Episode 33: "Units That Need to Die"
Cutting a language unit you hate teaching is harder than it should be — in this episode of Comprehend THIS!, we name the units we're finally letting go of and how to do it without the guilt. You'll learn how to tell which units actually need to die versus the ones you're just avoiding, and what to put in the gap so you don't blow a hole in your year.
We all have the unit we've taught for nine years and secretly can't stand. This week, Pamela Parks and I get a little spicy and drag ours into the open. Pamela spent years as a professional translator before becoming a world language teacher, which means she's genuinely good at spotting when something is essential versus just familiar — and I am genuinely bad at it, which is why I still teach things I should've cut years ago. We talk through why dead-weight units survive, how to make a clean cut without leaving a hole, and the one test we both use to decide whether an activity is worth its prep time. If you've ever wanted permission to retire a unit and feel fine about it, this comprehensible input conversation is for you.
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Transcript
Good morning and welcome everybody to
Speaker:episode number 33. We are
Speaker:well into season number four.
Speaker:For those of you in the United States, I
Speaker:hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July
Speaker:last weekend
Speaker:celebrating our Independence Day.
Speaker:And today we're talking
Speaker:about units that need to die.
Speaker:And you know that unit, the one you've
Speaker:taught so many times you
Speaker:could do it in your sleep.
Speaker:And honestly, half the time you kinda
Speaker:are. You hate it. Your
Speaker:students tolerate it.
Speaker:And every year you keep it because
Speaker:cutting it feels like admitting you
Speaker:wasted 9 September on
Speaker:something that never quite worked.
Speaker:This week, Pamela and I are naming names.
Speaker:Pamela spent years as a professional
Speaker:translator before she ever
Speaker:stood in front of a classroom.
Speaker:So she's got a particular eye for when
Speaker:something's just taking up space and
Speaker:pretending to be essential.
Speaker:We're talking about the units we're
Speaker:finally letting go of.
Speaker:Why it took us embarrassingly long and
Speaker:how to cut the dead
Speaker:weight without spiraling into.
Speaker:So what was I even doing all this time?
Speaker:It's a little spicy. Bring your cut list.
Speaker:And we'll be back
Speaker:after these short messages.
Speaker:You know what would
Speaker:make summer even better?
Speaker:Ice cream.
Speaker:But you know what would
Speaker:make your teaching better?
Speaker:CI summer camp.
Speaker:It's like camp except no mosquitoes and
Speaker:you actually leave feeling refreshed.
Speaker:10. Pre-recorded lessons all about
Speaker:comprehensible input strategies,
Speaker:activities and mindset shifts.
Speaker:You can binge in your hammock, on your
Speaker:couch or while hiding from
Speaker:back to school displays in July.
Speaker:One full year of access, zero pressure
Speaker:and way more fun than PD
Speaker:with 200 slides and zero snacks.
Speaker:Sign up now at mm.us slash summer camp.
Speaker:No bug spray required.
Speaker:Welcome to comprehend this.
Speaker:Real talk for real language teachers.
Speaker:No drills, no dry theory, just honest
Speaker:stories, practical ideas and a reminder
Speaker:you're not alone in the CI trenches.
Speaker:Let's dive in.
Speaker:And welcome Pamela.
Speaker:How are we doing this
Speaker:wonderful Sunday morning?
Speaker:Good morning.
Speaker:It got cloudy here at the end of the day.
Speaker:It's cloudy for us too.
Speaker:They're predicting might be having rain.
Speaker:They're saying we're
Speaker:getting this weird El Nino.
Speaker:Do they talk about the El Nino up by you?
Speaker:I hear about the El Nino all the time,
Speaker:but we have different things.
Speaker:But yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So they talked about that.
Speaker:They said we're going to be getting
Speaker:monsoon rains this time.
Speaker:So we'll see if that
Speaker:actually comes true or not.
Speaker:But I think we're going to be getting more rain.
Speaker:We're going to be getting more rain this time. So we'll see if that actually comes true or not. But it's been a pretty mild winter.
Speaker:I mean, wet and winter
Speaker:pretty mild summer here.
Speaker:You're already in winter.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We've only been mild here too.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Pretty mild.
Speaker:It's only been the high 90s.
Speaker:We haven't hit the 100s.
Speaker:We're supposed to hit
Speaker:hundreds next week, but we haven't.
Speaker:We haven't really hit that this year.
Speaker:So it's been nice,
Speaker:especially when I go to the dog park and
Speaker:sit out there for a
Speaker:little bit with my dog.
Speaker:It is not hot and sweaty out there.
Speaker:So I know Pamela is in the middle of or
Speaker:towards the end of her summer school.
Speaker:I hope the rest of us
Speaker:are enjoying our summer.
Speaker:I know mine is coming quickly to an end.
Speaker:We're halfway almost
Speaker:halfway through July.
Speaker:I can't believe it.
Speaker:It was just beginning of
Speaker:July last week, it seems.
Speaker:Because you start early
Speaker:in August, you were saying.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We start most of
Speaker:California starts in August.
Speaker:My old school starts even
Speaker:earlier than my new school does.
