Modelling and Metacognition.

Kia ora tatou,

To continue the subject of learning vocabulary two elements of last week’s column deserve further exploration., modelling and metacognition.

How would one model the sorts of learning we have been talking about?

This is problematical because the processes take place in the brain and are not observable. The challenge is to make them observable. One way is the “think aloud” strategy. Let’s say we are presented with the task of adding cognitive depth to a chunk or word we are learning. (This where we try to use the word in new sentences, of think deeply about how that word works.)
If we were learning the word amber, the situation might look like this:
“Can I say, ‘… going to amber…’?”
“No because amber looks like a noun, it’s a thing not an action.”
“Ah but you could say it if Amber was a name!”
“But this word doesn’t have a capital A so it’s not a name.”
“ Well what about switching from green to amber and then to red like traffic lights.”
By doing it this way we can show how we are thinking about the word, its schema, and how it works.

Metacognition is the practice of thinking about thinking, in other words to have reflect on and be able to say how your brain works, how you approached a problem. This has been shown to be a very successful strategy for effective learning. By using metacognition learners can shortcircuit the learning process because they understand how they are learning, reflect on how successful the process is and can deliberately employ the strategy. The conversation above shows metacognition at work and models patterns of thinking for the student.

Metacognition is one of the reasons why bilinguals reach higher levels of achievement than monolinguals, because they are having to make conscious decisions about how language works on a daily basis.

We can help our students learn vocabulary more effectively by having conversations about words/chunks with them and in our conversations show by “thinking aloud” how we come to particular decisions about how that word/chunk can be used.

Noho ora mai na,

Chris

Memory and vocabulary

G’day,

To continue our exploration of vocabulary learning today I will look at memory and vocabulary. Obviously the memory is the place where vocabulary is lodged, but the challenge is to get it into what is called the long term memory. Most students are good at keeping new vocabulary chunks in the short term memory but this is not the most desirable thing if you are a language learner and need them three months later.

There are a number of strategies which can help our children and students to put vocabulary into the long term memory.

• Repetition is the most obvious. However it needs to be a repetition of the hearing and use of the word in context. In other words just repeating the word means only that we remember how to spell it. We need to use it repeatedly for a purpose.

• Spacing. This means going back to the vocabulary item over a period of days. Doing this is much more effective than twenty repetitions in the first ten minutes and then no more for the next ten days. We need to revisit the item again from time to time also. One might write the word in a sentence with a little picture to illustrate it straight away andthen over the next few days do the same but in a different sentence each time.

• Use. Using the new chunk in some interesting way is one of the best strategies. Use it or lose it!

• Cognitive depth. When we have to think about our choice of a word, and think hard about our decision to use it the word is remembered more successfully. We need to use the chunk in new and creative ways.

• Imaging. Connecting the new vocabulary with mental pictures or an emotional response is a powerful memory tool, especially when the student creates their own mental “hook”. This may be why swear words are so easily learnt!

• Attention. When we make a conscious effort to learn vocabulary we improve the ability to recall that vocabulary. Accidental learning is less successful.

• Metacognition. (thinking about thinking!) When we deliberately combine the last three and also think deeply about how the new item works, how it is similar in meaning to other words we know, how it is different, its various forms, (passive, past tense, noun, verb etc)where it fits in our web of words and so on, we are working at top efficiency.

`To combine all these strategies one might write the new item in a sentence with a little picture to illustrate it straight away and then over the next few days do the same but in different sentences, using the chunk in different ways, with different tenses etc each time. All the time consciously looking for opportunities to use the chunk in conversation. Strangely enough my experience is that when one does this one then hears the new word/chunk all over the place even though it was apparently never heard before.

All of these are learning skills that can be taught to our children through modelling, getting them to do them and discussion about how learn vocabulary works.

Reference: How to Teach Vocabulary. Thornbury, S.(2002). Pearson Longman, UK.

Good luck!

Chris

Ways in which we store and retrieve vocabulary

Ngā mihi nui

Recently I was asked about learning and teaching vocabulary which led to a discussion about the ways in which we store and retrieve vocabulary. For the purpose of this discussion we accept that vocabulary is taken to mean both single words and chunks of words which combine to communicate a meaning. For example, a single word might be something like bicycle, and a chunk might be something like raining cats and dogs, or falling rain.

The difficulty in thinking about vocabulary is that words only rarely have a single meaning. A bicycle is always a bicycle, but a dog is not always a four legs and a tail dog.

Consider these phrases:

• Raining cats and dogs
• My car is a real dog
• She keeps on dogging my footsteps
• She is a dogged competitor
• Dirty Dogs (sunglasses)

All of these have some idea which links the different uses of dog but the meaning communicated is dependent on the context and the surrounding words.

