Let's Talk Comprehensible Output!
I want to take a moment and talk about comprehensible OUTput as we either start or or approach the beginning of the school year.
What got me thinking about this is the fact that I am a mother to an almost two-year-old and she has a pretty good grasp of language skills (but not that good because she's two, ya know?) Her output of sentences are not perfect but they are comprehensible. She can talk about what she sees, what she wants, doesn't want, what she has and so on but her sentences are not perfect. She often says things like "I go play friends" or "This for me!" and "I no want" but can I understand exactly what she's talking about? Absolutely! I don't sit there and say to her "No, you say 'I want to go play with my friends". And make her parrot back perfect grammar to her mom. I respond with something like "I'm so happy you want to play with friends!" and leave it at that. She also makes these errors even though she is exposed to English 100% of her day all day every day. We can't expect our students, even though they are older, to output grammatically perfect Spanish since we only get to expose them to the target language for ~4% of their day.
So how can we bring this thinking into our classrooms? We talk all the time about how we don't want to be explaining grammar (unless its very briefly) and not overburden our kids with correcting their oral output. It already takes them a long time to get the confidence up to say anything in the target language; why nitpick their output when they are making their message clear with the language that is available to them?
What we don't want to do looks something like this :
Student in TL : I wants...
Teacher, interrupting the thought: Oh you should say "I want" not "I wants"
Student in TL: Okay umm I *looks at teacher nervously* want? to goes
Teacher, interrupting the thought again: "You want the infinitive "to go" which is ir"
Student in TL : Oh .. I want ... to ... go ... to mall
Teacher: Oh right you should say "the mall"
Woof!! Talk about interrupting the kids thought-process and killing their confidence in one fowl swoop.
If your student says "I wants to goes to mall" Just say back "Oh! You want to go to the mall!" and maybe put vocal emphasis on the part of speech you want to call attention to without actually saying "You made a mistake." This is a strategy I use in my room and with my kid and just know that eventually they will catch on. They really will, I promise!
These errors might make your grammar nerd cringe a little bit but all you need to ask yourself is "Did the student get their message across?" If the answer to that question is "yes" then just let them live. And even if the answer is "No" Really break down what the student said and if you don't think about it TOO much they probably still got their message across.
So that is how I am letting my almost 2-year-old shape my language teaching. Ha! What do you do for your student's to help support their output while not killing their confidence?
What got me thinking about this is the fact that I am a mother to an almost two-year-old and she has a pretty good grasp of language skills (but not that good because she's two, ya know?) Her output of sentences are not perfect but they are comprehensible. She can talk about what she sees, what she wants, doesn't want, what she has and so on but her sentences are not perfect. She often says things like "I go play friends" or "This for me!" and "I no want" but can I understand exactly what she's talking about? Absolutely! I don't sit there and say to her "No, you say 'I want to go play with my friends". And make her parrot back perfect grammar to her mom. I respond with something like "I'm so happy you want to play with friends!" and leave it at that. She also makes these errors even though she is exposed to English 100% of her day all day every day. We can't expect our students, even though they are older, to output grammatically perfect Spanish since we only get to expose them to the target language for ~4% of their day.
So how can we bring this thinking into our classrooms? We talk all the time about how we don't want to be explaining grammar (unless its very briefly) and not overburden our kids with correcting their oral output. It already takes them a long time to get the confidence up to say anything in the target language; why nitpick their output when they are making their message clear with the language that is available to them?
What we don't want to do looks something like this :
Student in TL : I wants...
Teacher, interrupting the thought: Oh you should say "I want" not "I wants"
Student in TL: Okay umm I *looks at teacher nervously* want? to goes
Teacher, interrupting the thought again: "You want the infinitive "to go" which is ir"
Student in TL : Oh .. I want ... to ... go ... to mall
Teacher: Oh right you should say "the mall"
Woof!! Talk about interrupting the kids thought-process and killing their confidence in one fowl swoop.
If your student says "I wants to goes to mall" Just say back "Oh! You want to go to the mall!" and maybe put vocal emphasis on the part of speech you want to call attention to without actually saying "You made a mistake." This is a strategy I use in my room and with my kid and just know that eventually they will catch on. They really will, I promise!
These errors might make your grammar nerd cringe a little bit but all you need to ask yourself is "Did the student get their message across?" If the answer to that question is "yes" then just let them live. And even if the answer is "No" Really break down what the student said and if you don't think about it TOO much they probably still got their message across.
So that is how I am letting my almost 2-year-old shape my language teaching. Ha! What do you do for your student's to help support their output while not killing their confidence?
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