Speaker:So they start like the beginning of that
Speaker:week and we start the
Speaker:Friday of that week.
Speaker:So I get a little extra week in there.
Speaker:But otherwise, yeah, my
Speaker:summer is almost over.
Speaker:I've got about two weeks, not even two
Speaker:weeks full of freedom before it starts.
Speaker:So yes, I just looked at the date and I'm
Speaker:getting even more
Speaker:depressed looking at it.
Speaker:I didn't realize how close it was.
Speaker:I mean, I knew the date, but it didn't
Speaker:visualize in my head that I've really
Speaker:only got two weeks left.
Speaker:Two weeks. What you got some of the excitement of
Speaker:starting a new place.
Speaker:I mean, that's that's kind of fun because
Speaker:it's almost like Christmas.
Speaker:You're unwrapping all your stuff to see.
Speaker:Oh, yeah, I forgot I had this.
Speaker:Oh, yeah, I forgot I had this.
Speaker:Yeah, there is also
Speaker:stress of learning all the new.
Speaker:Yeah, procedures and the new ways of
Speaker:everybody doing everything.
Speaker:So that's always a
Speaker:little bit stressful in there.
Speaker:And so that first year, I just like to
Speaker:shut my door and do my own thing and
Speaker:listen and not talk.
Speaker:You know, just listen and listen, listen
Speaker:so I can get the atmosphere and the
Speaker:culture and everything along the way.
Speaker:So I'm looking forward to that.
Speaker:It'll be new. I won't have to commute as
Speaker:far, which is going to be awesome.
Speaker:And I don't know if I told you if I told
Speaker:you from the last time
Speaker:about our culinary teacher.
Speaker:I say anything about that.
Speaker:Boy, that was two weeks ago.
Speaker:Yeah, I don't remember.
Speaker:Yeah, no, I think he told me after.
Speaker:Yeah, you were going to work with the
Speaker:culinary teacher on your
Speaker:culture class a little bit.
Speaker:Well, what he know
Speaker:that's exactly what he.
Speaker:They cut the culinary program at the
Speaker:school, so he got laid off
Speaker:in the middle of the summer.
Speaker:So he he's looking for a new job and he
Speaker:says, I got a job at the local casino.
Speaker:And I'm like, oh, my gosh. And he's like,
Speaker:well, he goes, if you ever near there,
Speaker:you come by and stop by.
Speaker:I'm like near there. My school, my new
Speaker:school is a mile from that place.
Speaker:So it's like we're neighbors again. And I
Speaker:go, we reverse the commute.
Speaker:I was commuting from my house all the way
Speaker:down to where he lives.
Speaker:And now he's doing the vice versa. So
Speaker:it's kind of it's kind of funny.
Speaker:But OK, so let's get into our topic today
Speaker:before we get too far into it.
Speaker:We have these units we've got to teach
Speaker:and for years we have taught some of the
Speaker:same units, even though we dread the
Speaker:units each and every time.
Speaker:So let's start by what's your worst unit
Speaker:that you cannot stand to teach?
Speaker:So this this was me for for many years
Speaker:because I'm the only
Speaker:French teacher in the school.
Speaker:I'm the only Japanese teacher in the
Speaker:school. I get to do
Speaker:whatever the heck I feel like.
Speaker:So if something's not working for French
Speaker:or Japanese, it's like,
Speaker:OK, it's out of there.
Speaker:But I'm one of four and now I'm one of
Speaker:five Spanish teachers.
Speaker:We just brought on another Spanish
Speaker:teacher and we all
Speaker:have to march lockstep.
Speaker:The district is very solid on all you
Speaker:need your common formative assessments
Speaker:and everyone has to be on the same page
Speaker:of the same textbook at the same time.
Speaker:And there are things that the textbook
Speaker:presents in a very boring way.
Speaker:And I I believe in comprehensible input.
Speaker:I believe in connecting things together.
Speaker:I believe in the spiral of you learn
Speaker:something, but you don't just like you
Speaker:don't just this is chapter two.
Speaker:OK, we're done with chapter two. Let's
Speaker:never talk about that ever again.
Speaker:I want to keep coming back to it. I want
Speaker:to keep building on it and everything.
Speaker:And that's harder for me with my Spanish
Speaker:classes because I have to be.
Speaker:This is the time when we teach Gustav.
Speaker:This is the time when we teach all the
Speaker:food words all at once.
Speaker:I'm like, why couldn't I have combined
Speaker:that with Gustav?
Speaker:Kids like to eat. Right.
Speaker:So that's that's my
Speaker:frustration right now.
Speaker:I remember when I first started 15 years
Speaker:ago, the Japanese textbook had this thing
Speaker:about nationalities like
Speaker:it's chapter one and a half.
Speaker:You had to teach the kids nationalities.
Speaker:And I started doing
Speaker:that for like two days.
Speaker:And I was like, this is stupid. I'm
Speaker:looking around at my students.
Speaker:They are 80 percent
Speaker:Caucasian, 20 percent other.
Speaker:Every single one of them but
Speaker:one has been born in America.
Speaker:So talking about
Speaker:nationalities is not relevant to them.
