters, etc first and slowly introduce conversation skill. This is the approach used in most second language classes in regular schools.

Language Acquisition

The language acquisition approach is about giving basic language elements, help them use in communication, and build on top of it. Example, help the learners to understand basic vocabulary and language structures using Total Physical Response (TPS) and Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS), and help them to first improve listening skill, and then output skill. In this approach we give lots of input first based on contexts, goals, and tasks, and then help them use in the communication context.


Comparison

	Skill Building	Language Acquisition
Method	Learn the language element and use the language.	Use the language and learn the language elements.
Approach	Language exercise drill	Use language for communication
Grammar	Teach grammar rules.	Help them pick up grammar construct inductively.
Goal	To score high marks in tests	To develop communication competency in the target language.
Effort of Students	High	Medium
Effort of teachers	High	High in the beginning and medium afterwards
ROI	Low to Medium	Medium to high
Motivation	Language drills make the students to lose interest in learning the language.	Learners enjoy participating and producing language output.
Structure	Structured, systematic way. Predefined syllabus, tests for grading, etc.	Unstructured and loosely connected. The language elements are chosen based on the learners need and situation.

Conclusion

Please check The Five Stages of Second Language Acquisition.

Before I give my conclusion, let us look at how we acquired our first language. You may not know what you did and how you did this when you were a child. Look at how your kid(s) acquired their first language. That alone can give you a preview of my conclusion.
Acquisition, I think is the way to go. This is the way we have been acquiring the language for thousands of years and billions of people are doing it this way every day even today. I do not see a need to reinvent the wheel. Skill based approach do have value. But, it is hard to learn a language this way and the value is limited.

Hence I can confidently conclude that Language Acquisition approach is the way to go.

For more on language acquisition concepts and techniques, please refer to TPRS, and TBLT. I have discussed these topics in several posts in this blog.

Then an obvious follow up question would be how to use Language Acquisition techniques in the class. Let me answer this question briefly.

At Elementary level:

• Help them with basic listening comprehension.
• Teach 100-150 words using TPR. The goal at this stage is to be sure they understand the words, the follow the direction, and are able to respond back using actions. Do not expect or force them to talk in the target language.
• Help them  basic language elements and structures.
• Teach language elements and more works using TPRS. Tell level appropriate stories that the learners can understand and enjoy. Make them participate. Still they may not talk in the target language yet. Absolutely alright. Also use TPRS to help them start talking.
 

• Help them with advanced language skills

• Involve the kids in the language learning activities in context using TBLT. By now they are able to understand and talk simple sentences. Use TBLT to enhance their language skill. Here they will practice listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Use this approach as long as needed. Sometimes the learners may get bored doing activities, so, you may want to involve them in fun trips, teaching activity, projects, demonstrations, presentations, etc, all using TBLT approach.

 At Intermediate level:

• Help with more reading and writing skill.

At Advanced level:

•  Help them with literature, history, more culture related learning, etc. Also help them with writing skill.

The order of developing the skill is highly important. First we need to help them build listening comprehension, then speaking, and only (and only) then with reading and writing skills. I would not recommend introducing letters until they can talk at least little in the target language on their own. It is counterproductive to teach letters, reading and writing skill before they acquire listening and speaking skill.

A model to teach a second language to beginners

How do we teach a second language to the beginners? 

This post discusses a model using Comprehensible Input (CI) and Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) methods.

Abstract

Our goal as language teachers is to help the kids to:

• Acquire Tamil and retain it for long time.
• Develop communication competency.
• Develop reading and writing proficiency.

Let us take a deep look at some approaches and utilize the opportunity we may find in this research. Reading some of the top language teaching approaches, I start to believe we need to help the kids to internalize, and help them go through the process of how the brain acquires a language. This gives us an opportunity to fill the gap using some approaches that are proven to be effective for the past 30+ years.

The general idea of the approach goes as follows:

How do we plan to reach that target.

• Help them acquire 100 to 150 words using Total Physical Response (TPR)
• Help them acquire language elements using Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS)
• Honor the silent period and wait until the speech emerges; that is, wait until the learner is ready to talk. Do not force them to talk.
• Help them develop listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills involving them in purpose and meaningful activities; we will use Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) method.

