order of output

The problem, as I see it, of basing a curriculum around the order of acquisition is that the acquisition is based on accurate input of all levels. So, like I've heard again and again since joining the TPRS world, we shelter our vocabulary, not our grammar.

I think we have the name wrong anyway. I was typing a nice paragraph about how if we shelter the grammar then we never acquire the other structures. And I realized, it isn't the order of acquisition at all! It's the order of output!

I have two boys, the older one is three and the younger one is 20 months. Let me tell you, they understand and have acquired waaaaayyyyyy more than they can output. My three year old has an amazing grasp of language and uses every tense accurately. Last night, however, he said something about his two foots. Now, when he hears an adult say "foots" he knows it's wrong. But, in the hurry of getting his thoughts out quickly, it came out wrong. Which is perfectly normal.

I think the most valuable piece of understanding the order of acquisition is that we can understand why our students keep making the same mistakes, even though we've gone over the correct version ad nauseum, and we can loosely judge where students are in their acquisition of the target language.

verb or no verb?

I'm wrapping up my district assessments now.

I was noticing in yesterday's classes that some students were not using verbs in their sentences, while others were over-generalizing the use of the third-person singular.

Actually, I always notice this. It's hard not to.

But having just read the article on order of acquisition, it's making perhaps a more profound impact on my thinking process.

I have this rubric I'm supposed to use to score each child. One of the categories on it is verb conjugation. And now I hate that some students who have come so far this year will be dinged so hard on this exam simply because they just aren't "there" yet. I am reminded, once again, that in the educational system we are just expecting that all students will learn the same material at the same pace all year long. Even in my school where we thrive on individualization, we still have this expectation.

order of acquisition

More thoughts on Susan Gross' article "Order of Acquisition"

First to give credit where it is due, "order of acquisition" is one of Krashen's hypotheses. The article is explaining the hypothesis and talking about its practical implications.

Grammatical features of a language are acquired in a predictable pattern, although there is no way to list all the grammatical features of any language - there are too many!

In English, the order of acquisition for verb morphemes is -ing, regular past tense, irregular past tense, 3rd person present tense -s.

In Spanish, some uses of the subjunctive are acquired before some uses of gender.

The problem with this, as I see it, is that traditional classes don't allow for this natural acquisition process. We teach specific grammatical features each year, and expect students to learn and internalize these structures, even when they aren't in the natural order! For instance, we teach present tense in first year, but past tense is not until second year. Or, although we all know that young children tend to drop the verb in sentences, we fault our students heavily for doing the same thing.

The examples in the article are that first children do not use the copular verb at all. Sentences will be similar to "Tommy tall."

Second, there is a gerneralization of the verb. In English students will use the verb "is" for everything, in Spanish they use the verb "es" whether the sentence is in first, second or third person is irrelevant.

Although there is a natural order for acquisition, Susan reaffirms the fact that we should not shelter the grammar input from students. Which is, of course, what we traditionally do. We only speak or provide reading materials in the present tense for the entire first year. Only when students have mastered this concept do we begin to think about other tenses, and even then we stay in the shadow of the land of present tense, using complex verbs for future tense and recent past.

She points out the fallacy of waiting to provide input until a child is ready for the next stage. Young children would never acquire their first language - or at least not as quickly - if parents waited to provide input until their children were ready to progress.

In TPRS, we are urged to shelter vocabulary, not grammar. Although even that isn't as sheltered as in a traditional class. Or, rather, it's sheltered in a different way. In a TPRS classroom, students are not expected to memorize long lists of vocabulary words, but vocabulary is presented in the class through comprehensible stories. For the most part, we focus on the high frequency words of the language (duh!) but we also allow for student interest (like erizo - hedgehog, I never would have learned that one if a student had not wanted to talk about his pet in class.) Students are also exposed to many vocabulary words through their reading. I think the sheltering of vocabulary is more in what we repeat, and what we expect students to be able to learn.

fossilized grammar

I was reading Susan Gross' site the other day and read one of her articles - "Order of Acquisition." In it she talks about allowing the students to make mistakes, but to keep providing them with accurate input.

I can remember reading in some of my language acquisition classes, millenia ago, that if students are allowed to persist in an error, that error will fossilize. Susan's assertion is that the error will only fossilize if the input is not correct, or (I am assuming) if the input is not frequent and comprehensible. But that puts an amazing amount of pressure on me. As a non-native speaker who hasn't spoken beyond the level of middle school students in nearly a decade, I know my grammar is rusty. Even when I am speaking in the target language, and providing plenty of comprehensible input, I am risking allowing students to fossilize my mistakes!

The article is only four pages long and is an easy read. There was a lot in it! But this was one of those points that stuck with me probably because it taps into a fear of mine that I'm not a good enough teacher. I will post more on this article later.

On a side note, now that I'm documenting all my readings and thoughts here, I am noticing how much I really am reading professionally! I always thought I was a slacker. No wonder I haven't made it through Ben Slavic's book, TPRS in a Year, yet.

Circling

Circling is a technique where the teacher asks a series of questions about the same structure. For instance if the sentence we are looking at is Sally danced in the park, circling questions could be focusing on danced. I could ask, Who danced? Where did Sally dance? What did Sally do? Did Sally or Martha dance? etc. It's great. It gets lots of comprehensible input in, but it is really boring. My students, abhor anything that resembles boring, so although I keep trying to circle, and I think I understand the concept, it flops each and every time.

Setting our kids up for failure

It surprises me what students are expected to have *MASTERED* in the course of a year!

No wonder student retention in language programs is such a problem. They are set up to fail from the very beginning.

In my district, by the end of the first year, a student is expected to be able to write an unplanned essay within one hour. The essay must be one page long on a specific topic. There can be no pattern of verb conjugation errors. The same goes for grammar and spelling - there can be no pattern of errors. Furthermore, they are expected to correctly and accurately use transitions, proper paragraphing, introductions and conclusions. And that's just the writing portion of the test!

There are four exams to be given and each exam allows for little to no mistakes.

The really depressing part of that is that the first year exam is easy compared to the second year exam.