Speaker:So immediately, well, I, you know, I like
Speaker:floundered for like two or three days
Speaker:with that before I cut it.
Speaker:But fortunately that I woke up pretty
Speaker:quick on I don't have
Speaker:to teach nationalities.
Speaker:There's other things I could get to that
Speaker:are more interesting to the kids.
Speaker:So I mean, nationalities was crucially
Speaker:important when I was living in Japan.
Speaker:I had to know the nationalities. OK,
Speaker:people would ask me where I
Speaker:was from. I have to answer.
Speaker:I see somebody else Caucasian in the city
Speaker:and I asked them, where are you from?
Speaker:We'd be speaking in Japanese and stuff.
Speaker:So that you know, I was I was one of
Speaker:twelve foreign exchange
Speaker:students in the school.
Speaker:So we talk about our nationalities. But
Speaker:in America, in my mostly homogenous
Speaker:class, there's no reason
Speaker:to talk about nationalities.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly. Yeah. For me, the two
Speaker:lessons that I couldn't stand to teach
Speaker:were one, the reflexive unit.
Speaker:Yeah. It was always at the beginning of
Speaker:level two. And the problem was once the
Speaker:kids learned these reflexive verbs, they
Speaker:made every other verb reflexive, which
Speaker:made some really
Speaker:funny sentences for some.
Speaker:That's over correction and it's normal.
Speaker:Yeah. But it's like, why do we have to
Speaker:teach them all at once?
Speaker:It makes no sense. I'd rather sprinkle
Speaker:them throughout the year because then
Speaker:they don't make that mistake of overdoing
Speaker:them because we teach them, you know, you
Speaker:know, in Spanish, you
Speaker:know, calling yourself.
Speaker:Your name is a reflexive verb. We teach
Speaker:that and that doesn't interfere and make
Speaker:everything else reflexive at that moment.
Speaker:So teaching them and spreading them out
Speaker:seems much more logical to me. And then
Speaker:the past tense because that's also well,
Speaker:they, you know, they
Speaker:don't listen to the rule.
Speaker:Never teach anything new after spring
Speaker:break because kids forget it. And so when
Speaker:is predator usually taught at the end of
Speaker:level one right before school gets out
Speaker:like, OK, forget that.
Speaker:Then they start with the imperfect in
Speaker:level two. But then the problem is level
Speaker:two is all focused on past tense and the
Speaker:kids go, what happened to
Speaker:present tense? Is it still there?
Speaker:They forget how to conjugate for present
Speaker:tense. And in most languages that have a
Speaker:past tense, past tense is actually
Speaker:acquired earlier than present tense
Speaker:because you talk about
Speaker:what you did more often.
Speaker:And plus when you read books, what are
Speaker:they written in past tense? So it's a
Speaker:much it's you know, when they when you're
Speaker:even when you're reading to your infants,
Speaker:the stories are in past tense.
Speaker:So they acquire it earlier for languages
Speaker:that actually have a tense for that. So
Speaker:why are we teaching it in isolation?
Speaker:I like to teach the present and the past
Speaker:together at the same time. And I don't
Speaker:differentiate between imperfect and
Speaker:predator it either for the
Speaker:languages that have that.
Speaker:The way that I like to do that is I in
Speaker:the first year I'm focusing on the
Speaker:difference between the
Speaker:past and the present.
Speaker:So the kids know because they don't
Speaker:understand that fully in English. They
Speaker:make the mistake in English swapping
Speaker:tenses when they write in papers.
Speaker:Oh, absolutely. So then I'm only I teach
Speaker:the more common verb. So I know there's
Speaker:powder imperfect for every verb. But go
Speaker:generally works with the predator or the
Speaker:passe composé in French and was usually
Speaker:the imperfect most of the time.
Speaker:So I just teach the common form. And then
Speaker:when the new one comes up, I just tell
Speaker:them what it means. But in level two,
Speaker:then that's when I work on the difference
Speaker:between the imperfect and the predator.
Speaker:But again, I don't use the rules. I use
Speaker:what Susie gross, how she explained it
Speaker:and it works. And I love how she does it
Speaker:because she does it in two words.
Speaker:If it's an action, it's in the predator
Speaker:passe composé. And if it's a
Speaker:description, it's in the ampere or the
Speaker:imperfect. And that works 90 percent of
Speaker:the time. It works that way.
Speaker:So I really like teaching it that way.
Speaker:And for those verbs that that change
Speaker:meaning, whether they're in the imperfect
Speaker:or the predator, it also covers that.
Speaker:Because if I say, both the it's the
Speaker:ability he was able to, but we don't have
Speaker:any proof. There's no action associated
Speaker:that way. He just says I can could do it.
Speaker:It's just description.
Speaker:But when he says, he could do it, we know
Speaker:that he actually tried and succeeded in
Speaker:there. So there's an action implied in
Speaker:there. Or when they go, he was sick.
Speaker:Well, now the implication is there is an
Speaker:action there. What was the action? He got
Speaker:better. Because Estaba just means he was.
Speaker:It's just a description.
Speaker:So it really works really, really well.