Notes:

• By the time the speech emerges, and they are ready to talk, they would have built enough words in their memory and hence they will start using them in their output on their own.
• At this stage help them practice using the language in real life contexts.
• By now they would have reached a language proficiency level that will make it easy for them to produce language output through speech and writing.

This is the way we all acquired our first language. This is exactly the same way the brain acquires second, third, … languages. Unfortunately, no shortcut exists to help acquire a language. Approaches that go against this natural way is not likely to yield expected result unfortunately. In fact, other approaches may even have a opposite consequence.

So, principles are:

• Focus on language acquisition (instead of language learning).
• Create language acquisition activities in the class.
• Create communication context where the kids will use one or two words.
• Slowly and gradually introduce letters.

Here is sample weekly plan.

Plan for class 1:

• தோப்புக்கரணம்
• help them acquire: எழுந்திரு, உட்கார், நில், கை, மேலே, தூக்கு, கீழே போடு, காது, தொடு (10 வார்த்தைகள், little on the high side for the first class).
• The idea here is to create purposeful activities using Tamil as the language of instruction.
• குரங்கும் ரஜினியும் கதை
• help them enjoy the story and expose to: குரங்கு, பிடிச்சிருக்கு, பிடிக்கல, கீழே, விழு. சிரி, அழு, கூப்பிடு, கூட்டிக்கொண்டு போ. No expectation to learn any of these.
• The kids enjoy stories more than language drills.

Class 2:

• Repeat class 1. This time the students will say the words. The students will participate and act out the story.

Every week create such contexts (the purposeful activities), and make the class active and interesting. See below for a suggested list of purposeful activities.

Expected Result

At the end of the first year, they will be able to:

• Understand basic words.
• Follow simple directions
• Understand a novel sentence using the acquired words
• Understand and follow chain commands
• Answer simple questions in one or two words.

Detailed plan

Goals

See the goals in the Summary.

Goals for first year of language learning

• Vocabulary skill: 100 - 150 easy, basic, and common use words.
  We will use about 300 words, but will expect the learners to remember and recognize about 150 words, that is 5 words per class.
  
• Understanding of Basic commands.
  
• Recognize as many letters as possible (to read only; writing letters will be practiced in 2nd or 3rd year)
  
• Start giving yes/no answers, one word answers, and if possible 2-3 words sentences.
• Understand simple songs.
• Sing along simple songs
• map words to objects
• படம் பார்த்து வார்த்தை சொல்லுதல்
  

Concepts:

 

• The L1 Way
• The Natural Approach
• Language Acquisition

The Approach

Teaching a language for long term retention involves the following.

Listening skill

Build strong vocabulary skill in their subconscious mind. After this they will be able to understand the meaning of the words they hear in their own way.

Speaking skill

Help them to use these words in speaking. During this phase the speaking exercise will involve using the words they acquired from Listening skill phase.

Reading skill

Once they acquired 100 to 150 words, that is after they internalized the meaning of 100 to 150 words, and are able to answer simple questions, move them to Reading skill phase. The Reading exercise helps them acquire more words, and use them in speech. In this phase, they acquire more words, use them in speeches, and develop reading comprehension skill.

Note: we will help with letter recognition during the listening and speaking phases in parallel. Hence they are ready to read small words by the time they come to the reading phase. During reading phrase help them to write letters.

Writing skill

The final phase of basic language acquisition is Writing. By now, they know good number of words, they can recognize and write the letters. They also know how to use the words in speech. Now they have all the building blocks necessary for production in written form.

During each of the above phases, the skills developed in previous phase(s) will be fully exploited. Hence this qualifies to be an integrated language program.

Approach for first year class:

• Communication first
• Language Skill
• Listening
• Speaking
• Comprehensible Input
• TPR Storytelling
• Low Anxiety
• Fun
• Meaningful

The Techniques

Several techniques will be used for each of the above skill building phases.

Listening - Build vocabulary using actions - Total Physical Response (TPR). Tell stories using TPRS.

Speaking - Stories + Teacher questioning technique. a) yes/no questions, b) one word answer questions, c) two words sentence answer questions. We will use mostly choice questions and product questions.

Reading - Read aloud small words with 2-3 letters. Read 2-3 words sentences. Each word should be about 2-4 letters long.

Read aloud stories. The stories should have pictures and 2-4 words sentences; each word should be about 2-4 letters. The kids should already know the meaning of 90% of the words we read here.