When we store the word dog we create a schema, a web of interrelated meanings and experiences related to dog. The schema diagram might look like this:

Recent research is indicating that these sorts of webs of meaning
are the way in which we store vocabulary, and when we come
across a new item we will plug it in to the appropriate web.
However these webs do not exist independently of each other
but are linked to other webs. The web for dog is linked to webs
for cars, other animals, weather etc.

And so on

As parents and teachers we need to keep in mind the way in which we store vocabulary and help our students to create the webs for themselves, remembering also that for our bilingual students the webs will contain words from both languages.

Kia ora ra,

Chris.

The different purposes of language

Talofa lava.

To continue the discussion of the cultural component of language and the way this impacts on the learner I would like to take a quick look at the different purposes of language, what we might call genre. Genre here refers to text purposes such as narration (story telling), recount (telling a personal experience), giving directions etc, rather than the “science fiction”, “historical novel,” “chick flick” meaning of genre.

Every culture has its own concept of the purpose of a particular genre, and how it should be done. For example in New Zealand we would most likely think that a report should be written in the third person, giving the impression of objectivity by not using the words I, me, you, we, us. It should have an opening paragraph outlining the report, and a closing section in summary. Some cultures however expect to find the summary first, and others give reports in a story form. All of these are valid and require our language student to gain an understanding of how the language being learnt performs that task.

Another example is the purpose behind telling a story. Western cultures tend to tell stories as single stand - alone items. In my experience the stories we hear nowadays are primarily intended to entertain. In earlier times in the Western world stories were used to teach lessons about behaviour, remember the moral stories from Victorian times.

It seems to me that the Maori stories I know are commonly intended to transmit information about genealogy, tribal history and proper behaviour and are part of a longer narrative. In this way the story of how Motutapu got its name is connected to the Tainui canoe, the grave that the tree from which Tainui was carved grew, and Maui’s sister’s stillborn baby, after her first husband was turned into a dog. These are characteristics found less today often in English language stories, except perhaps for the Harry Potter books and similar series.

The implications of this for our programmes is that firstly we need to teach our students authentic genre not just a version of the English genre translated into the target language. We also need to be aware that when we put a text in front of a student, they may not understand the deeper meaning because they have the wrong expectation about that genre. If they expect that the story is meant to entertain, and are given a story intended to explain a historical relationship between two tribes, they will struggle to maintain interest and gather deeper meanings.

Ia manuia lou aso.

Chris

The backstory behind bilingualism

Ngā mihi nui ki a tatou i tēnei tauhou, Greetings to all and a happy New Year.

To start off this year’s contributions, I would like to share with you some thoughts about the backstory behind bilingualism.

It is common to hear that gaining a second language gives insights into other ways of thinking, and that culture and language are inextricably linked. In New Zealand there is prevalent view that we can learn Māori culture without learning the language. It is probable that this is an idea shaped by the misconception that culture is only song and dance.

For the purpose of this discussion though I would like us to consider culture as the system of customs, beliefs and values held by a people.

Learning the haka Ka Mate Ka Mate implies more than just knowing the words. A full understanding of the haka requires knowledge of the literal meaning of the words and the message it intends to convey. To do this one would need to understand the value system and customs of the author and the significance to him of the circumstances which instigated the haka.

To demonstrate the vastly different ways in which people interpret the world, consider the concept of time. “…going forward” is a commonly heard phrase, as is, “don’t dwell on the past.”

A Martian visiting us would think that looking forward into the unknown (the future) is an important feature of Western thinking, and the past is less important and relegated to some place on the back shelf.

In Māori the word for past in time is “mua” which is also means in front of and “muri” means future and behind. Clearly Māori have a different perspective. You might say that figuratively one faces the past and the future is behind us where we can’t see it.

Interestingly in Māori, time seems to travel in a vertical direction. ‘Te ra kei te heke mai’ is a way of expressing “next day”, heke meaning descending. Yesterday is expressed as, “te ra kua taha ake”, ake indicates an upward movement away from the speaker. So in this view tomorrow drops in on us and when it becomes yesterday, it returns to the heavens. I feel as if English considers time as something which moves horizontally but I can’t presently put my finger on how I get that idea. Any ideas?

To finish this little discussion I will leave you with a brainteaser. In Māori numbers take the form of verbs. So the number rua can be preceded by any one of a number of tense markers, eg, “Ka tahi, ka rua, ka toru, ka wha.” So in Māori a number is a verb.

What would that look like in English or French?

Because the concept is so foreign to most of us it is almost impossible to conceive of numbers being verbs and how they would work.

Through learning another language one gains deep insights into the culture which is expressed by that language.

Noho ora mai ra,

Chris Lowman

Differences between teaching in a monolingual setting and teaching in a bilingual setting

Talofa lava. 

For the last newsletter of the year I would like to take a look at some of the essential differences between teaching in a monolingual setting and teaching in a bilingual setting.

For most of us who attended the usual NZ school it would appear on the surface all that is required for a successful bilingual classroom is for a speaker of the target language to walk in and do in that language what would have been done in English. There are a number of critical differences though.