Speaker:And then what I focus on instead of is
Speaker:that the imperfect or predator, like, is
Speaker:that an action or description? Action or
Speaker:description. Getting him to
Speaker:think that way over and over.
Speaker:So those are my two big ones. And then my
Speaker:third one, if I have to say, is the food
Speaker:chapter because they throw every food and
Speaker:utensil and everything at the same time.
Speaker:And it's like you're not allowed to talk
Speaker:about food before then or after then.
Speaker:And it's not the food they like to talk
Speaker:about. It's not the like asparagus is in
Speaker:there. I love asparagus. But how many
Speaker:kids like asparagus or Brussels sprouts?
Speaker:And so what I like to do.
Speaker:What I like to do because I want to keep
Speaker:my students centered. So what I do for
Speaker:that is I have them draw a picture of
Speaker:like they fold the paper in four and they
Speaker:have their breakfast, their favorite
Speaker:lunch, their favorite dinner
Speaker:and their favorite dessert.
Speaker:And so then I'll collect all those and
Speaker:then I'll interview them about their
Speaker:foods. And so what am I teaching at that
Speaker:point? All of the foods that are
Speaker:important to the kids.
Speaker:The relevancy. It's not going to stick if
Speaker:it's not relevant to them.
Speaker:And then if I need to, if there's like a
Speaker:word I actually have to teach that is not
Speaker:coming up, I'll use it as a contrast.
Speaker:Do you like paella for breakfast or do
Speaker:you like eggs and bacon for breakfast? So
Speaker:I'll throw those other words there as
Speaker:contrast in there because
Speaker:they won't come up naturally.
Speaker:But if I'm required to teach it somehow,
Speaker:it's like I know it's going to be on the
Speaker:test, then I can throw it in that way.
Speaker:But I like doing that. And then with that
Speaker:reflexive chapter, I just take all those
Speaker:reflexives and spread them out throughout
Speaker:the whole year where they're logical.
Speaker:I find that works.
Speaker:Is always like, oh, describe getting up
Speaker:in the morning and that's it. Like they
Speaker:don't use, especially in Spanish, there's
Speaker:so many times when you're cheating the
Speaker:passive tense using reflexive. Yeah.
Speaker:Right. And so, yeah, I agree. I agree.
Speaker:And I tell the kids, it's funny because I
Speaker:taught middle school for so many years.
Speaker:So these things stick in their head. I
Speaker:go, everything you do in
Speaker:the bathroom is reflexive.
Speaker:Yeah, basically, you know, if you do it
Speaker:in the bathroom, it's reflexive, you
Speaker:know. Yeah. But I like teaching it. It's
Speaker:kind of like I handle all these units
Speaker:that we're talking about when they have
Speaker:the I don't find it helpful.
Speaker:And I don't find it natural to choose a
Speaker:topic and then she teach a hundred words
Speaker:all about that topic because parents
Speaker:don't do that. Parents do not take their
Speaker:kids to the grocery store and let's go.
Speaker:We're going to memorize the entire fruit
Speaker:and vegetable aisle today.
Speaker:We don't do that. They start with what's,
Speaker:you know, important
Speaker:to them. You know what?
Speaker:Yeah. You know what vegetables do you
Speaker:like, you know, when you're eating? Oh,
Speaker:those are your peas and they're eating
Speaker:their peas. You talk about that kind of
Speaker:stuff. So I like to take let's say if I
Speaker:have got three units, I've
Speaker:got to teach before a midterm.
Speaker:I will take all that vocabulary and all
Speaker:that grammar in those three units and
Speaker:then I'm going to find what's the most
Speaker:important vocabulary and grammar in those
Speaker:three units and make
Speaker:my own unit from that.
Speaker:That way it naturally sprinkles in there.
Speaker:I'm throwing away all the chafe after
Speaker:that. All the extra vocabulary that
Speaker:they're never going to use. I mean, one
Speaker:kid told me goes, we were learning all
Speaker:these classes and he's like, when am I
Speaker:ever going to say that?
Speaker:He goes, I will never take that class.
Speaker:And I'm like, you ain't
Speaker:wrong. You ain't wrong.
Speaker:Right. And, you know, when I send my
Speaker:Spanish one students off to Spanish two
Speaker:and Spanish three and Spanish four and my
Speaker:colleagues get them, they're amazed at
Speaker:how much they know. And it's because I
Speaker:focused on only the stuff
Speaker:that they were high frequency.
Speaker:Nobody's going to remember star fruit or,
Speaker:you know, I'm trying to think of
Speaker:something weird. Nobody's going to
Speaker:remember the weird stuff. Yeah.
Speaker:But, you know, if they can talk
Speaker:comfortably about, you know, their
Speaker:favorite breakfast or whatever, then my
Speaker:colleagues are like, wow, they remember
Speaker:everything. It's because they've been
Speaker:talking comfortably about this because
Speaker:it's high frequency.
Speaker:We worked it into every story we did.
Speaker:Every book on my shelf, I guarantee you,
Speaker:has those words in it.
Speaker:You know, so it's it's just.
