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We have gotten it wrong, really wrong, in the language classroom. Historically, the teacher stood at the front of the classroom spouting details of grammar. Students sat at desks placed in straight rows directed toward the teacher and madly took notes. They later filled out worksheets and tried to memorize the content presented by the all-knowing educator. And this is still often the scenario today.

What's missing? Students are not allowed to focus on the one aspect of learning a language that intrigues them -- the speaking. So much time is spent teaching students about the language that they rarely have time to use it in a genuine way. The result is that most students decide to stop studying a foreign language once they realize they're not actually achieving their goal of speaking it.

The first step toward teaching students to speak a language well is understanding proficiency. Great language teachers comprehend proficiency levels and teach their students about them. Once proficiency is the central focus in the classroom, grammar no longer reigns -- communication does. Spending time in the classroom on all modes of communication -- interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational -- is essential, but interpersonal communication should be the main emphasis. To achieve this, the teacher must get out of the way.

If the teacher is always speaking, the students are not. For students to achieve the communicative practice they need, the solution is simple: The less the teacher speaks, the more students do.

Through classroom observation, I have seen that some teachers are much more comfortable letting their students take center stage than others. And I have concluded that those teachers who are most comfortable with student-centered classrooms see the greatest linguistic results, have less attrition from one level to the next, and have more students who are engaged and happy.

Strategies for Focusing on Student Proficiency

Begin each day with an interpersonal speaking activity.

Require students to use the target language in class.

Eliminate activities in which you ask individual students questions. Instead, promote pair work -- larger groups mean that individual students speak and negotiate meaning less. (Carefully consider the pairs: Putting an A student with a D student will frustrate them both, and putting close friends together will likely cause a distraction.)

Broach interesting topics that allow students to use the vocabulary they are learning or have learned previously.

Make your presence known. Constantly walk around the classroom, mentoring as you go.

Spend time modeling what you want your students to do, but don't overdo it. For example, specifying verb tenses and vocabulary that must be used during their exchanges will quickly make an authentic activity inauthentic.

Become comfortable with organized chaos. Students may not use the tenses you had hoped, they may make up words, and they may even throw in English words here and there, but this is perfectly normal and part of the language acquisition process.

5 Interpersonal Activities to Get You Started

Speed dating: It sounds risqué but only entails lining up desks in rows facing each other. Use a website like Wheel Decide to change topics every two to five minutes. The students in one row remain in their seats, and the ones facing them move every time the time expires. Every few minutes, new pairs have a conversation.

Poster making: Throw out a question related to your unit, such as "What do you do to get ready for school?" Have students working in pairs use a website such as Canva or Easel.ly to create posters answering the question. Next, have them present their posters to the class.

Pail of prompts: Make slips of papers with different scenarios related to your unit. Have students draw them out of a pail and practice a conversation on the topic. Next, have each group go to the front of the room and talk about their topic for one or two minutes. Set a timer and have them talk until the time runs out.

Silent exchanges: Give students working in pairs a topic related to the current unit. Have each pair create a Google document that they share with each other and with you. Each pair has a written conversation on the topic. The teacher can monitor the conversations and give feedback via the Google doc. This allows students valuable interpersonal writing practice before they move on to the more high-pressure exercise of interpersonal speaking. Once they have practiced the conversation in silence, have them read it out loud.

First Five Fridays: Assign each student in your class a Friday or two during the school year when he or she has to direct a conversation for the first five minutes of class. During this time, he or she can broach any (appropriate) topic. Students are responsible for making sure the conversation stays alive for the entire five minutes.

These are just a few activities you can use to get students talking in class. If you've used any others, please share them in the comments section.

A special thank you goes out to Greg Duncan and Sabrina Huang for inspiring aspects of these activities.

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In Language Classrooms, Students Should Be Talking

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We have gotten it wrong, really wrong, in the language classroom. Historically, the teacher stood at the front of the classroom spouting details of grammar. Students sat at desks placed in straight rows directed toward the teacher and madly took notes. They later filled out worksheets and tried to memorize the content presented by the all-knowing educator.

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World language teachers have one goal: to develop students' ability to communicate in the target language. Over the last 30 years, the field of world language education has undergone a major paradigm shift, moving away from verb conjugation charts, grammar rules, and vocabulary lists toward student-centered activities that provide target language input in a meaningful and authentic way.

