Well the Monday lesson started about 15min late because the "Homework-books" finally arrived and they were distributed to the kids and they had to copy all their homework into the book. Plus, the former teacher of the class came to visit. And she also wanted to hear the "viva la vida".
But then I started my English lesson. I told them that I wanted to have a conversation with them every morning before we start with the English. So I had the following lines on the blackboard:
GOOD MORNING EVERYBODY
GOOD MORNING MRS. KÜNDIG
HOW ARE YOU TODAY?
WE ARE FINE THANK YOU, HOW ARE YOU?
I'M WONDERFUL THANKS. ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO HAVING ENGLISH TODAY?
OH YES, WE CANNOT WAIT!
GREAT, THAN LET'S GET STARTED!
YAY!!!
Went through this conversation with the kids until they understood and then we talked it though in different emotions. Normally, angry, sad, tired, whispering and over-excited.
Then I handed out some ABC - lists and asked the kids to write down on the list every word they knew about food. There could be food, drinks, tools to eat and cook, tastes and more. I told them how to work with this ABC - list. They didn't have to wait at the A until they have found something and then go to the B. No, the aim was to wander up and down the list with their eyes and where ever they could think of an English word, they write it down.
I gave them 5 minutes to work with this list. Then I had them to compare their list with a classmate. Not the one next to them, because they have probably already seen each others lists. After another 3 minutes I stopped them and asked them to write down today's date on the list. We will get back to this list later, but for now they have activated their knowledge about food.
Now I asked them to take out the decoded text I want to work with in this unit: Shopping for a school camp I explained again how this should work. "I read the English text real slowly and you read along the German translation - Cross out every word you don't need help with, and so on"
Well, it didn't really work so well for all the student. At least 3 students I noticed to read the German waaaay behind where I was with my English version. It took them a long time to cross out the words. I'm thinking of giving this as a homework next time. Or having them read the text by themselves first because there are always so many words in those text that they already know. Like that, they could really concentrate on the words, they don't know yet while reading together. Well we only had time to read the text once. We'll go on with it next Monday.
Friday there will be no English since we go into the woods with the "Lung League" and on Monday I want to take a test with the kids to check their English level. I'll take another test at the end of the year to see their improvement.
So this was my first English - English lesson. Just once I almost said one word in German but I could swallow the ending :-)
Thursday 27 August 2015
Tuesday 25 August 2015
21st of August 2015 - Introducing the Birkenbihl approach
Well I had another sleepless night because I wasn't really sure how to get my point across. I watched the following DVD by Vera F. Birkenbihl called:
"SPRACHEN LERNEN LEICHT GEMACHT!"
languages learning easy made!
You see, I'm completely into the decoding, why not the other way around ;-)
It's a fabulous lecture given to a bunch of people such as parents, teachers and self-learners. I would have loved just to play this DVD in front of the class, but I decided not to. Instead, I wrote down all the parts I wanted to tell the class. I also decided to make this lesson in German because I really, really wanted them to understand.
So the next morning, we started with the song "viva la vida" and sang it for the head teacher. We're always together on Monday and Friday. It's only Thursday morning, that I'm by myself.
And then I introduced the Birkenbihl method to the class. I won't write here a thousand times: "I told them that there was ..." I'm going to use direct speech here as if I was talking to the class.
Difficulties with language learning
So, how many of you think, that learning a foreign language is easy? (non of them raised their hand) I'd like you to write down the two things that you're struggling with the most. This could be things such as: writing, reading, learning vocabulary, pronunciation, speaking, grammar or anything else you can think of. (I gave them a minute to think about this and to write it down. The head teacher herself came to the blackboard and wrote down one word at the back that she thought was the biggest issue that the class had) So let me tell you this: According to surveys, 90% of all student say that they have difficulties with learning a foreign language and another 90% of them struggle with Vocabulary and Grammar. Now, how many of you have written down at least one of those two issues? (ALL children raised their hands and the teacher turned over her side of the blackboard. She had written VOCI too. Maybe 1/3 of the class actually did have both of them written down but the other issues were mainly pronunciation and speaking)
The natural way of language learning
Before learning a foreign language, what language did you learn? - And how did you learn your mother tongue? Well from the 7th month of pregnancy, an embryo starts hearing his mother's voice. So before it's even born, it had two months to get used to the sound of the language. But after being born, it takes another couple of months before a baby starts using their voices to communicate. And maybe a year later it's able to say the first words. And maybe another year later it starts putting some words into sentences... And even though neither grammar nor pronunciation is accurate, everyone is happy about it. And another 2-4 years later it starts to read and write...
The unnatural way - the school way...