Speaker:I just put a link to the best ones. The
Speaker:ones I love are from Rutledge frequency
Speaker:dictionaries. They have it in French,
Speaker:Portuguese, contemporary American
Speaker:English, Dutch, Japanese, Russian,
Speaker:Arabic, Mandarin, Korean, Persian,
Speaker:Spanish, German, Czech, Turkish.
Speaker:So they've got quite a variety. And what
Speaker:I like about them is they it's really
Speaker:dense reading in the beginning of the
Speaker:introductory chapter of it because it
Speaker:explains how they got what they got.
Speaker:But basically, they say they took from
Speaker:both written and TV. So they took both
Speaker:versions there because, you know, what
Speaker:you find in newspapers and what you hear
Speaker:on television are not
Speaker:necessarily the same vocabulary.
Speaker:They took both those. They took all the
Speaker:different registers from the uneducated
Speaker:to the highly educated. Right. And then
Speaker:they were important in some languages
Speaker:like, I don't know, all
Speaker:the Dravidian languages.
Speaker:They have what you hear on television is
Speaker:totally different from what you read.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly. So I thought it was very,
Speaker:very fair how they've got them. And most
Speaker:of them are top five thousand words.
Speaker:And they give them to you in two
Speaker:different ways. One's alphabetical, one's
Speaker:numeric. So if you want to teach us the
Speaker:top 100 words, you can find
Speaker:the top 100 words in there.
Speaker:They've got the definitions next to them,
Speaker:but they also have sections where they'll
Speaker:say the top 10 food
Speaker:items or the top 10 what?
Speaker:What? Clothing items, those types of
Speaker:things. So if you teach thematic, it's
Speaker:got it broken down, which ones are most
Speaker:important. And it's
Speaker:funny, like the food one.
Speaker:When I go through it, it's almost never
Speaker:any of the vocabulary that's in the food
Speaker:chapter. They don't put in there. It's
Speaker:just like, what? It's not even in there.
Speaker:But I like it. So I've got the link
Speaker:there. I'll put it back up again. It's
Speaker:mm.us slash frequency.
Speaker:And it goes right to Amazon where you can
Speaker:see the ones, those ones I guess listed
Speaker:off that was from there in there. And I
Speaker:love this because when the average
Speaker:language that they say people, what I
Speaker:call active vocabulary, the vocabulary
Speaker:actually comes out of your mouth is about
Speaker:eighteen hundred to two thousand.
Speaker:So if you have about eighteen hundred to
Speaker:two thousand vocabulary, you're
Speaker:considered fluent
Speaker:because you can say just about.
Speaker:This is Zippslaw. Z-I-P-F, Posh V-S,
Speaker:Zippslaw. It applies to every single
Speaker:language ever invented.
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah. So that two thousand is that
Speaker:magic number. And the rest I call passive
Speaker:vocabulary or reading vocabulary. It's a
Speaker:vocabulary you understand when you see
Speaker:it, but it'll never
Speaker:come out of your mouth.
Speaker:I'm not going to actively teach that
Speaker:vocabulary. I'll point it out in reading,
Speaker:but I'm not going to actively teach that
Speaker:vocabulary because it's never going to
Speaker:come out of your mouth. And I always use
Speaker:the word behoove. How many people use the
Speaker:word behoove out of their mouth?
Speaker:Most of us know what it means, but it's
Speaker:passive vocabulary. We recognize it. And
Speaker:so I use that a lot.
Speaker:You teach your students to circumlocate.
Speaker:So when they don't know the word behoove,
Speaker:they can describe it. They can talk
Speaker:around it. Somebody that they're talking
Speaker:to will say it and your students will go,
Speaker:oh yeah, that's it. And they
Speaker:are fluently communicating.
Speaker:Exactly. And so I like doing that. I used
Speaker:to always vet my vocabulary from any
Speaker:unit. I go, look it up. Is it in the top
Speaker:two thousand? If it's not, it's off my
Speaker:active list right off the bat. Because
Speaker:the only exception to that was a word
Speaker:that my kids will really want to use or
Speaker:it's really, really funny.
Speaker:Like in French. So the funny words are
Speaker:good to sprinkle in there. Pomplamoose in
Speaker:French. I was about to say Pomplamoose.
Speaker:That's everyone's favorite weird word.
Speaker:Poupitre. My Spanish students love the
Speaker:word poupitre. They will talk about it
Speaker:all the time. Or ombligo. I use that one.
Speaker:Ombligo. So we always talk about
Speaker:ombligos. Because those are just funny
Speaker:words in the language of the kids. And
Speaker:then we always talk
Speaker:in German about farts.
Speaker:Fart just means like a travel, you know,
Speaker:you can use it so many ways. An onramp is
Speaker:an einfart. An offramp is an ausfart. A
Speaker:guttefart is bon voyage. So it's just a
Speaker:funny word that we can use and laugh
Speaker:about because we can all laugh about
Speaker:farts. And German use that word so much.
Speaker:And it comes from the verb to go. You
Speaker:know, to move to the bottom.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's like depart, right?
Speaker:Yeah. So it's just it's so funny that,
Speaker:you know, when you use those words, but
Speaker:otherwise I go through my units and I
Speaker:chop them down from that because I don't
Speaker:know if you read any textbook, they say
Speaker:you should be able to teach this chapter
Speaker:in two weeks. And then they've got 100
Speaker:vocabulary words. What natural human
Speaker:being memorizes 100
Speaker:vocabulary words in two weeks?
