Beginning the Teaching of a Foreign Language Journey - SPPT 5999

As some of you may know, I began grad school just a couple weeks ago. Being in grad school entails three main tasks: teaching, learning, and researching. The last one has yet to begin, but the other two are in full swing, and boy is it a learning curve. This post will mainly focus on the teaching aspect seeing as one of my assignments is for a course on teaching methodology/pedagogy.

This past week, three articles* were given to the class to read that discussed different, but important, ways of teaching foreign languages. Let’s all start on the same page: teaching a foreign language is not the same as teaching a different subject. In fact, teaching a foreign language, I would argue, is much more difficult! Teaching foreign language should encompass content, culture, implicit grammar, vocab, etc. I am fighting to use my second language and help my students develop of second language (which means by nature, I am fighting with English for control in my brain and the brains of my students.)

One difficult I am facing is how to present different countries and cultures in the Hispanophone world. Spanish is the official language for twenty-one countries! It is a significant minority language in four countries, a historical language in two countries, a creole language in four countries, and has been transformed into a Judeo-language spoken by some Sephardi Jews in Israel today.** How do I not reduce these rich, and vibrant cultures into things such as “In Argentina they drink mate,” and “In Spain, ‘lisps’ sound familiar,” etc.

Carol Klee, a tenured professor at the University of Minnesota answered this for me, saying that it’s important to “focus on themes… [things] like ‘women’ and what’s happening in areas of society with women… So, focusing on broader themes rather than the countries themselves.”

All of the articles that I read for class mentioned or focused on the integration of culture in foreign language teaching and the importance of it as the Hispanophone world is so diverse, and it gives content from which we can teach. Integrating culture not only gives a foundation for vocab and the use of grammar in a real, communicative way, but also brings light to places that might otherwise be forgotten as Hispanophone. “And there is still a struggle to find a balance between content and language, particularly in the first-year,” Carol adds. This is an area in which I am still trying to find balance.

Another focus of all three articles is the importance of communicative learning and encouraging proficiency in students. The ACTFL gives very detailed guidelines for the levels of proficiency, and it is expected that students jump from whatever level of novice he/she is to intermediate-low by the end of the semester with me.

Carol comments on this as well when I asked if there was a model that works best for teaching foreign languages: “More student-centered methods work best… When I started teaching as a graduate student, we were still transitioning from audio-lingual… teacher centered [teaching.] And as the years passed, it transitioned from more teacher-centered to student-centered, group activities, and communicative language teaching.”

I also interviewed Bill Viestenz, an associate professor of Spanish and Global Studies at the University of Minnesota and asked what good foreign language teaching looks like (hoping to incur some wisdom as I begin my own teaching journey.) He responded, writing, “I think that good foreign language teaching frames the intersection of culture and linguistic competency in a productive and logical way. Good language instruction is able to augment the student's linguistic competency through modeling and performance rather than through too much dependence on meta-linguistic demonstration.”

Across the board, there is an emphasis on communication and culture, not either-or, but both-and. They work together and are necessary as students try to gain proficiency in their new second language. We move away from “dependence on meta-linguistic demonstration” and towards “performance” aka verbal, written, listening, and reading abilities.

I think Bill sums up the success we as teachers/professors want for our students well: “I try not to think of success in terms of the A-F grading scale. For me, success is constituted by tangible, gratifying progress towards a learning outcome.” Carol also comments that success is if students have improved their communication skills by the end of the semester, not simply achieving a high grade or doing all the homework (things that could reflect a higher competence, but not necessarily.)

These interviews and articles have been important as I establish myself as a teacher during my grad career, and I so look forward to how I can impact my students and help them learn a new language and new cultures.

 ~Ash

*Three articles: ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines, 2012; Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changing World, 2007; Report of SLA Working Group, 2015

**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_where_Spanish_is_an_official_language > my blog, I can use wiki if I want