Changing Teacher Prep

The following was a rather lengthy reply to a discussion on the Latinteach list about teaching reading theory and using TPRS in the Latin classroom.

>>>Ginny L, you especially -
what
is being done to preserve and carry on this pedagogy (that the other
languages have employed for quite some time, I might add)?

***

Me especially, eh? Me... because I'm always bold enough to speak out about something that may well be unpopular with others... (as I ponder whether I've spoken out one too many times lately and whether I might be fired)...

ahem

Here is the big picture where we as a profession need to think outside of the box. With the exception of a few programs with MAT's (like UGA and UMass), most future teachers are going through certification in Latin on their own or maybe with one other person in the program. How many were in your methods class? It was just myself and another guy when I was working on mine. It hasn't changed much.

Consider how as secondary teachers we have to watch our programs like hawks (see a recent plea for help on this list) because of small enrollment. Can you imagine how you argue for a class for one or two people? My understanding is that the professors are not compensated for one or two students well, and yet we all know that a class of two can take as much prep as a class of 50, if done well. These same professors are expected to keep up their research and publishing, and sadly pedagogy is not what academia is looking for in regards to publishing for the most part. They jump through hoops just like we do and we need to respect that fact and find a way to work with it.

Time is a factor for professors, and also a frustration with the idea that what they do is sometimes at odds with what we do. For instance, courses in any given classics department are, in the target language, usually about a specific author--Vergil, Cicero, Plautus, Catullus, etc. Their goal is to read X number of lines, have some essays and a few tests. Very few professors are in on the ground level of language acquisition; they are dealing with students who have the basics.

We are dealing with the basics and we lately we are opening our minds to better ways of dealing with the basics. We are reconsidering our goals: is it to make students who can write better English and know the difference between whom and who, or is it to create students who can read as opposed to decode a given passage of Latin? Is chanting declensions and conjugations as the Latin teacher does at the beginning of Dead Poets Society what we want from our students? I have had parents who could chant amo, amas, amat but heaven forbid I put a passage of Latin in front of him.

So here we are totally reevaluating how we approach language acquisition because we are TIRED of OUR OWN COMPLAINTS that students don't retain vocabulary well or moan every time they see a passage of continuous Latin. We are exploring TPRS and Krashen and Rassias, we are looking at different textbooks with even more textbooks under development. And many of us are saying to ourselves that if we had just had this information SOONER--if we could just insure that the next group of future teachers is armed with it--life would be better.

But where do we fit it in the tight undergraduate schedule? Is it a course or should it be something incorporated from the very beginning of your undergraduate career?

I have been arguing on the classics list and sometimes at my blog site that we can relieve some of the pressure on the professors to meet the needs of future teachers by offering set authors (Vergil, Catullus, Ovid, Cicero, Horace--which they can't necessarily do because their institutions require variety) by instituting a reading lab 101 and an oral Latin/pronunciation lab 101. Ok, they could be combined.

Here is what I have in mind and what I will keep advocating for until something better comes along. This new 1 hour a week lab will be required for all incoming Latin students with high school Latin under their belts and all student in beginning Latin (at least by the 2nd semester). One of the main textbooks will be Dexter Hoyos's _Latin: How to Read it Fluently_ which explicitly explains how one can retrain the brain to go from left to right, how to do what must have come naturally centuries ago. For practice, Oerberg's _Lingua Latina_ will be reader. This text, if you have not seen it, has nothing but Latin and pictures. Repetition and contrast reinforce vocabulary and grammar. The main benefit will be to ensure that EVERYONE has significant practice 1) reading from left to right, 2) reading PAGES if not CHAPTERS of Latin at a go, 3) reading WITHOUT EVER resorting to the glossary or a grammar. This same text could be used to practice pronunciation and fluent reading. It is absolutely criminal that we have new teachers who have NEVER ONCE had a teacher explain the rules for pronunciation. Admittedly this is something I wish CLC had--an appendix with pronunciation rules. The new CDs that come with the text have terribly inconsistent pronunciation and are, I feel, very disappointing and not worth using.

But what are the benefits of such a course? 1) students are exposed to tools that should make the rest of their undergraduate career reading authors considerably easier and thus providing more time for thoughtful contemplation of content instead of grammar; 2) students would become far more comfortable with speaking Latin, questioning in Latin, and talking about a text in Latin; and 3) students are exposed to tools that would allow them to read authors that they will need to know for secondary teaching (Vergil, Cicero, et al.) outside of classtime. Yes, OUTSIDE of classtime. My proposal would also include that departments track future teachers more closely and suggest which authors they should be reading outside of class that would complement the class the student is enrolled in. For instance, if taking Propertius, why not have future teachers read a little Ovid and Catullus outside of class and include those authors in any paper required for the class?