Firstly our heritage language classes are made up largely of students who are not native speakers of the language and in the first year or so have limited understanding of what is being said. The teacher in the bilingual classroom can be reasonably sure that the children’s language resources in the target language are quite small. Whereas the teacher of English in NZ can be reasonably sure that most of her students bring a rich resource of language to the classroom (barring the fairly small group of children who are native speakers of other languages).

What does this look like? Typically these students have a small vocabulary, limited to a narrow range of topics, with a limited knowledge of colloquial usage, and confused concepts about the syntax of the language (word order). None of these situations are rare in English-only classrooms, but we are talking about a matter of degree here, a vocabulary of 500-1500 in the target language compared to 2500-4000 in English. The implication of this for the bilingual teacher is that she needs teaching strategies for efficient language acquisition and a wide range of strategies for supporting children’s comprehension. In the main the teacher in a monolingual classroom assumes that students have a working knowledge of English and makes use of that knowledge. In the heritage language learning classroom the teacher has to create that level of language competence.

Being able to speak a language is no guarantee that one can teach it. Being bilingual is no guarantee that one can teach bilingually. To be a successful bilingual teacher one needs not only to know all that is required to teach in the English-only environment but also knowledge specific to second language/bilingual teaching and learning. Knowledge such as:

• the pedagogical theory behind second language bilingual learning;

• how second languages are acquired by bilinguals;

• how the brain processes new language and knowledge how the brain transfers skills and knowledge from one language to the other;

• what activities are available to accelerate these processes;

• how to encourage students to communicate in the new language in an environment dominated by English;

• how to adapt curriculum to become a vehicle for language learning as well;

• knowledge about biliteracy, not just literacy in one language; and

• how to deliver the curriculum through the language.

This last point is probably the major one. The Heritage language is not a curriculum subject. Our children are not learning the language as a subject and there is no text book for them or their teacher to follow as we would find in a secondary school or university class. The language to be learnt comes from the demands of each curriculum area and is not formally structured, it is the learning environment that is structured.

-Right from the start our children are learning and using the language as a means of communication. The curriculum is delivered in the target language, the academic skills are taught in that language, classroom social activity is ideally in that language. The students can’t escape from it at the end of the period and go to a Maths class taught in English. The teacher needs to know how to maintain the language use across all curriculum subjects and still cover the essential skills.

-Additionally this is taking place within the cultural context of the target language. In the Māori class things are done in a Māori way in line with Māori cultural beliefs and practices.

-As you can see, our teachers, teaching in the Heritage language classes need to have a special skill set, and the complexities of teaching are in excess of those for the average English speaking teacher in an English speaking classroom. When stressed it is common for bilingual teachers to yearn to return to the comparatively straightforward English-only classroom. They know how challenging being a bilingual teacher is.

Which language should be used to test/assess/counsel a bilingual child?

Kia ora tatou. 

Among the many texts on my bookshelf I have a copy of “A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism” by Colin Baker (2000). This book does very much what its title says and provides clear concise answers to the myriad of questions we teachers and parents have.

In browsing through the book I came across the question, “Which language should be used to test/assess/counsel a bilingual child? What should be the nature if such assessment?” Part of Baker’s response is about national testing systems such as our NCEA and he makes some important points about the practice of teachers and schools when assessing their students, in particular regarding the use of norm referenced tests. 

Norm referencing is the process of statistically finding an average, in other words creating what a “normal” student looks like in statistical terms.  When a student is assessed with such a tool the results show where that student stands in comparison to this statistically normal student. 

On the surface this may seem to be a reasonable process however there are some rather important fishhooks to be found. These assessment tools are often based on data gathered from native, monolingual speakers with very few bilinguals included. In Baker’s view such assessments are typically created by “White, middle class, Anglo test producers” and will include elements unfamiliar or not relevant to the bilingual. Nor do they measure the things bilinguals do need to be good at. 

Let’s try a mind experiment…Let us say, “ A normal apple is more or less ball shaped, with a core in the centre and glossy yellow-green, orange or red coloured skin. The flesh is apple flavoured and moderately crisp.”

Even though my grandfather successfully grafted a pear branch on his apple tree it is not possible to match the pears against what makes a good apple. To do so would mean saying, “This pear does not make a very good apple, it is misshapen, the wrong colour, wrong taste and too hard. The pear comes in well below the norm for apples.”

Assessments which make the assumption that a test can measure the achievement levels of bilinguals against monolingual standards effectively measure pears as if they were apples.

Baker also makes the point that assessment against monolingual norms can be disempowering to the bilingual student if it is implicit in the assessment that success is measured against monolingual standards. Inevitably bilinguals feel that their skills and knowledge are undervalued. Bilingualism is then seen as of less value, not “mainstream” and marginalised. 

Read more in: “A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism” by Colin Baker (2000) Multilingual Matters, Clevedon USA. A number of copies are held in the school library.

Noho ora mai ra, Chris