With the release of Can-Do Statements by the National Council of State Supervisors for Languages and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (NCSSFL-ACTFL), most recently updated in 2017, teachers across the nation began to focus on language learning experiences centered on building communication skills, asking the critical question: What can students do with the language? Although the origins of this movement can be traced back to the early 1990s, the effects of the shift are still gradually making their way into classrooms to impact how educators teach content.

This shift requires a reimagining of some tried-and-true methods, instructional practices, and resources-no easy task for many veteran educators.

For Washington, DC Public Schools' Global Education team, the shift meant creating a new open-source curriculum, backwards-mapped using the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements, the World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages, and AP themes.

In the spring of 2016, we collaborated with seasoned DCPS teachers to develop materials that provided authentic communicative experiences. We used principles of Understanding by Design, and one of the first questions was how to assess student learning. If we were going to ask teachers to step away from vocab quizzes and fill-in-the-blank tests as the main modes of assessment, we had to provide a viable alternative.

That alternative appeared in the same semester, when the district's Office of Teaching and Learning announced a new initiative known as Cornerstones -a series of high-quality, powerful lessons that students engage in through the DCPS units of study across grade levels and content areas, including English language arts, math, science, social studies, art, health, physical education, and world languages.

Cornerstones are developed by DCPS teachers, and are designed for students to make meaningful real-world connections to engaging and rigorous content through proven, high-impact instructional models. We determined that we could use Cornerstones to create project-based learning assignments for our world language units.

Design

Project-based learning has always thrived in the world language classroom-we wanted to capitalize on this to create meaningful projects that aligned with the skills students need to be effective communicators. To do this, we turned to Integrated Performance Assessments, also known as IPAs, to assess unit content. IPAs are cluster assessments, with each task designed to evaluate one of the three modes of communication -interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational. Well-designed IPAs include one authentic real-world scenario and three interconnected tasks, and often engage students in solving a problem or creating a product.

Starting with the Can-Do statements for each unit, we designed tasks that could measure student mastery of the content knowledge from the unit and students' ability to apply it to real-life communicative tasks. A team of DCPS teachers created the assessments, including lesson plans and student-facing materials, and translated them into six of the seven target languages we offer.

Considerations for students with special needs and heritage and native speakers, and strategies for family engagement, were all developed alongside the content. Teachers created the outline for the Final Course IPAs, which would holistically measure Can-Do Statements and skills developed throughout the course. In the first year, a total of 28 projects were created across seven grade bands.

Implementation

This assessment approach was a shift for more than a few teachers. We knew that to ensure a successful rollout, teachers would need to be supported and trained appropriately. For the first round of new projects, this meant targeted professional development on the Cornerstones projects. We hosted district-wide sessions on the projects with teachers, focused on the instructional methods for successful implementation, and created a safe space for teachers to identify and discuss potential challenges.

As part of the Cornerstones initiative, any required specialty materials and resources were provided by the District and distributed to schools. Teachers implemented projects throughout the year, and students had the opportunity to engage in a variety of experiences.

Some students created an online educational justice campaign; others learned how to discuss improvements they would like to see in their school community, culminating in an advocacy letter to the Chancellor of DCPS about improving their school community. And other students discussed how to welcome newcomers into their school community, culminating in the creation of a welcome packet to help transfer students adapt to their new school.

Across all Cornerstones, world language teachers were able to use project-based learning as a deeper, more meaningful assessment tool that truly demonstrated what students can do.

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World language teachers have one goal: to develop students' ability to communicate in the target language. Over the last 30 years, the field of world language education has undergone a major paradigm shift, moving away from verb conjugation charts, grammar rules, and vocabulary lists toward student-centered activities that provide target language input in a meaningful and authentic way.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Inside: Shifting our thinking on speaking in the language classroom, and creating space for confident speaking.

As a new teacher, I was determined to get my students speaking. Everybody wants to get their students speaking, right? It's the holy grail of language class: communication, conversation.

I mean, why are we teaching Spanish, if not to produce students who can speak it? And yet... one of the biggest frustrations is students who don't speak, don't stay in the TL, or don't participate.
For me, the most dramatic improvements in speaking came when I let go of "getting my students to speak up."
WHAT? Ok, bear with me.

In those early days, I was frustrated that my students weren't speaking in Spanish like I'd hoped. They were holding side conversations in English; silence followed when I asked questions. Even my eager students hesitated to speak. What was I doing wrong?