Why is it that Latin majors rarely read anything other than what was assigned in class? I can honestly say for me it was because I could only decode and not read, and hadn't an inkling that I could just read extensively in another author without feeling the need to grab a dictionary or grammar to make sure I knew the meaning of every single little word. I had little faith that I could do so with ease and thus was scared to do it. No one ever suggested reading some easier authors. No one ever suggested anything. I just assumed that I wasn't as bright as those who would eventually go to grad school. What a joke. I just didn't have the tools. I just needed Dexter's book.

I also think departments should be made aware of the various conferences offered around the nation. If they cannot provide the complete educational experience we would like--TPRS, Krashen and all others included--then by all means these departments should consider helping future teachers and grad students get to such conferences. If there is no one in the department that is "qualified" (?!) to teach such a reading/pronunciation 101 lab as I have described, then train them up by sending them to such a conference. I have been promoting the Cambridge conference in Atlanta to UGA just this year because I know most universities do NOT prepare future teachers for teaching from a reading based text, and they should one way or another.

My point in all this is that we can't just say, COLLEGES, TEACH THE NEW STUFF. TEACH THE AP AUTHORS. Likewise, colleges shouldn't just say back, SECONDARY, WHAT WE'VE DONE ALL ALONG IS GOOD ENOUGH. WE DON'T HAVE TIME, RESOURCES, OR MANPOWER FOR MORE. We need to find a middle ground, something doable, something that will benefit both camps in the long run. Right now I think my 101 lab idea sounds the most reasonable and the most general with the potential for fantastic results for both future teachers as well as just undergraduates and graduates studying Latin who perhaps have no interest in teaching but want to master the language. Could TPRS be worked into the pronunciation lab? Of course. But we don't have people trained to do that yet in most classics departments, do we?

Here's what must NOT happen. We must not get complacent. We must not get discouraged. Even though we see no changes happening yet that we might like to happen, we should keep discussing these ideas here in cyberspace, in print and at conferences--and also with our students.

Consider National Latin Teacher Recruitment Week--NEXT WEEK. Would you like to see future teachers trained in these new methods? Then tell YOUR STUDENTS what your dream is. One or two will be listening. Even when you might have some real whiners in the class, consider that there may well be one or two who hang on your every word whether you know it or not.

If you build it, they will come.

The Reading Approach and other thoughts

The question was asked on Latinteach "What is truly the reading approach?" and this was the reply of BP, who has given me permission to reprint it here:

***

A reading approach is far more than where the text is placed, though
that can be a factor. I'll list the components that I see in a reading
approach:

1) focus on story development rather than which pieces of grammar must
be learned in this lesson.

2) story presented in comprehensible units.

3) comprehensible units mean that vocabulary helps are given either by
glosses, pictures, or both.

4) story line is developed in such a way that the structures that a
student needs to know are repeated often, in interesting ways.

5) grammar serves the story; the story does not serve the grammar. So,
for instance, grammar notes will be given somewhere in the unit, and
they are the "need to know" notes. Students may encounter
accusatives-singular from several declensions rather than all the cases
of a particular declension. The check on this one is really the inerest
level of the story. If the grammar is serving the story, it is much
easier to write an interesting story line. The first chapter, for
instance, of Hans Oerberg's LL is about 30 lines long, and is
interesting. The first story in LFA is only 4 or 5 lines long and
almost sounds moronic. Ironically, they both are about the same
topic--where things are in Europe.

6) reading approaches focus on reading and comprehending, not on
translating. I consider this to be a way to judge the degree to which a
text actually pulls off reading approach. If the practice of every
lesson is "to translate" then the text is not, finally, much of a
reading approach.

7) A reading approach sets up story line in a way that repeats basic
vocabulary and introduces new vocabulary in a comprehensible way. It
does not depend on a list of vocabulary words for the student to learn
(though a reference list of new words may be a handy device somewhere at
the end of the lesson). A reading approach depends on reading
interesting storyline for the student to acquire new vocabulary.

I may think of more, but these seem to me to be the key issues in a
reading approach. And, I would say that each text falls somewhere on a
continuum between the traditional grammar-translation method and the
more recent developments in reading approaches.
***

There was another note he wrote that I really liked, but I must have deleted it in a fit of madness.... AH, here it is embedded in another note:

***

> > I guess the first issue is what you are looking for when you teach. You
> > say that what you are doing works well for your students. "Works well"
> > means that it is producing what you are looking for.
> >
> > It sounds to me like what you are looking for (please correct this if I
> > am wrong) are students who can translate Latin into English, and,
> > perhaps, who can explain grammar structures found in the Latin.
> >
> > You may need to change nothing if a) that is what you are looking for,
> > and b) that works for all kinds of learners in your class.
> >
> > It is not a reading approach, nor is it language acquisition.
> >
> > If you want your students to be acquire ability in Latin, then there are
> > some shifts you could make, but like all of us, it also means learning
> > some teaching methods that are quite different from translating and
> > grammar study in order to decode the Latin into English.
> >
> > 1) read the model sentences in CLC as Latin, and using the
> > cartoon/drawings to help gain undertstanding WITHOUT translating into
> > English. That's largely what they are there for. If you are
> > translating the model sentences right off the bat, then you are
> > communicating, like it or not, that the Latin is not very necessary.
> > The real goal is to turn this into English.
> >
> > 2) By practicing understanding the Latin via the drawings, move to the
> > first story and read it in a variety of ways to understand in Latin.
> > One of my most common practices is to read a few lines, and then to ask
> > leading questions in Latin. For instance with Adventus, stage 31,
> > tomorrow we will read the first 6 lines and I will ask the following to
> > which I expect oral, Latin responses:
> >
> > a) Quo tempore est in fabula? (dies illuceset/ or die illucescente)
> > b) qui apparent in fabula? (ingens multitudo Romanorum, et paupers
> > apparentO
> > c) quid pauperes agunt? (paupers exibant ex insulis)
> > d) cur pauperes ex insulis exibant? (ut aquam e fontibus traherent)
> > e) quomodo senatores ad forum advenerunt? (senatores lectis vehebantur)
> > f) Quae aedificia in ripis fluminis erant? (multa horrea erant)
> > g) Unde servi importati erant? (e Britannia importati erant)
> > h) Describe mihi quomodo servi apparerent. (Servi catenis gravibus
> > vincti sunt).
> >
> > All that from the first six lines. And, I since this will be our second
> > time through the story, I will ask them to turn their books over while I
> > ask the questions. Also, I will make sure to ask some of these
> > questions of my "barometer" students--that is, those whom I suspect may
> > be having difficulty comprehending the story. If they can answer
> > correctly, then we can move on. If they cannot, I will ask someone
> > else, and then cycle back to the "barometer" kids until they can answer
> > correctly.
> >
> > There are three stories in Stage 31. We can do this and other things
> > like this with each that require no translation but which do require
> > comprehension.
> >
> > 3) AFTER all the stories have been worked with in comprehensible ways,
> > we will read the About the Language, and practice the exercises. By
> > then, they feel like review, and that is how I use them before a quiz on
> > the stage.
> >
> > 4) every once in a while, I ask students to translate stories or
> > sentences. Why? Because translation is a secondary skill in language
> > acquisition, and it can be used when all else fails. That's how I use
> > translation--as a last resort.
> >
> > I offer these observations because you asked, and as dialogue--not out
> > of some notion that I know and you do not. I think we are at an
> > interesting place in Classics and in Latin learning. We have many new
> > tools at our disposal, and I think we owe it to ourselves and our
> > students to try them.
***

BP is, to me, one of the top three inspirational teachers out there today. I had thought that I had really broken through some of the constraints that I had from my own education regarding how to teach language, but he makes me rethink what I'm doing now and ask myself AM I WHERE I WANT TO BE?? And am I?

No. I'm still relying on too much English. I'm still relying on grammar. My own inexperience with extensive oral Latin and TPRS limits what I will try, though I will try new things and risk falling on my face doing those new things.

I do think that I am creating READERS of Latin and not decoders, and to me that was a very important first step because no matter how you get there, the university folks are really only going to be interested in whether you read the lines or not the night before and can discuss them with attention to grammatical detail in class. The methods I employ using a reading card and metaphrasing are reinforcing the attention to detail NEEDED to read accurately. I have had former students thank me for teaching them to read well.

But in essense, I'm really still teaching them to translate into English well. For most of us, we think that goes hand in hand. It is hard to let go of the native language, I feel. But I can, when I force myself, stay "in the Latin" when I'm reading. It's not easy.

But that's not good enough. We still have problems with vocabulary acquisition. I've always felt I had, and have always wondered what to do. I want to get students to write more and yet somehow find time to GRADE it. Why not have students rewrite stories from day one? Why not have them describe QUID TU IN PICTURA VIDES? Wouldn't that be easy enough and repetitive enough? ego in pictura canem video. ego in pictura ianuam video. etc. That could be done from DAY ONE. Why not?? WHY THE HECK NOT?

USING THE LANGUAGE, STAYING IN THE LATIN.

I'm ready for a fresh start at a new school. I need new expectations with students who have more on their minds than the gangs in the hallways and who did what to whom. I want to be able to assign homework and KNOW there's a parent there who will enforce doing the homework. I want to work for a principal who treats the teachers as part of the team and not disposable, replaceable slaves.

Ahem. I've been online too long. That's what happens when you take a day off!