The potentially self-efficacy diminishing and consequently demotivating scenarios in the MFL classroom and potential strategies to ensure that students are being motivated by knowledge gaps and not demotivated by knowledge chasms…
Potentially Demotivating Scenarios In
The MFL Classroom
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Potential Motivating Strategy
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Students not knowing where to begin on a written piece.
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Use the ‘Break It Down’ technique7 as described
in Teach Like a Champion (Lemov,
2010:88-92) to ‘Provide the missing (or first) step.’8 (Lemov,
2010:91). Depending on the written task, ask something like, “Well, what can
we always start with to build a paragraph, the infinitive or a time phrase
first?” Give students the option of one right, one wrong as a choice. Then
practise the procedures to build a paragraph and get the student to repeat
the procedures back to you. Ensure that the student has enough supporting
material to help them build language .
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Students finding a reading text too hard.
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Make the content more accessible to the students to build
their confidence and reduce cognitive load. A range of strategies could
include; getting the students to write down a set number of words that they
do know the meaning of before completing the task (with the teacher
emphasising the words that the students do know) and looking the meaning of
these up in pairs beforehand, getting the students to complete the task in
pairs or as a FLA, practising VFLAs (my own term from Fun Learning Activities
for MFL!) with some of the more demanding items of vocabulary to feature in
the text beforehand and then practising retrieval until students have more
knowledge.
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Students finding a listening exercise too hard.
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Again, make the content more accessible to the students to
build their confidence. A range of strategies could include; playing the
sound file more than twice, pausing more often, writing some of the key
vocabulary and English on the board as the listening exercise runs so
students see what they hear, practising VFLAs with some of the more demanding
items of vocabulary to feature in the exercise beforehand and then testing
students’ retrieval, using a range of ‘micro-listening strategies’9
(as referred to in Dr Gianfranco Conti’s blog) with the content on the
listening task.
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Students getting a word meaning wrong, a verb ending
wrong, pronouncing a word incorrectly etc. in front of the class.
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Use a similar technique to those of the ‘Rollback’ and
‘Eliminate false choices’ techniques10 (Lemov, 2010:91) as
described in the ‘Break It Down’ strategy in Teach Like a Champion to repeat back the student’s language
errors to them. Lemov says, ‘…hearing your own error in another’s words is
often revealing.’11 (idem) So if a student in French who was
learning about infinitives for the first time found ‘boulanger’ in the
dictionary and mistakenly thought that it was an infinitive, then eliminate
some false choices. For example, saying, “What does ‘boulanger’ mean in
English? If it were an infinitive, what would the English meaning always
start with? Is there a ‘to’ at the start of the English meaning of
‘boulanger’ in the dictionary? If ‘boulanger’ means ‘baker’ then can I ‘to
baker’? Can I go and say ‘I am going to baker’? I can say ‘I am going to
bake’ but that’s a different word and it’s got a ‘to’ with it. Does ‘baker’
have a ‘to’ with it in the dictionary? So, therefore, can it be an
‘infinitive’?”
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Students receive disappointing feedback on a test.
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Avoid letting the student develop the mindset that failure
is embarrassing or totally negative. Move the student’s focus on from ‘not
being very good at languages’ to perhaps ‘not having been able to recall and
apply the language in the correct way this one time’. Model your own past
failures when learning languages. Model the skills that you also found
difficult. Share in the fact that you also found this part of
language-learning difficult when you were their age. Refer to the following
line from Willingham, ‘When you fail-and who doesn’t?-let them see you take a
positive, learning attitude.’12 (Willingham, 2009:185)
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All of this motivating for memory comes back to providing a task with the right level of support which is centred on students plugging their language knowledge gaps and not having to struggle to fill their knowledge chasms. An appreciation and awareness of the students’ language knowledge chasm would seem to be an essential factor in motivating students to learn languages...
Notes
(continued from Part 1)
7 Lemov, D. Teach
Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students On The Path To College,
Jossey-Bass, 2010, pp.88-92.8 Lemov, D. Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students On The Path To College, Jossey-Bass, 2010, p.91.
10 Lemov, D. Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students On The Path To College, Jossey-Bass, 2010, pp.91.
11 Lemov, D. Teach
Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students On The Path To College,
Jossey-Bass, 2010, pp.91
12 Willingham, D.T. Why
Don’t Students Like School? San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009, p.185.
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