Speaker:It's not my students, unfortunately.
Speaker:No, not me either. And, you know, it's
Speaker:funny because I've been, you know, I've
Speaker:been we've been talking this podcast,
Speaker:I've been learning Maltese as we go
Speaker:along. And, you know, we add this new
Speaker:vocabulary. He gives me this lesson in
Speaker:Google Docs with, you know, exercise and
Speaker:stuff that we work through.
Speaker:Then I go through and I put it into
Speaker:Claude or chat GPT and I say, will you
Speaker:pull all the vocab out of this chapter
Speaker:for me and make an Anki card list? An
Speaker:Anki for those who don't
Speaker:know is time spaced practice.
Speaker:It's a flashcard program. It's free for
Speaker:anything. And there doesn't have to be
Speaker:languages, but it's time repetition
Speaker:spaced so that it knows by science
Speaker:approximately you're going to forget a
Speaker:word and then you it'll
Speaker:resurface that word at that time.
Speaker:But Anki only gives me 20 new words a day
Speaker:and then about 80 words of repetition to
Speaker:practice. So it's only about 100 words a
Speaker:day that I'm and they're not all new
Speaker:because 80% of those words are review.
Speaker:Right. And then 20% are new words that
Speaker:I'm working in. So it knows that you
Speaker:can't do that all the time. So it really,
Speaker:really helps along the way. So if you
Speaker:have to learn vocabulary, I do recommend
Speaker:that particular program.
Speaker:That really is easy and I really can put
Speaker:it in the format for you so you don't
Speaker:have to type it out the manual or go into
Speaker:the Anki and type out each flashcard
Speaker:individually. I just have it do it and I
Speaker:even have it put in the
Speaker:pronunciation in parentheses.
Speaker:And even though I know the international
Speaker:phonetic alphabet, I prefer just to give
Speaker:it to me an English sound. So I say when
Speaker:you give me the pronunciation, use
Speaker:English phonetics. And so it puts it in
Speaker:parentheses right next to it with the
Speaker:stress and capitals.
Speaker:So it really makes it really easy because
Speaker:multis can be a difficult language to
Speaker:pronounce. It's not some things are
Speaker:really connected but the diphthongs are
Speaker:where some it doesn't make sense. Right.
Speaker:Because those are going to
Speaker:change the meaning, right?
Speaker:Yeah. So some it says this letter just
Speaker:lengthens the sound but not always.
Speaker:Sometimes it changes the sound like G H I
Speaker:would be a instead of E which is what it
Speaker:normally would have been. So it helps to
Speaker:do that way for me to have those
Speaker:pronunciations in there.
Speaker:Plus I have all these other languages
Speaker:going through my mind. I know what do you
Speaker:call it? Shoulders is I got to think
Speaker:about it. Spaling. But because of my
Speaker:German, I always say Spaling. Spaling. So
Speaker:I've got to have that pronunciation right
Speaker:there to get out of my German head in
Speaker:there. So it always reminds me when I was
Speaker:learning Hawaii and all my
Speaker:friend was like, you know,
Speaker:you have a Japanese accent when you speak
Speaker:Hawaii. And I was like, Oh, okay, I see
Speaker:why I understand. Yeah, it makes a
Speaker:difference. Like, and also the word for
Speaker:pencil is lapis. But I have Spanish
Speaker:lapis. And so I, I pronounce it
Speaker:differently. And I got a, so having the
Speaker:pronunciation right there is really
Speaker:helpful for me to do that, even though I
Speaker:might already know how to pronounce it
Speaker:just as it's a
Speaker:confirmation along the way.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:So let's think about why do we think we keep the dead weight when we know we don't because something else we didn't talk about is and we've talked about it before, is if we are enthusiastic about whatever we're teaching, neither will our kids be.
Speaker:Oh, every time someone goes silent
Speaker:reading doesn't work for me or singing
Speaker:songs doesn't work for me. Or how do you
Speaker:get your kids to sing that song? It's a
Speaker:native speaker song and it's quite fast.
Speaker:It's your enthusiasm for
Speaker:it. You might have to fake it.
Speaker:So this is, this is why I've got so many
Speaker:gray hair now is because gray hairs now
Speaker:is like I was told, Oh, we're going to
Speaker:cram your classes with 35 to 39 students
Speaker:so you can squeeze in an English class.
Speaker:And I had to teach the great Gatsby. And
Speaker:I hate the great Gatsby.
Speaker:Me too.
Speaker:Me too.
Speaker:So I spent, I spent the whole summer
Speaker:trying to find an angle because I knew
Speaker:that if I wasn't authentic about it, how
Speaker:could I get my students invested in the
Speaker:reading if I couldn't do it myself. So
Speaker:100% agree, you have to like what you're
Speaker:doing. And if you don't like what you're
Speaker:doing, either find an angle that makes it
Speaker:interesting to you or get rid of it.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I always wondered why because Romeo and
Speaker:Juliet is always
Speaker:standard teaching, right?
