As a former World Language teacher, I know of the importance of hearing the target language as much as possible. In order to internalize a new vocabulary word, you have to hear it at least 70+ times. By hearing I mean not only the sounds of the letters that make up the word, but also the context the word is embedded in… the melody of the sentence that embraces that word… the words that lead up to it and the words that follow it to make meaning and conclude the sentence.
When learning a language, it is especially important to attach a feeling to a word in order to make meaning of how it will be used in the future with maybe other words surrounding it than the ones originally learned. It is equally important to give language learners the opportunity to practice using the words, sentences and melodies and help them be comfortable in pronouncing them and feeling and hearing them come out of their mouth.
Recording a podcast and the EDITING of the podcast is a great tool, especially for language learners to play with the mechanics of the language. It gives the learners the opportunity to see their voices, read the sounds, manipulate the sequence of sentences, sounds can be deleted, edited, emphasized and re-arranged similar than a word processing program can do this with the written word.
Our second graders were learning the story of Purim a few weeks ago. Their teacher and I planned to have the students record the story as a podcast to be shared with their parents on their classroom blog. Students had had experience with podcasting the previous year as they produced Flat Stanley and a Magic Tree House podcast as first graders.
Their Jewish Studies teacher worked with each of them to write individual parts in Hebrew to create a script of the Purim Story. Collaboratively the class had to make sure that the entire story was told between them.
Then we started recording them in Garageband. We recorded each student’s sentence, but were careful to record the sentences completely out of order.
The children loved listening to their recordings over and over again. Once all the parts were recorded it was time for the students to edit the podcast file and move each clip into the correct order to tell the story of Purim.
Putting audio clips into order
We connected the computer to the SmartBoard which allowed students to come up to the board to use their fingers in order to find a certain place in the recording, play, pause, start, listen and decide to which position the clip should be moved to.
Listening Comprehension
Again, I would like to emphasize that this project was NOT about using Garageband (the tool). It was NOT about producing a podcast (the genre) . This lesson was about writing a script, listening, comprehension, collaboration, speaking skills, and fluency in the target language. The tool allowed us to manipulate sounds, re-listen, think critically and logically about the best way to present the story- all in the target language. The genre allowed us to share our work, amplify our reach, gain an authentic audience and motivate students to create and be creative.
Even if you don’t speak Hebrew, take a moment and listen to these 7 and 8 year olds. Listen to their fluency, melody and motivation in their voices. Maybe you want to leave them a comment to let them know you “heard” them.
[audio:http://langwitches.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/2nd-Purim.mp3|titles=2nd-Purim]
I can’t speak or understand a word of Hebrew, but this was fun to listen to. I can hear how excited the kids are, and it sounds like they were having fun with the recordings. I was impressed with how clear these second graders were speaking.
I think this project was a fantastic idea. I’m emailing your post to the foriegn language teachers I work with. Thanks for sharing this.
Dear Students,
What a pleasure to hear your telling of Esther and her selfless sacrifice for her people. Your voices spoke not only words, but emotion, and this was an emotional time for Israel.
Thank you for sharing your storytelling with the world!
Shalom,
Mrs. Hale
Tucson, Arizona
I love everything about this… the content of the post, the learning, the laughter, the sound of kids talking so confidently and proudly in Hebrew. Will use it to model for students at my school when they have a go at something similar, inspired by you!
Another great post and I couldn’t agree more about recording the student and letting them listen to themselves. A fantastic tool for raising awareness.
I’m really curious about your point at the beginning about the need to be exposed to new vocabulary more than 70 times before it is internalized or acquired. Where did this number come from? Obviously it is a generalisation and we all acquire different things at different rates at different times, but I completely agree with the generalisation nonetheless. Would you be able to direct me to any more literature on research in this area?
@Gordon
As w World Language teacher I used to teach with the method of TPRS (Total Physical Response Storytelling or Total Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling). It was a method developed by Blaine Ray. Part of the strategy was to repeat the vocabulary word in the target language in all kinds of ways in order to allow students to internalize the word, not by memorization or grammatical rules, but by the way it “sounded right”. I am sure the number is an arbitrary number, but from experience I know that it is (approximately) valid…
@Silvia
Thanks. I’m a relative newcomer to Total Prof thru Read & Storytelling but I like what I’ve seen of it. At the moment I’m having some difficulties trying integrate this approach to Cambridge exam preparation classes… but that’s a whole different conversation thread.
Yes, the number could be arbitrary but that’s what I’ll stick with if I have to justify a bit of drilling to them. 🙂 Of course the exposure in different contexts, different sentences, different question forms, etc. is important for the learners to get the right flavour of the word. That’s certainly what quickly attracted me to the TPRS approach.
This was mitzuyan! Ahavti! I am sharing this with my teachers as another example of integrated learning where learning is the goal and the tool is just a mechanism to help reach this goal.