All good teachers strive to make learning meaningful for their students. The challenge can be greater in the context of LOTE (Languages others than English) in the Primary school where you may have as little as a 30-minute weekly allocation. Add to this an ‘opt in’ policy as a subject (in NSW) and with it no guarantee of continuity in subsequent years. As a result, despite our best efforts, language learning can become piecemeal, devoid of lasting significance or meaning for our students. Colours of fish and fruit, hair and eyes. So what?
Can we paint a bigger picture for the purpose of language learning? One that encourages our students to reflect on moral and spiritual dimensions? That expands their understanding of how they can show love to their neighbour?
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"But I don't care about where you can buy cheap designer jeans!"
In my son's Year 9 Italian textbook, fashion and shopping were predictably the context for teaching vocabulary about clothing. For the exercise under protest, he was required to compose an email responding with advice to an imaginary friend's bargain hunting request. Whether intentionally or not, the unit assumed and sought to appeal to the stereotypical superficiality and consumer mentality of young people, while choosing to ignore their possible broader concerns about global clothing waste. Its underlying message: appearance is everything. Thankfully, this boy wasn't buying it! What expectations do our students have in learning another language? Can we invite them to imagine their learning differently?
Often the emphasis is on learning to speak another language, rather than learning to hear another language. The focus is to communicate and get your message across. As Christian educators, we have the opportunity to present students with a different picture of the purpose of language learning, motivated by the call to love God and our neighbour. Finding myself between jobs, I have lately gone back to the Primary classroom as a casual substitute teacher...
Working as a ‘sub’ can be very instructive to understanding what it’s like to be a stranger in a foreign land, without the tiresome plane trip. In processing the experience I've realised there is value in considering: could there be applications here for the Languages classroom? In my Italian language classes it is not unusual for a variety of language backgrounds to be represented. One way we practise hospitality towards classmates in Kindy is to learn to count in each other’s first language (L1), establishing the foundation that language forms an important part of our identity and that all people (represented by their languages) are welcome.
However, I had not really given much thought to building and encouraging L1 or heritage language in subsequent years. After all, learning Italian is the goal, isn't it? In my first year of living in Italy, struggling to understand and be understood, so often I wanted to shout out: “This is not who I am!”
A blog I read recently identified something of what was going on during that frustrating and sometimes demoralising time. This quote stood out: "Language can act as a lens of identity. While your personality is individual, your identity may change due to language, or perhaps rather how people perceive you in that language.” Lyn Wright Fogle So how can we as teachers make a difference to the way our students perceive themselves? It was the last day of term. My Kindy students were putting the final glittery touches on their Christmas Nativity wall hangings, Italian Christmas songs on repeat in the background. Buon Natale! È nato Gesù! (Happy Christmas, Jesus is born!) We were celebrating the birth of Jesus and the end of Kindy’s first year learning a language together.
A day later, the classrooms were strangely quiet, emptied of their chatter, endless energy and laughter. It was time to reflect. Had I used the time wisely? Had I taught them well? What foundational understandings and attitudes of hospitality would these Kindy graduates bring to their next language class? How would I grow as a teacher from this year’s experiences? What might I do differently next time? “Our rich multicultural nation maintains a frustratingly monolingual mindset”, begins a recent scholarly article. It is a reality with which teachers of mandatory high school language courses are all too familiar.
Rachel Moore, my guest blogger, is a Year 7 French language teacher at Nepean Christian School. In this post she shares her approach to unlocking the hearts and minds of her students to understand the value of language learning. Is it possible to teach even young children to be a blessing as tourists?
For the students in the Stage 1 Italian classes I was teaching, overseas family holidays seemed to be almost the norm. I was aware their contact with local people would usually be limited to hotel and restaurant staff and those manning tourist attractions. Their ability to communicate in the host language would at best consist of a few stilted phrases. Even with these ‘limitations’ I was keen to explore ways of preparing my students to love their neighbour, even as strangers in a foreign land. “What does it mean to have a mind that is open? A heart that is giving?”
The Year 7 Mandarin class I was visiting at St Andrews Cathedral School had been asked to consider these questions and discuss. In the middle of the tables were tantalising “party bags” full of pictures and realia, waiting to be emptied and explored. It was an introductory lesson to the topic Celebrations, to be taught across the three languages offered at the school. First, however, their teacher Dominique Haynes was guiding her students to explore the underlying learning attitudes that she would be encouraging them to bring to this inquiry unit. |
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