Writing - Tell or read a story. Ask questions. Ask them to answer in writing. a) one word answer b) 2 words answers. c) fill in the blanks, d) match word <<-->> pictures.

Create Language acquisition activities in contexts. All children acquire languages in context. So, we will create contexts in the class and help them acquire Tamil vocabulary in contexts.

Encourage reading as early as possible. Our plan is to spend more time on basic conversation and slowly and gradually introduce letters.

Make it easy, interesting, and enjoyable for them. Use communication approach. Use inductive grammar approach.

Techniques for first year class:

• Vocabulary building using TPR
• Stories using TPRS
• Letters recognition
• Fun
• play small games that the kids can understand
• Traditional, natural, and simple
• i + 1 concept will be followed throughout the year
• We will use lots of props and flash cards
• Think of ways to introduce letters in a fun way.
• Read small and interesting story books to them.
• Sing along kids songs

A Model (or Roadmap)

Listening Skill ⇒ Speaking ⇒ Reading Comprehension ⇒ Better Writing Skill

Introduce letter recognition during Listening and Speaking stage.

Introduce writing letters during Reading comprehension stage.

Example: During reading practice, one should already know the meaning of at least 75% of the words they read. Any lower amount will result in frustration and loss of interest.

Language Acquisition

Acquiring a new language is not easy. We’ve to allow the brain to take enough time to build required amount of neurons to save the new information. It takes time and effort. Conscious learning keeps the information in the limited short term conscious memory (cache). Unless this information is pushed to the unlimited permanent memory, the information will be lost soon.

So, it is important that we allow enough time, energy, motivation for the brain to acquire new language.

Enough and frequent practice helps the brain to become a better Google, that is, a faster and more relevant search and retrieval of correct language elements when one needs to use in the output activities such as speaking and writing.

Any force to go against this brain’s way of doing things will result in the brain shutting its doors down.

It’s true that children are more capable. But, this does not apply in every situation. Like adults, they also have limitations. Pushing them beyond the limit will result in lost support from them. As one linguist said they turn off their internal language acquisition device if the activities are not interesting and/or not meaningful to them..

பீலிபெய் சாகாடும் அச்சிறும் அப்பண்டஞ்

சால மிகுத்துப் பெயின்.

This is where the Language acquisition concepts play a major role in Language Teaching.

References

I borrow the knowledge and ideas used here from the following resources in addition to my own teaching experience.

• Beyond Methods - Dr. Kumar
• The Natural Approach - Dr. Krashen
• TPR - Dr. Asher
• TPRS - Dr. Ray
• California ESL curriculum

Please check the above resources to better understand the concepts, approaches, and techniques discussed here. If anything is not right or does not work, it will be solely due to my lack of understanding of the materials.

Pacing

We will not rush to complete the entire lesson planned for each class. We will go with the pace of the learners. If they acquire fast, we will do more practice or borrow something from next class. If they go slow we will push the balance to next week. Thorough understanding and acquisition of the language is our main goal for the first year class.

The Time

Most community schools meet between 1 and 2 hours per week. This gives about 50 hours. 50 hours is not at all enough to teach a language reasonably. How much of language can a beginner possibly acquire in 48 hours? Not a lot. Also, a week of gap between two classes will cause them to forget what they learned in the previous class. Then we have school breaks. Due to this a beginning language learner of 5 years old can only acquire a small amount of language skill. How we make learning Tamil efficient and build strong foundation in the language skill in the given amount of time is our main job.

Teaching Tamil in Context

A language is developed for the purpose of real life communication. These real life situations are contexts. It only makes sense we structure our class to practice the kids in using the language in real life situations. That is the context.

Example: Let us say you want to teach the words  எழுந்திரு, உட்கார், நில், கை, கால், இடது, வலது...

Some ways to teach this are:

• Translation method
• show and tell
• sentence forming exercise

A better way to reach this would be to create a context and use the language in the situation. In this context, the kids hear the word, understand the meaning on their own, and do something with it.

Let us teach them how to do தோப்புக்கரணம்.

Teacher models a word or phrase. To model a word or phrase: say the word, show the meaning, and do the action. We can do the following.

• எல்லோரும் எழுந்திருங்க.
• Say the words, show எழுந்திருங்க with hands, and also get up.
• இந்த (வலது) கையை தூக்குங்க
• இந்த (இடது) காதை பிடிங்க
• உட்காருங்க
• எழுந்திருங்க
• மறுபடியும் உட்காருங்க
• repeat this few times.