With a second language the school expects us to do it all at once... I can see this with my stepson... He has to learn vocabulary lists with words he has never even heard before. Even before they have talked about it in school... And what's the problem with that??? You are trying to learn something by figuring out the pronunciation yourself which is just not possible in English! In Spanish, there are rules of how to pronounce a word and if you know those rules, you can pronounce every word, no matter if you know it or not... But English? The language of homophones? Then tell my how to pronounce the letters "ough"... If it's "though" why don't I say "throw" to "through"? I just added a "r"... And if it's "bough" why can't I say "cow" to "cough"? It's just a "c" instead of a "b"... So you see that trying to cram vocabulary you don't know cannot make sense. Can it?
The origin of vocabulary lists
And who invented vocabulary lists and grammar rules? (I got answers such as: "a mean person", "a teacher", "someone stupid"...) Well, it were the monks in the Middle Ages when they went on Missions in far away countries to bring those people what they thought was the right belief. So they went to remote places and before they could convert those people to Christianity, they had to learn the language. We all agree that this is not too hard while you're in this place where this language is spoken all the time. But most monks didn't stay forever but new monks came to replace them. And to give them a head-start they sent vocabulary lists back to the convents so the monks that were going to replace them could start learning the language before they got there. So what was the difference between those monks in the convents and you students? These monks were highly motivated because they knew that they would need this language to survive in those countries. In addition to that they didn't have much to do than praise the lord, eat and pray and learn those words on the list... They didn't have 9 other subjects they had to do homework for. Learning isolated vocabulary is not brain-friendly at all but back then it was all they had. They didn't have CDs or MP3-players they could load text in the foreign language on as we do now but most language teachers still expect kids to cram vocabulary for their tests. (Even teachers who just finished their education at a university of teachers education believe that cramming vocabulary is essential for learning a foreign language although I now that our lecturer told us nothing alike and I'm quite sure that other lecturers (at least the good ones) show their students different ways of dealing with vocabulary too. Fun ways... Brain-friendly ways... Then why is it so hard to believe for teachers, that cramming vocabulary is not the way? - I just realised that I'm writing more thoughts than I actually told the class, so I put them in brackets and italicised them)
How to get the necessary repetitions
(I drew an exponential curve on the blackboard) In order to initialise vocabulary a brain need repetition. Without repetition, we'll have forgotten 75% of what we have learnt within only two days and after 30 days it's completely gone. (So here we see the sense of testing students!!!) How many of you only study something for a test? And how sustainable is that? Our brain needs repetition to be able to save data permanently. Repetition 1-5 is not too bad but what about repetition 25? 35? 45? (They looked at me with huge eyes) There is a way to get this repetition which is no so boring and time consuming as writing the same word 45 times... we can delegate this task to our subconscious mind. Just like in our mother tonge. Non of us said (let alone wrote) the word "Daddy" before we initialised it. But we heard it over and over again. "Come to daddy", "oh look, there's daddy" and so on... So we got the essential repetition by hearing it. Now our brain makes no difference between actively listen to something or just hearing a sound in the background and that's exactly what this Birkenbihl method is about.
The Birkenbihl approach
Step 1 - To decode a text
The first step of the Birkenbihl method is to crack the code of the foreign language.
In the "young world" word list there is for example: "keep somebody happy" translated with "jemanden bei guter Laune halten" while we would translate it with: "behalten jemanden glücklich" because you all can see the sense in this translation too and there's really no "good" and no "mood" in this English phrase, is there? There is lots of weird translations in those vocabulary lists and all of you would cram them for the test!
My favourite translation is "I'm the one to ask" from Unit 4 which is translated with "bei mir sind Sie an der richtigen Adresse"...
But this step is already done for you. There will be exercises where you will have to decode a text yourself but for right now, you start with step 2 of the approach.
Step 2 - Active listening
In this step, I will read the text to you in English and you will first read along the German word-by-word translation. With a black marker you can cross out all the German words that you already know. So the second time I read the text, you follow the German words where you still need them to understand and switch to the English words where ever the German word is crossed out. After a couple of times, you will have understood all of the text. The aim is, that you hear the English and you understand it. So you don't have to produce the English yet. That comes later.
Step 3 - Passive listening
This is when we let the gigantic capacity of our unconscious mind work for us while we do something fun. We let this text that we now understand every single word of play on our MP3 player, our stereo or where ever. We don't have to listen to it, it just has to be there... We can adjust the volume when everything is quiet. That's when we should be able to hear it. But then, we can concentrate on our homework, our hobbies, even watch a movie while we unconsciously make all the repetitions we would never do under different circumstances.