First, I was tempted to blame them. They had bad attitudes, or were lazy. I needed to be stricter about "Spanish only." I needed to immerse them more, set a higher standard, you know?
Try harder! If you don't speak, you won't learn Spanish.
So I implemented systems. Tickets, charts, punishments. You know the drill. And still- I wasn't getting the spontaneous communication I wanted.

Finally, I began to wonder if the reason was deeper. Maybe it was deeper than not having good enough systems, or fancy enough rewards and consequences.

And one day, I stopped trying so hard to "get them to speak." I started focusing on making our time together compelling and meaningful, trusting that communication would follow. I had been trying to pull my little plants to make them grow faster. I stopped measuring their growth so much; I started focusing on the soil, the water, and the sun: the parts I could actually control.

(Before I dive in, I KNOW some classes are difficult and just harder than others. I know some classes aren't staying in the TL language, and it's a discipline issue. I know students aren't passive plants. I'll address this at the very end of the post, don't worry!)

But I also believe that most students, deep down, are attracted to meaning. They want to communicate. They have things they care about, and want to feel successful in class.

So what was I doing wrong?

1. Inappropriate Expectations.

As a new teacher, my expectations for output were way too high. No wonder my students shut down! I was doing many activities they couldn't be successful with, no matter their determination.

When I became familiar with the ACTFL guidelines, I was shocked. It was also a huge breath of fresh air. Novice-low was expected to produce lists, not full spontaneous sentences with perfectly conjugated verbs? WHAT? Here's what the ACTFL has to says about Novice speaking levels:

"Novice-level speakers can communicate short messages on highly predictable, everyday topics that affect them directly. They do so primarily through the use of isolated words and phrases that have been encountered, memorized, and recalled. Novice-level speakers may be difficult to understand even by the most sympathetic interlocutors accustomed to non-native speech."

It wasn't lack of rigor, then- in fact, my imagined rigor was probably producing rigor-mortis. I had to re-adjust my expectations, re-work many activities, add lots of visual supports, and really re-work how I spoke to them.

For my novices, my questions were often too open-ended, so that even when they wanted to respond, they didn't have enough language to do so (which made them feel like they were "behind" or "bad at languages," and increased the fear factor). When I began rely heavily of yes/no questions, either/or, and one-word answers, participation increased. I became more skilled at differentiating as I communicated, as well- adjusting individual questions to a particular students level.

2. Over-Emphasis on Accuracy.

Back when I taught with my textbook, the backbone of my units were grammar points. Instead of providing rich, whole language, we were hyper-focused on something like ser vs. estar, or memorizing the irregular preterites. So when my students spoke, they were trying to construct rules and piece together bits of language, while worrying it would come out wrong.

This paralyzed them, obviously. When explicit grammar lessons took a backseat, I naturally switched to giving them whole language from the beginning. I didn't present ser as a conjugation chart: I introduced it as " Mira clase, hay una chica. ¿Es alta or baja?" And bam- in the first week of Spanish they were responding in phrases, just like that: "¡Es alta!" without mentally running through a conjugation chart to land on es. When I laid off the explanations and just told them what a phrase meant, they ran with it.

The day I realized ACTFL classified consistently conjugating verbs correctly as an advanced-level skill I felt FREE. Accuracy has a place, but it's a small place in novice-intermediate levels. An over-emphasis on accuracy, will hamper risk-taking and fluidity in speaking. This quote says it better than I can:

I would humbly submit to you that many teach grammar and syntax as prerequisite knowledge for communication. I contend that this notion is misguided, at best, and leads us down the wrong path instructionally. Grammar and syntax are important, not for the creation of communication, but rather for the avoidance of miscommunication.
- Jon De Mado, On the Role of Grammar

3. Not Centering the Course on High-Frequency Words.

When I followed my textbook to a T, we learned ar, er, and ir verbs in-depth because they were "easier" than irregular verbs like " gustar" or " tener." It was months before we got to those.

I suppose the textbook was arranged that way because the thinking goes how can you use and understand a word you couldn't explain/dissect? (Even though my two-year-old could, just like most English speakers can use do and does quite accurately, without being able to explain why.)

