I want to go there

My version of I want to go there doesn't include websites or resources but after our in-residence sessions I'm realizing that a lot of what we've discussed can't be applied directly into what I do in the world of SLA. Therefore, I'm bending the rules a bit. Also, I'm hoping it may help everyone understand the world of SLA a little bit better.

Since I only have one year of experience teaching, second language teaching methods are relativity new to me. The only prior insight I had into the world of SLA was as a student. Recently, my eyes have been opened. I'm beginning to see the errors in the ways of high school Spanish courses, and it's greatly impacting the way I'd like to run my class.

Almost everyone who took Spanish courses is high school says "I took Spanish for three years, but I didn't learn anything". How can this be? Allow me to explain. First, some quick background: the verb "to talk" is hablar in Spanish. In English, to specify the subject or the agent of the verb, you place a pronoun in front of it: I talk, you talk, we talk. In Spanish, the agent is inflected in the verb itself, and pronouns are unnecessary: I talk = hablo, you talk = hablas, we talk = hablamos. Most of you are probably aware of this already.

For some ridiculous reason, some time in the past someone decided that the best way to learn a second language was through drills. There is still evidence in the book I was using to teach this past year, and unfortunately in the exams as well. For example, the textbook came with a teachers handbook, with suggested activities corresponding to each lesson. When we started a new chapter and began to look at, say, the preterite tense, the book suggested that a good in-class activity would be, for example, a game where the class is divided into teams, the teacher yells out "I talked!" and the first team to correctly conjugate hablar into first person, preterite (hablé) and yell it out would get a point, and so on. All I can say is wow.

Now, I remember in high school Spanish class, spending days upon days working on verb tables. Every few days we'd get a new blank table, with new verbs, and we'd have to conjugate them accordingly and then memorize them. Then the tests would consist of matching a conjugated verb to it subject or something of the sort.

Here's the thing: does anyone remember learning their first language this way? No. Because we didn't. We learned how to speak English (presumably) in a practical/hands-on way. We certainly didn't spend an entire hour talking about one verb and how it functions. We learned the language through reading books, and doing activities, and through other mediums specifically designed with a simplified version of the language, to help our development. And repetition, yes, but not memorization.

Unfortunately, the Spanish Department at MSU is somewhere in transition. Obviously they don't expect us to spend class time running through drills and having the students repeat conjugations after us, but the homework and the tests are still formatted with "fill in the blank with the correct form of the verb in the ______ tense" activities.

I'm slowly getting to the point here. My goal is to provide my students with a practical version of the language, with real world contexts, and testing them on content. I like to teach my students Spanish in the same way that they learned English. And yes, they will probably have less accuracy with their conjugations and say "he said" instead of "I said" a few times, but what toddler doesn't let an "I go-ed" slip through before eventually learning "I went". I hope you're following all of this rambling..

I want to "go" my class to a place where in class we read "The Cat in the Hat" and then have the corresponding test for that unit have questions about the content of the story also: "Who said _______?" "Who broke ______?". Now obviously that would only be about 1/10th of the material from that lesson, but I think you get the idea. No more "fill in the blank with the correct conjugations." They'll still have plenty of exposure to verb conjugations, but also so much more.

Now I do practice this already, giving quizzes that test for content, but since I don't control the syllabus, these quizzes only count as weekly participation grades, leaving overall grades to mostly still be based on the "fill in the blank" exams and homework. Therefore, although my students do get this exposure to the language, they lose sight of the real goal (learning Spanish in a practical and useful way) and their need for drills takes over when it comes time to study for their exams. I want there to be no confusion as to what our true goal is in an SLA classroom.