Step 4 - Activities
And then, after having listened to the text for about two weeks, we know it inside out and we can start doing all kinds of fun stuff. We can do role-plays, quizzes, play games, talk freely about the topic and a lot more. But since this occurs two weeks after starting with the topic we have to think ahead. So about two weeks before completing a Unit we do the active listening with a text from the next Unit. So you can go ahead and listen to it passively before we even start with the activities of the Unit.
That way you are always familiar with words we use in a Unit and you can participate straight away. With the traditional method you start a Unit and as you go along you learn more and more about it and once you know it all and it starts being fun, the Unit is finished and a new Unit start with new and unfamiliar vocabulary. We want to make it the other way around.
Does this make sense to you? Who would like to try this with me? (Really every single one of them smiled and raised their hand and I felt soooo relieved!!!) I'm really looking forward to doing this with you!
So this is it for my first German - English lesson. From now on there will be no German speaking in my English lessons anymore!
"SPRACHEN LERNEN LEICHT GEMACHT!"
languages learning easy made!
You see, I'm completely into the decoding, why not the other way around ;-)
It's a fabulous lecture given to a bunch of people such as parents, teachers and self-learners. I would have loved just to play this DVD in front of the class, but I decided not to. Instead, I wrote down all the parts I wanted to tell the class. I also decided to make this lesson in German because I really, really wanted them to understand.
So the next morning, we started with the song "viva la vida" and sang it for the head teacher. We're always together on Monday and Friday. It's only Thursday morning, that I'm by myself.
And then I introduced the Birkenbihl method to the class. I won't write here a thousand times: "I told them that there was ..." I'm going to use direct speech here as if I was talking to the class.
Difficulties with language learning
So, how many of you think, that learning a foreign language is easy? (non of them raised their hand) I'd like you to write down the two things that you're struggling with the most. This could be things such as: writing, reading, learning vocabulary, pronunciation, speaking, grammar or anything else you can think of. (I gave them a minute to think about this and to write it down. The head teacher herself came to the blackboard and wrote down one word at the back that she thought was the biggest issue that the class had) So let me tell you this: According to surveys, 90% of all student say that they have difficulties with learning a foreign language and another 90% of them struggle with Vocabulary and Grammar. Now, how many of you have written down at least one of those two issues? (ALL children raised their hands and the teacher turned over her side of the blackboard. She had written VOCI too. Maybe 1/3 of the class actually did have both of them written down but the other issues were mainly pronunciation and speaking)
The natural way of language learning
Before learning a foreign language, what language did you learn? - And how did you learn your mother tongue? Well from the 7th month of pregnancy, an embryo starts hearing his mother's voice. So before it's even born, it had two months to get used to the sound of the language. But after being born, it takes another couple of months before a baby starts using their voices to communicate. And maybe a year later it's able to say the first words. And maybe another year later it starts putting some words into sentences... And even though neither grammar nor pronunciation is accurate, everyone is happy about it. And another 2-4 years later it starts to read and write...
The unnatural way - the school way...
With a second language the school expects us to do it all at once... I can see this with my stepson... He has to learn vocabulary lists with words he has never even heard before. Even before they have talked about it in school... And what's the problem with that??? You are trying to learn something by figuring out the pronunciation yourself which is just not possible in English! In Spanish, there are rules of how to pronounce a word and if you know those rules, you can pronounce every word, no matter if you know it or not... But English? The language of homophones? Then tell my how to pronounce the letters "ough"... If it's "though" why don't I say "throw" to "through"? I just added a "r"... And if it's "bough" why can't I say "cow" to "cough"? It's just a "c" instead of a "b"... So you see that trying to cram vocabulary you don't know cannot make sense. Can it?