But how the heck can you have a interesting conversation without gustar? O nce I focused FIRST on high-frequency verbs, the change was huge. We could talk about SO MANY THINGS. We could get the gist of SO MANY authentic songs and #authres. If students know even twenty core words, so much can be said.

4. Phony Conversation Topics.

My students are human beings. They are actually dying to talk and communicate: it's why I have to make rules about side conversations. They LOVE sharing their opinions and talking about themselves.

They're just not dying to talk about inane topics. Before I centered my program on high-frequency words, we were stuck in really unnatural partner activities and conversation. Every teacher- no matter the method- can fall into the land of boring and pointless conversation.

So I began a new rule of thumb: if we wouldn't talk about it in English, why would we talk about it in Spanish? If the game wouldn't be fun in English, why are we playing it in Spanish? I began choosing games that were so fun, they wanted to speak Spanish- not because they were practicing, but because they were lost in the fun of the task (= game, in this instance). Mafía, Mano Nerviosa, Manzanas a Manzanas, and the Circumlocuation game are good examples of this.

I am by no means 100% successful here, but I've learned to take a step back if a class discussion is bombing: is it really that my students are being uncooperative, or did I just ask a dumb question? Are we dealing with bad attitudes, or would I also be crying inside if I had to talk about this for 20 minutes?

5. Lack of Focus on Input.

Ironically, when I had an output-focused mindset, the output was worse. When we did lots of memorized dialogues, presentational tasks, paired partner speaking, and games that "practiced" speaking, the output suffered. You can actually acquire a language on some level, without speaking. You can't speak a language without massive input, though.

When I let go of "getting my students to speak Spanish," I focused my energy on fantastic, compelling input. I gave them tons and tons of things to read. I told them stories and held conversations, and we watched movies and listened to songs. I zeroed in on what my students cared about.

I stopped the endless quizzes to know what they'd memorized the night before. I stopped thinking they could memorize their way into fluency. My assessment in the lower levels became more relaxed and unrehearsed ("tell me about your family") as I began to search for what language had made its way into their minds, and could naturally flow out.

A nd guess what? The output blossomed. When I let go of "getting my kids to produce," they largely spoke when they were ready.

6. Changing My Immersion Mindset.

When I clung to the idea of immersion, I was not understanding that all input is NOT equal. Comprehension was more important than immersion. My immersion was a lot of noise. It made my students shut down. When I allowed myself to speak English, I found that 10% of class spent in English made the 90% REALLY effective. To me, 90% of class time in Spanish that is comprehended Spanish is better than 100% of class time in Spanish that is only 70% comprehended.

(This isn't to say that teachers who do 100% immersion are wrong- as long as they're getting 90%-100% comprehension, we're on the same track. I just found that allowing myself 10% in English meant a rich 90% in Spanish. It may be I haven't developed the skills to do this.)

Conclusion

I don't mean to paint my classroom as rainbows and unicorns- there was/is still a range. There were still students who didn't gush over Spanish and decided not to take Spanish 3. And in the end, our students are not passive plants. They can choose to pay attention and participate, or not.

So in the end, I STILL found some of speaking-in-the-TL systems helpful. Why?

First: I speak Spanish. And yet, with my friends who are native English speakers but also speak Spanish, we chat in Spanish. People by nature revert to what is easiest and most comfortable, so most people need accountability.

Second, there will always be classes whose departure from the TL is a character issue. Sometimes it is a discipline issue, and sometimes an issue of laziness.

I keep my systems lighthearted, like a game, and celebrate their speaking like a crazy. I gush over bravery in speaking, and celebrate them.

One year, in the spring, I told a level-2 class they would get ten minutes to watch extra, at the end of the period. If they unlawfully spoke English, I'd erase a minute. If I slipped up and said anything in English, they got an extra minute. We had so much fun with this, and it worked for that last stretch of the school year when everyone was stir crazy.

My favorite post with ideas for target-language accountability is this quick one one from Sherry, at Secondary Spanish Space, and then her longer post at World Language Café.

I would love to hear your thoughts too. Let me know in comments below!

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Motivating Students to Speak in the Target Language: Shifting Our Thinking

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Join the newsletter Want to stay in touch and hear from me weekly?Sign up now and you'll get this free game set. Success! Check your email for your ¿Adivina quién? Game Set. There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again. First Name Email Address We use this field to detect spam bots.

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I teach high school Spanish level 3 students. I will be researching conversing in the target language.