Speaker:I have to teach next year.
Speaker:But I never figured out why people don't
Speaker:associate it because the kids say it's so
Speaker:ancient. I'm like, but it's not. If you
Speaker:just take the basics, your parents don't
Speaker:like the person that
Speaker:you want to go out with.
Speaker:And even if you've never dated before, it
Speaker:could be a friend. And every kid has
Speaker:experienced that, that your parents don't
Speaker:like that friend or that boyfriend or
Speaker:that girlfriend. And if you make it more
Speaker:like that, then we can talk about it and
Speaker:put it into perspective.
Speaker:And then the kids go, oh, now I
Speaker:understand it. Now I get it. Now I can
Speaker:understand that play a lot better. And I
Speaker:think if you do that a lot more with
Speaker:anything, it makes it better.
Speaker:And what I always hate about English
Speaker:class because I like reading and I like
Speaker:reading new stories, but I don't like
Speaker:dissecting them. So when I teach language
Speaker:and we read novels, there's two camps.
Speaker:I'm in the Susie Gross camp and there's
Speaker:other ones who analyze the novel, like
Speaker:what is the theme of this novel? What was
Speaker:the purpose? What was going on?
Speaker:I'm not going to do that in French. I
Speaker:just want you to enjoy the story.
Speaker:I don't want to do it in English.
Speaker:I want you to enjoy the story in
Speaker:Japanese, you know, because if they like,
Speaker:okay, the whole reason I speak, how many
Speaker:languages I speak? Four and a half? The
Speaker:whole reason is because
Speaker:I'm a voracious reader.
Speaker:And if I can get my kids to enjoy
Speaker:reading, they'll get there. They'll learn
Speaker:all those vocabulary
Speaker:without me really trying hard.
Speaker:The high frequency ones are right there.
Speaker:All the high frequency ones, they see
Speaker:them all the time. That's their
Speaker:repetition. That's their spaced
Speaker:repetition. It's there.
Speaker:So getting that
Speaker:enthusiasm for reading, that's...
Speaker:And I don't think any author ever says, I
Speaker:hope my book or my story is dissected in
Speaker:that class to ad nauseam.
Speaker:And there's nothing that's more clear
Speaker:when we... I had to teach "Der
Speaker:Verwandelung". "Der Verwandelung". What
Speaker:do you call that in English? It's
Speaker:Kafka's... Metamorphosis.
Speaker:Metamorphosis. Metamorphosis. Yeah.
Speaker:So I read that book first in German.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:The original. So I read it in German and
Speaker:then we had to read it in English class
Speaker:in college. So we're reading it. And then
Speaker:the English teacher's interpretation of
Speaker:the novel was completely wrong because
Speaker:she didn't have the cultural context from
Speaker:which it was written.
Speaker:Because if you don't know the story, this
Speaker:family takes in a renter into one of the
Speaker:rooms. And so her context was they were a
Speaker:poor family. But that's not it. In
Speaker:Germany, property is so scarce.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And living places are so scarce that if
Speaker:you have an open room, it's customary for
Speaker:you to rent that room out.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:It has nothing to do with being wealthy
Speaker:or poor or needing the money. And so she
Speaker:took a whole different spin on the novel
Speaker:or the short story. Right.
Speaker:The story based off that viewpoint, which
Speaker:was somewhat wrong. I mean, they were a
Speaker:poor family, but that was not the reason
Speaker:why they took in a renter.
Speaker:This this harkens back to what I
Speaker:explained to my students a lot of times
Speaker:is you can know every single word in the
Speaker:language. What if you don't understand
Speaker:the culture? You can't communicate.
Speaker:And then I have like an example of I have
Speaker:like surfer talk and I say, who's saying
Speaker:this? And they usually I've had in the
Speaker:last five years that I've started doing
Speaker:this, only one student has ever
Speaker:identified. Oh, that's a surfer.
Speaker:I have corporate speak. A lot of them
Speaker:don't recognize corporate speak. You
Speaker:know, I have just like different like
Speaker:this is English, guys.
Speaker:How do you not understand this? This is
Speaker:English. It's because you don't
Speaker:understand the culture. You don't
Speaker:understand the jargon and the slang and
Speaker:and just how this group of people is you
Speaker:are using this word and everything.
Speaker:So, yeah, that gets back to like, what
Speaker:are you teaching and why are you teaching
Speaker:it? And like, what's your frequency of
Speaker:the words? But you you've got to
Speaker:understand the culture or there's no way
Speaker:you can hope to be actually fluent.
Speaker:Yeah, it's the context. It is the context
Speaker:because it's funny because here's a good
Speaker:English example. Bless your heart.
Speaker:For people who are people who aren't from
Speaker:the south think, oh, that's such a nice
Speaker:little say. No, but every southerner is
Speaker:like, that is one of the worst things.
Speaker:That's a mean thing to say. They say
Speaker:bless your heart. But if you don't know
Speaker:that that from the southern point of
Speaker:view, you don't know. It's you lose out
Speaker:on that whole that whole
Speaker:context that goes on there.