The origin of vocabulary lists
And who invented vocabulary lists and grammar rules? (I got answers such as: "a mean person", "a teacher", "someone stupid"...) Well, it were the monks in the Middle Ages when they went on Missions in far away countries to bring those people what they thought was the right belief. So they went to remote places and before they could convert those people to Christianity, they had to learn the language. We all agree that this is not too hard while you're in this place where this language is spoken all the time. But most monks didn't stay forever but new monks came to replace them. And to give them a head-start they sent vocabulary lists back to the convents so the monks that were going to replace them could start learning the language before they got there. So what was the difference between those monks in the convents and you students? These monks were highly motivated because they knew that they would need this language to survive in those countries. In addition to that they didn't have much to do than praise the lord, eat and pray and learn those words on the list... They didn't have 9 other subjects they had to do homework for. Learning isolated vocabulary is not brain-friendly at all but back then it was all they had. They didn't have CDs or MP3-players they could load text in the foreign language on as we do now but most language teachers still expect kids to cram vocabulary for their tests. (Even teachers who just finished their education at a university of teachers education believe that cramming vocabulary is essential for learning a foreign language although I now that our lecturer told us nothing alike and I'm quite sure that other lecturers (at least the good ones) show their students different ways of dealing with vocabulary too. Fun ways... Brain-friendly ways... Then why is it so hard to believe for teachers, that cramming vocabulary is not the way? - I just realised that I'm writing more thoughts than I actually told the class, so I put them in brackets and italicised them)
How to get the necessary repetitions
(I drew an exponential curve on the blackboard) In order to initialise vocabulary a brain need repetition. Without repetition, we'll have forgotten 75% of what we have learnt within only two days and after 30 days it's completely gone. (So here we see the sense of testing students!!!) How many of you only study something for a test? And how sustainable is that? Our brain needs repetition to be able to save data permanently. Repetition 1-5 is not too bad but what about repetition 25? 35? 45? (They looked at me with huge eyes) There is a way to get this repetition which is no so boring and time consuming as writing the same word 45 times... we can delegate this task to our subconscious mind. Just like in our mother tonge. Non of us said (let alone wrote) the word "Daddy" before we initialised it. But we heard it over and over again. "Come to daddy", "oh look, there's daddy" and so on... So we got the essential repetition by hearing it. Now our brain makes no difference between actively listen to something or just hearing a sound in the background and that's exactly what this Birkenbihl method is about.
The Birkenbihl approach
Step 1 - To decode a text
The first step of the Birkenbihl method is to crack the code of the foreign language.
In the "young world" word list there is for example: "keep somebody happy" translated with "jemanden bei guter Laune halten" while we would translate it with: "behalten jemanden glücklich" because you all can see the sense in this translation too and there's really no "good" and no "mood" in this English phrase, is there? There is lots of weird translations in those vocabulary lists and all of you would cram them for the test!
My favourite translation is "I'm the one to ask" from Unit 4 which is translated with "bei mir sind Sie an der richtigen Adresse"...
But this step is already done for you. There will be exercises where you will have to decode a text yourself but for right now, you start with step 2 of the approach.
Step 2 - Active listening
In this step, I will read the text to you in English and you will first read along the German word-by-word translation. With a black marker you can cross out all the German words that you already know. So the second time I read the text, you follow the German words where you still need them to understand and switch to the English words where ever the German word is crossed out. After a couple of times, you will have understood all of the text. The aim is, that you hear the English and you understand it. So you don't have to produce the English yet. That comes later.
Step 3 - Passive listening
This is when we let the gigantic capacity of our unconscious mind work for us while we do something fun. We let this text that we now understand every single word of play on our MP3 player, our stereo or where ever. We don't have to listen to it, it just has to be there... We can adjust the volume when everything is quiet. That's when we should be able to hear it. But then, we can concentrate on our homework, our hobbies, even watch a movie while we unconsciously make all the repetitions we would never do under different circumstances.
Step 4 - Activities
And then, after having listened to the text for about two weeks, we know it inside out and we can start doing all kinds of fun stuff. We can do role-plays, quizzes, play games, talk freely about the topic and a lot more. But since this occurs two weeks after starting with the topic we have to think ahead. So about two weeks before completing a Unit we do the active listening with a text from the next Unit. So you can go ahead and listen to it passively before we even start with the activities of the Unit.
That way you are always familiar with words we use in a Unit and you can participate straight away. With the traditional method you start a Unit and as you go along you learn more and more about it and once you know it all and it starts being fun, the Unit is finished and a new Unit start with new and unfamiliar vocabulary. We want to make it the other way around.
Does this make sense to you? Who would like to try this with me? (Really every single one of them smiled and raised their hand and I felt soooo relieved!!!) I'm really looking forward to doing this with you!
So this is it for my first German - English lesson. From now on there will be no German speaking in my English lessons anymore!
Monday 24 August 2015
20th of August 2015 - Viva la vida
Long time no see!!!
I had two pretty rough weeks and finally get the chance to write in my blog again. In this post I'll write about my first experience with class I just started to teach.
The school I started to work for starts their school year on Tuesday and since I work Monday, Thursday and Friday my first day of work was Thursday the 20th of August. But the class had no English that day. Each Thursday I teach two German lessons, one "Religion and Culture" and one Music. But I'm planning on making double lessons in R&C every other week so I started with an English song.
I'll write in a separate post, why I'm positive that you can learn a foreign language mainly through lyrics of songs that you listen to...
Since I will not speak any German during our English lessons, this seamed to be a good way of introducing this method to the class. In the last school year they wrote down songs they would like to sing and I got this list from the teacher. I know how to play the guitar but really not too good since I haven't plays in decades! So I decided to go for the "Viva la vida" by Coldplay since their English is good and the chords are pretty easy.
