Part 2: Reimagining Language Textbooks for Comprehensible & Communicative Teaching – Q&A

This week, I’m continuing the conversation about reimagining language textbooks for comprehensible and communicative teaching by answering your questions about the subject, and I’m going to start with the topic of vocab. If you missed part 1, episode 52, click here to listen to it first.

Vocab

The first question I want to talk about is, “How can I incorporate an overwhelming amount of vocab?” The answer is, do you need to incorporate an overwhelming amount of vocab? Sometimes we feel like we have to, but we really don’t need to. What I really want you to think about is, “Do I need all this vocab?” Is there some reason, beyond my control, where my students are going to have to know this vocab?

In the past, when I tried to incorporate a lot of vocab, I had students with a few “A”s, but also a lot of “C”s and “B”s. Some students memorized the vocab for the quiz, but how many of them retained it for the next chapter, or the chapter after that, and did they learn or even talk about that next year?

Frequent Vocab

In the last podcast episode, my advice was, let’s look at your vocab and make some decisions. What do you think is the most frequent vocab from a unit? What is the most relevant and essential vocab that you need? Can we start with that? Then, you start with 10 to 15 words. You can also dedicate a small chunk of our daily class for vocab practice. I talk more about this in episode 53. Listen above or click here.

Grammar

How do you ensure that students get practice using the first person since most materials are in third person?

I do it in my class is by asking questions, and I’m going to give you an example. I do a ton of questions in my class, and I spend a ton of time talking with my students. Every time that I bring in input, I turn and ask a question. When I ask a question, if it’s a personalized question, I answer first. This is where I incorporate different forms of the verbs by having these conversations with my students.

The next question I want to discuss is from a teacher in the Spanish Teacher Academy. She was going to start a unit about the city and was struggling on how to even begin. So, we brainstormed and designed her unit. I told her that we were going to start with a tour of her own city. She’s going to use Google Maps, and then she’s going to do a map talk and use some visuals. After she finishes her walking tour, she’s going to create some type of structured input activities. She’s then going to do a short, pop-up grammar explanation and follow that by asking the students to try to do a tour themselves. In the tour, she’s going to give sentence frames and sentence starters that are going to support their output. That is how she’s going to incorporate grammar that is included in her textbook.

Structuring Your Daily Lesson Plan

How can I plan for all my days when I don’t have a textbook?

Such a great question! If every single day, I’m trying to decide what I’m going to do tomorrow for 45 minutes or for 90 minutes or 70 minutes, we are going to be exhausted and that is not sustainable. Practices that are not sustainable are not effective because we cannot do that on a regular basis. In the resources and links, I’m linking episode 11 below on how I plan for a 90-minute class without a textbook.

To sum it up, I really only plan for about 30 minutes a class. The rest of the time is already planned. I begin class with five minutes of a social emotional learning check. My students come to my class and they see a slide where I’m asking them how they’re doing. After that, I do Calendar Talk. In Calendar Talk, we do our reading and go over a reading activity. Then, we move on to talk about our week. You can also add in voluntary reading time. I go into more detail about these and other planning tips in episode 53.

When the Struggle is Outside Your Classroom

This can be when we don’t have a department that is supporting acquisition driven instruction and wants us to follow the textbook. How do we handle this? I think what we need to do is to compromise. I think we need to decide what works in our classes and talk to our departments. We can say, “Can we have these chunks of time, where I can do what I think is the best for my students?” For example, “Can I do Calendar Talk for seven minutes in my classes?” This small activity will build your confidence, and little by little, I think it will give you the confidence to have more difficult conversations with your department.

I talk more about the higher level classes in podcast episode 53. Listen above. Remember, you can start out with a little bit of time, at the end of the class or it can be on a specific day of the week. I think that when we understand what the principles are of second language acquisition, and that it will truly support our students to acquire the language, then we can make decisions about how you can also comply with the requirements of your department.

I hope I have answered some of your questions, giving you ideas of how you can, maybe, have a reimagining of  your textbook in a way that is more aligned with the principles of second language acquisition. Don’t forget to go listen to GWP -The Podcast episode 53 for a more detailed discussion on this topic.