Now the kids heard the word, understood the meaning (without any translation or explanation), and also followed the direction. This method is called Total Physical Response (TPR) system.

This is the context.  May not be that interesting. But, more effective than learning thru other methods. How do we make it interesting? TPRS can help.

Testing

Our goal is to help them acquire language skill and hence we will test the kids for the following:

• Test for comprehension
• Test for language acquisition
• The regular check for understanding

 
Teaching words using actions (TPR)

Give instructions to Students in English

Start one word action; they follow; repeat 5 times

Say + Delay + Kids Perform + You confirm

Simultaneous practice + assessment

It is important that everyone understands.

Repeat: TEACH + CHECK cycle.

Say + Kids Perform

Limit to max 10 words

Check Some Individuals

Volunteers

Then everyone

குதி, நில், தூக்கு, ஆட்டு

கீழே, மேலே

கை, கால், தலை, காது, வாய், கண், மூக்கு

திரும்பு, கத்து, பார்

சத்தமா, மெதுவா

மெதுவா, வேகமா

வரை (draw)

வண்ணம், தீட்டு,

இடது, வலது

முடி

ஓடு

புத்தகம்

வை

சிரி

பெருசு, சின்னது

வீடு

பூனை, நாய்

குரங்கு, வாழை

நிலா

கதவு

drop mastered words and add new words

Put the words in wide variety of contexts.

Rapid fire checks

Pay attention to response time

Comprehension checks

• say + delay + confirm
• say + kids perform
• say + make mistake + check them
• Translation check
• kids close eyes + give commands + kids perform

கண், மூடு, திற

Commands in random order.

Funny Commands:

சரியா தவறா?

• கை சிரிக்குது
• கால் அழுது
• கை நடக்குது
• கால் சாப்பிடுது
• மூக்கு பேசுது

Ask part of the class perform while others observe.

Raise the bar

• alternate between single commands and chain commands

Chain Commands:

• instruction:
• wait until I finish
• Visualize the commands I give and use that visual to perform the action.
• signal to express
• If you understood raise the hand
• else touch your head

Purposeful activities:

• தோப்புக்கரணம்
• சமையல்
• அம்மாவுக்கு உதவி செய்வோம்
• வீட்டை சுத்தம் செய்வோம்
• கபடி
• ஓட்டப்பந்தயம்
• pickup game
• circling
• jump time
• உடற்பயிற்சி
• விளையாட்டு
• Plan to trip to a place
• Build a toy story

Words from TPRS book:

செயல்	பெயர்	மற்றவை
நில்	கை	வேகமா
உட்கார்	கால்	மெதுவா
நட	தலை	soft
குதி	வாய்	சத்தமா
நிறுத்து	கண்	hard
தூக்கு	மேசை	இடது
கீழே வை	மூக்கு	வலது
திரும்பு	பையன்	மேலே
கத்து	பெண்	மேலே
பார்	தரை	ஒரு முறை
தொடு	கூரை	இரண்டு முறை
காட்டு	மீன்	கீழே
அடி	கது	around
சாப்பிடு	முட்டி	பெருசு
எழுது	car	சின்ன
வரை	முடி	மகிழ்ச்சி
வீசு	பாதம்	கெட்ட
பிடி	கை கடிகாரம்	முன்னால்
வெட்டு	கடிகாரம்	இடையில்
கேள்	arm	கீழே
எடு	மார்பு	skinny
ஓடு	தோள்	thin
போடு	pencil	சின்ன
சிரி	பேனா	through
	முகம்
	செய்தித்தாள்
தள்ளு	magazine
சொல்	காகிதம்
பேசு	புத்தகம்
படி	தண்ணீர்
தேவை	orange juice
அழு	அன்பளிப்பு
தப்பி	towel
விழு	bowl
சிரி	வீடு
ஓடு	trip
தூங்கு	பூனை
பார்	தெரு
get	மூலை
break	sock
எடு	சட்டை
திற	பணம்
honk	suit
grab	seat
pickup	skirt
பாடு	வாழைப்பழம்
	spoon
	கத்தி
	fork
	ஆள்
	நிலா
	lettuce
	ketchup
	shower
	கதவு
	அம்மா
	அப்பா
	பாட்டி
	தம்பி
	தங்கை