So first thing I did was to play the intro of the song on my guitar and have them guess, what song it is. Then I handed out the following document:
Coldplay - viva la vida
We started with the first verse. I explained the class that I'll read the English text and that they should follow the German word by word translation with their eyes. And every time they come to a word, they understand in English without the German crutch, they should paint over it and read the English instead.
So for example:
The first time they hear me reading this English line they read the following:
I used to rule the world
Ich pflegte zu regieren die Welt
The second time, they paint over "Ich", "zu" and "die Welt" because they understand the English just as well as the German. So they actually read "I pflegte to regieren the world" while they hear the sentence.
I used to rule the world
Ich pflegte zu regieren die Welt
And the third, forth or fifth (etc.) time, they don't need the German crutch anymore, because they understand all of it.
I used to rule the world
Ich pflegte zu regieren die Welt
So from now on, they don't need the German ever, ever again. So when they understand the whole song, we can work with it in English with everyone understanding.
So verse by verse we looked at the vocabulary and discussed the meaning. With a future history teacher in the class, we figured out what "Revolutionaries" were and why they waited for the kings head on a silver plate. It was fascinating, how much this young guy knew! After getting through a verse, we would sing it together. The first couple of verses, I read the lines several times, so they could cross out the words they knew but I felt the motivation drop so for the second half of the song we only clarified the meaning of the verses and started singing the song. We'll get back to it later.
I have more ideas for this song, and I will write about them soon.
My conclusion out of this music lessons is the following:
- It may not have been the best idea to start a whole new method with a quite difficult song but still, the kids were highly motivated to sing it because they like it a lot.
- I should have introduced the whole Birkenbihl approach with all it's 4 steps before starting with step 2 so that they know that this step IS the one they have to get through in order to get all the fun stuff!
So after getting home this day, I decided, that it was time now, to tell the class about my plans with them. And this I did on Friday. But I'll tell you about this tomorrow ;-)
I had two pretty rough weeks and finally get the chance to write in my blog again. In this post I'll write about my first experience with class I just started to teach.
The school I started to work for starts their school year on Tuesday and since I work Monday, Thursday and Friday my first day of work was Thursday the 20th of August. But the class had no English that day. Each Thursday I teach two German lessons, one "Religion and Culture" and one Music. But I'm planning on making double lessons in R&C every other week so I started with an English song.
I'll write in a separate post, why I'm positive that you can learn a foreign language mainly through lyrics of songs that you listen to...
Since I will not speak any German during our English lessons, this seamed to be a good way of introducing this method to the class. In the last school year they wrote down songs they would like to sing and I got this list from the teacher. I know how to play the guitar but really not too good since I haven't plays in decades! So I decided to go for the "Viva la vida" by Coldplay since their English is good and the chords are pretty easy.
So first thing I did was to play the intro of the song on my guitar and have them guess, what song it is. Then I handed out the following document:
Coldplay - viva la vida
We started with the first verse. I explained the class that I'll read the English text and that they should follow the German word by word translation with their eyes. And every time they come to a word, they understand in English without the German crutch, they should paint over it and read the English instead.
So for example:
The first time they hear me reading this English line they read the following:
I used to rule the world
Ich pflegte zu regieren die Welt
The second time, they paint over "Ich", "zu" and "die Welt" because they understand the English just as well as the German. So they actually read "I pflegte to regieren the world" while they hear the sentence.
I used to rule the world
Ich pflegte zu regieren die Welt
And the third, forth or fifth (etc.) time, they don't need the German crutch anymore, because they understand all of it.
I used to rule the world
Ich pflegte zu regieren die Welt
So from now on, they don't need the German ever, ever again. So when they understand the whole song, we can work with it in English with everyone understanding.
So verse by verse we looked at the vocabulary and discussed the meaning. With a future history teacher in the class, we figured out what "Revolutionaries" were and why they waited for the kings head on a silver plate. It was fascinating, how much this young guy knew! After getting through a verse, we would sing it together. The first couple of verses, I read the lines several times, so they could cross out the words they knew but I felt the motivation drop so for the second half of the song we only clarified the meaning of the verses and started singing the song. We'll get back to it later.
I have more ideas for this song, and I will write about them soon.
My conclusion out of this music lessons is the following:
- It may not have been the best idea to start a whole new method with a quite difficult song but still, the kids were highly motivated to sing it because they like it a lot.
- I should have introduced the whole Birkenbihl approach with all it's 4 steps before starting with step 2 so that they know that this step IS the one they have to get through in order to get all the fun stuff!
So after getting home this day, I decided, that it was time now, to tell the class about my plans with them. And this I did on Friday. But I'll tell you about this tomorrow ;-)
Wednesday 12 August 2015
Action research with my stepson
I would like to share an outcome of an action research that I have done with my stepson Nick.
Nick grew up in Switzerland but with Swedish as mother tongue. Before he started staying with his father every other weekend at the age of four, he hardly spoke any Swiss German at all. This lack of German always caused him trouble in school... Then at the age of 10, he moved to Sweden with his mother and his two sisters and had no point of contact to the German language except for the very meagre Skype conversations and the few weeks he spent in Switzerland on his holidays.
Then last summer, he decided he wanted to live with his father and now he stays with us and goes back to the Swiss school. Most people took it for granted, that now, after being separated from a German speaking environment for two years, he'd have lots of trouble in school. At the beginning it surely wasn't easy for him at all but then I had to do an action research for my teachers education and I decided to do it on him. I had him read (all) the books of the "Magic Tree House" of Mary Pope Osborne in German and at the same time listen to the audio book of those books. This way he got through a book in a reasonable time (about 50-60 minutes) because he could adjust his reading speed to the speed of the reader.
Now, as theoretical background of my action research I used a part of one of my favourite books by Vera F. Birkenbihl called "Boys and Girls. How they learn" (the book is in German and I'll add it to my list of references) Now Birkenbihl (2012, p.72f) explains that John MEDCALF, a special education teacher, became aware that kids (mainly boys) had trouble reading, if they couldn't establish a connection between sound and caption of a word. So the key is to listen to an audio book and reading the same text at the same time. Her way of language learning is based on this awareness too.
So if we are used to reading letter by letter to try to figure out the word - which takes so much time and energy - start to work with his method, we don't have time to look at the letters. We have to start looking at the whole words. The connection of sound and caption gets stronger and stronger the more often we hear and see a word and suddenly it's built so that wherever we see this word, we know it straight away without having to think at all. Now about 80% of the words in these books (actually in pretty much all books or texts) are basic vocabulary. So imagine if our brain recognises 80% of all words without us having to read them consciously, how much easier will it be to get through a text even without the help of an audio book?
It was amazing to see Nicks improvement in German, which at that time was his second language too. I tested his reading abilities without audio books before and after reading through all 44 volumes of the "Magic Tree House" and the difference was huge. If anyone is interested in the whole action research paper I wrote, just let me know. But it's written in German...
Well if this works for him, I'm a hundred percent sure that it can work for all kids learning a foreign language. The main difference I see between Nick learning German and a primary class learning English is, that Nick would have understood those audio books without any help. His receptive oral language skills were there and so he just improved his receptive written skills and his productive skills. Now in the class I will be teaching, I will have to work on the receptive oral skills first, before I can just have them read books themselves like Nick did. But I'm sure they can get there too.
Birkenbihl, Vera F. (2012). Jungen und Mädchen: wie sie lernen. 6. Auflage. Bergisch Gladbach:
Breuer & Wardin
(Boys and Girls: how they learn)
Nick grew up in Switzerland but with Swedish as mother tongue. Before he started staying with his father every other weekend at the age of four, he hardly spoke any Swiss German at all. This lack of German always caused him trouble in school... Then at the age of 10, he moved to Sweden with his mother and his two sisters and had no point of contact to the German language except for the very meagre Skype conversations and the few weeks he spent in Switzerland on his holidays.
Then last summer, he decided he wanted to live with his father and now he stays with us and goes back to the Swiss school. Most people took it for granted, that now, after being separated from a German speaking environment for two years, he'd have lots of trouble in school. At the beginning it surely wasn't easy for him at all but then I had to do an action research for my teachers education and I decided to do it on him. I had him read (all) the books of the "Magic Tree House" of Mary Pope Osborne in German and at the same time listen to the audio book of those books. This way he got through a book in a reasonable time (about 50-60 minutes) because he could adjust his reading speed to the speed of the reader.
Now, as theoretical background of my action research I used a part of one of my favourite books by Vera F. Birkenbihl called "Boys and Girls. How they learn" (the book is in German and I'll add it to my list of references) Now Birkenbihl (2012, p.72f) explains that John MEDCALF, a special education teacher, became aware that kids (mainly boys) had trouble reading, if they couldn't establish a connection between sound and caption of a word. So the key is to listen to an audio book and reading the same text at the same time. Her way of language learning is based on this awareness too.
So if we are used to reading letter by letter to try to figure out the word - which takes so much time and energy - start to work with his method, we don't have time to look at the letters. We have to start looking at the whole words. The connection of sound and caption gets stronger and stronger the more often we hear and see a word and suddenly it's built so that wherever we see this word, we know it straight away without having to think at all. Now about 80% of the words in these books (actually in pretty much all books or texts) are basic vocabulary. So imagine if our brain recognises 80% of all words without us having to read them consciously, how much easier will it be to get through a text even without the help of an audio book?
It was amazing to see Nicks improvement in German, which at that time was his second language too. I tested his reading abilities without audio books before and after reading through all 44 volumes of the "Magic Tree House" and the difference was huge. If anyone is interested in the whole action research paper I wrote, just let me know. But it's written in German...
Well if this works for him, I'm a hundred percent sure that it can work for all kids learning a foreign language. The main difference I see between Nick learning German and a primary class learning English is, that Nick would have understood those audio books without any help. His receptive oral language skills were there and so he just improved his receptive written skills and his productive skills. Now in the class I will be teaching, I will have to work on the receptive oral skills first, before I can just have them read books themselves like Nick did. But I'm sure they can get there too.
Birkenbihl, Vera F. (2012). Jungen und Mädchen: wie sie lernen. 6. Auflage. Bergisch Gladbach:
Breuer & Wardin
(Boys and Girls: how they learn)
Tuesday 11 August 2015
Background of the class
In about a week, school starts back and I will start teaching English (amongst other subjects such as German, Maths, Music, Sports and Religion&Culture) to a sixth grade primary class.
Last Christmas I had the chance to work in this particular class as relief teacher and I was warned, that the English level was not high at all. I have to admit, it was even lower than I expected. Two years ago, when the class was taken over by their new teachers, there were issues way more important such as German and Maths that they had to ketch up with. So there really wasn't a lot of focus on English, which I completely understand.
Here are just a few things I noticed last winter:
But with only 4 lessons to teach, introducing a whole new method would not have made sense. What fortunate coincidence that I now get the chance to teach exactly this class for a whole year!
Last Christmas I had the chance to work in this particular class as relief teacher and I was warned, that the English level was not high at all. I have to admit, it was even lower than I expected. Two years ago, when the class was taken over by their new teachers, there were issues way more important such as German and Maths that they had to ketch up with. So there really wasn't a lot of focus on English, which I completely understand.
Here are just a few things I noticed last winter:
- The kids are not used to getting their orders in English and do demand that they are spoken German with
- They often reply in German as well
- Lots of basic vocabulary is not internalised
- Neither are basic grammatical rules
- A few kids really enjoy speaking and don't mind being wrong (which is wonderful!) but most don't really like to speak at all
But with only 4 lessons to teach, introducing a whole new method would not have made sense. What fortunate coincidence that I now get the chance to teach exactly this class for a whole year!
Monday 10 August 2015
Used literature
List of References:
Birkenbihl, Vera F. (2011a): Sprachenlernen leichtgemacht! Die Birkenbihl-Methode Fremdsprachen zu lernen. 34., komplett überarbeitete Auflage. München: mvg Verlag.
(Language learning made easy! The Birkenbihl-Method of learning a foreign language)
Birkenbihl, Vera F. (2011b) : Trotzdem LEHREN. 5. Auflage. München: mvg Verlag.
(TEACH anyway)
Birkenbihl, Vera F. (2012). Jungen und Mädchen: wie sie lernen. 6. Auflage. Bergisch Gladbach:
Breuer & Wardin
(Boys and Girls: how they learn)
Holenstein, Karin (2013): Gehirn-gerechtes Sprachenlernen. Die Birkenbihl-Methode im Sprachunterricht. 1. Auflage. Bern: hep verlag ag.
(brain-friendly language learning. The Birkenbihl-Method in the language education)
Spratt Mary / Pulverness Alan / Williams Melanie (2014): The TKT Teaching Knowledge Test - Course Modules 1, 2 and 3. 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press
(The grey and cursive translations are not names of English books. They are just there so that my English-speaking readers know what the title of the books are about. I'm reading them in German)
I have four main books I want to be using as theoretical background of my action research.
Birkenbihl, Vera F. (2011a): Sprachenlernen leichtgemacht! Die Birkenbihl-Methode Fremdsprachen zu lernen. 34., komplett überarbeitete Auflage. München: mvg Verlag.
(Language learning made easy! The Birkenbihl-Method of learning a foreign language)
Birkenbihl, Vera F. (2011b) : Trotzdem LEHREN. 5. Auflage. München: mvg Verlag.
(TEACH anyway)
Birkenbihl, Vera F. (2012). Jungen und Mädchen: wie sie lernen. 6. Auflage. Bergisch Gladbach:
Breuer & Wardin
(Boys and Girls: how they learn)
Holenstein, Karin (2013): Gehirn-gerechtes Sprachenlernen. Die Birkenbihl-Methode im Sprachunterricht. 1. Auflage. Bern: hep verlag ag.
(brain-friendly language learning. The Birkenbihl-Method in the language education)
Spratt Mary / Pulverness Alan / Williams Melanie (2014): The TKT Teaching Knowledge Test - Course Modules 1, 2 and 3. 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press
(The grey and cursive translations are not names of English books. They are just there so that my English-speaking readers know what the title of the books are about. I'm reading them in German)
I have four main books I want to be using as theoretical background of my action research.
- Three books are from Vera F. Birkenbihl. She is an absolute expert in brain-friendly learning and illustrates impressively how learning can be fun and sustainable at the same time. I will write a lot more about her as a go along.
- One book is from Karin Holenstein. She is a very experienced teacher herself and has lots of ideas of how to apply the Birkenbihl-Method successfully to primary school. She writes her book from the perspective of a primary teacher, a mother of primary students and a language coach.
- And the last one is the course book we have used at the University of Education Zurich.
- I'll probably amend this list with another book about action research but I'm not quiet sure which one to use.
Saturday 8 August 2015
Preperation Unit 1
I'm working with the teaching material called "Young World 4" but I will only cover parts of it. I'll take out at least one text out of a unit and surely cover the grammatical issues.
I have to anticipate something of my thesis that I will define more precisely later on. I truly believe, that if you know the exact meaning of every single word in a text that you hear over and over and over again, you will memorise these words and grammatical structures without actually studying it. Just think of songs that you know the text of...
So I want to work with songs, audio books and one or a few texts out of each "Young World" unit that I have on the CD that comes with it. First of all I need to find the good text of each unit. Texts I can work with and text that cover the most important issues of the unit.
So, Unit 1 in the book is about the way we live. First there are four texts about four different families and the food they eat. I looked up the texts and searched them for the words in the vocabulary list. The text that covers the most vocabulary and also the grammar is the one about the shopping list for a school camp. Even better: This is a dialogue so I can have the kids to do role plays with it once the know it really well.
First I thought about how I can get them to learn the whole vocabulary even if we don't work with all the material but honestly, there are so many words in there, that are not even useful. I'm sure that they learn more, if they internalise lots of other word that I will cover with different song lyrics, audio books and so on, so I'll make use of my right to leave out parts of the vocabulary and in return expect them to know other words (from songs for example)...
So for Unit 1 I will work with the text "Shopping for a school camp" which is track 9 on the CD.
This text I will introduce to the class at the very beginning of the school term and then switch to a song or a short story. Their only homework for English will be to listen to this one text over and over again. Then after 2 weeks of "passive listening" (by Vera F. Birkenbihl => will be explained more precisely) the kids will be ready to work and play with this text.
I have to anticipate something of my thesis that I will define more precisely later on. I truly believe, that if you know the exact meaning of every single word in a text that you hear over and over and over again, you will memorise these words and grammatical structures without actually studying it. Just think of songs that you know the text of...
So I want to work with songs, audio books and one or a few texts out of each "Young World" unit that I have on the CD that comes with it. First of all I need to find the good text of each unit. Texts I can work with and text that cover the most important issues of the unit.
So, Unit 1 in the book is about the way we live. First there are four texts about four different families and the food they eat. I looked up the texts and searched them for the words in the vocabulary list. The text that covers the most vocabulary and also the grammar is the one about the shopping list for a school camp. Even better: This is a dialogue so I can have the kids to do role plays with it once the know it really well.
First I thought about how I can get them to learn the whole vocabulary even if we don't work with all the material but honestly, there are so many words in there, that are not even useful. I'm sure that they learn more, if they internalise lots of other word that I will cover with different song lyrics, audio books and so on, so I'll make use of my right to leave out parts of the vocabulary and in return expect them to know other words (from songs for example)...
So for Unit 1 I will work with the text "Shopping for a school camp" which is track 9 on the CD.
This text I will introduce to the class at the very beginning of the school term and then switch to a song or a short story. Their only homework for English will be to listen to this one text over and over again. Then after 2 weeks of "passive listening" (by Vera F. Birkenbihl => will be explained more precisely) the kids will be ready to work and play with this text.
Friday 7 August 2015
What this is about...
I will write my Bachelor thesis as an action research in the class I will be teaching in the upcoming school year. I'll be writing it in English, since it concerns English teaching.
This blog will be my diary in which I write my thoughts, preparation, plans, feelings, outcomes and much more. It will be kept as a personal diary so who ever reads it shall forgive grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. Those parts that I will use for my actual work will of course be revised. I will now start with the preparations I've done yesterday to keep me up-to-date and when time allows it I'll write all the background information.
This blog will be my diary in which I write my thoughts, preparation, plans, feelings, outcomes and much more. It will be kept as a personal diary so who ever reads it shall forgive grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. Those parts that I will use for my actual work will of course be revised. I will now start with the preparations I've done yesterday to keep me up-to-date and when time allows it I'll write all the background information.
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