Speaker:And yes, I'm teaching to kill a
Speaker:mockingbird next year, too. But so I
Speaker:think you put it on your you put it up.
Speaker:You I don't know where
Speaker:I'm from losing my English.
Speaker:That you put a good word on it, that what
Speaker:we keep the dead weight because it's
Speaker:something that we're
Speaker:already used to doing.
Speaker:But and we analyze it really doesn't
Speaker:work. So my thing and you this is what
Speaker:you had said, and I think is so true. If
Speaker:you can't get behind it, if you can't be
Speaker:enthusiastic about it, then throw it away
Speaker:because you're not
Speaker:doing anybody any favors.
Speaker:And there are some things I don't really
Speaker:like, but I fake it. And then my kids go
Speaker:right along with it. Like the first song
Speaker:I always teach in level one is called the
Speaker:taco song. I absolutely hate that song.
Speaker:But it's so important to
Speaker:teach my kids love the song.
Speaker:They always love it. They always ask it.
Speaker:It's like if this is it. If you know taco
Speaker:and burrito and Pepe,
Speaker:you know the vowels.
Speaker:OK, OK. So if you can say those words and
Speaker:it just repeats over and over again, it
Speaker:says these vowels are unchanged. Unlike
Speaker:English vowels, these
Speaker:vowels are always the same.
Speaker:And those are three words that kids know
Speaker:usually from English. They know how to
Speaker:say taco and burrito and Pepe. I would
Speaker:say it's not Peepee. It looks like
Speaker:peepee, but it's Pepe. Not peepee. Don't
Speaker:call Pepe peepee. He's
Speaker:not going to be happy.
Speaker:So whenever there's a mispronunciation of
Speaker:vowels later on, I'll go, how do we say
Speaker:it? I can go back to that song. So all my
Speaker:songs I sing for two weeks except that
Speaker:songs like cannot stand that song because
Speaker:I've heard it for 24 years.
Speaker:And sometimes I hear it three or four
Speaker:times in one year I taught Spanish one,
Speaker:all seven classes, all seven. So I heard
Speaker:it seven times a day. I was like, no.
Speaker:So but I show the enthusiasm for that
Speaker:song. So I get my kids to be enthusiastic
Speaker:about it. And it's one of their favorite
Speaker:songs. I like that song. I don't know
Speaker:why. I don't know why it gels with them.
Speaker:Check it out. But it helps. It helps with
Speaker:the pronunciation because English has 11
Speaker:vowel sounds. Even though we only have
Speaker:five vowels, we have 11 vowel sounds.
Speaker:Spanish only has five. There are five
Speaker:vowels and five and they don't vary.
Speaker:So once you know the vowel, you should be
Speaker:able to pronounce everything. I pronounce
Speaker:everything. I'm like, guys, what you see
Speaker:is what you get. Exactly. It's all the
Speaker:same. Yeah. I say slow it down. If it's a
Speaker:big word, just slow it down.
Speaker:The first time by the second time, you'll
Speaker:be able to say it faster. Break it down
Speaker:by syllables. But don't keep the dead
Speaker:weight. If it's dead weight and you can't
Speaker:get behind it somehow, then drop it. Even
Speaker:if it's required teaching, if you can't
Speaker:get behind it, then your kids are going
Speaker:to place the value on it
Speaker:like you place the value.
Speaker:If it's not obvious you put the value on
Speaker:it, they're not going to learn it either.
Speaker:So there's really no point in wasting
Speaker:that time with that stuff because we have
Speaker:so little time with the kids. So then we
Speaker:want to focus on what
Speaker:we can actually teach.
Speaker:And I think we talked about it last time
Speaker:about whether you teach everything in
Speaker:every chapter or you teach the five main
Speaker:concepts. They do better with the
Speaker:concepts because then they can use their
Speaker:brain to actually think
Speaker:through everything else.
Speaker:Right. And I think one of the things that
Speaker:was the freest for me was when I started
Speaker:getting into comprehensible input and I
Speaker:started crafting my own TPRS stories and
Speaker:it was like, oh, okay, this is the time
Speaker:when I have to teach Gustar.
Speaker:And it's like that's the only thing. And
Speaker:then we were talking about over
Speaker:correction, you know, with that, like, so
Speaker:once once they learn like one thing and
Speaker:then with Gustar, they're always like,
Speaker:you know, Joe Gusto or whatever.
Speaker:And and then they learn Gustar and then
Speaker:suddenly everything is kind of corrected
Speaker:back to like, may whatever it anyway. And
Speaker:I was getting really frustrated with it
Speaker:because I was like, this, I cannot do
Speaker:this all in like one fell swoop.
Speaker:That's not natural language. And so once
Speaker:I got into the comprehensible input and I
Speaker:started crafting my stories, then I
Speaker:realized, ah, I can front load all the
Speaker:other stuff. You know, I can
Speaker:like, I have to teach time now.
Speaker:I can sprinkle that into every single
Speaker:story. I don't have to carve out. This is
Speaker:the two weeks when we learn how to read
Speaker:an analog clock. Right.
Speaker:And and then it was like, it's always in
Speaker:there. It's it's in every single story.
Speaker:So I don't have to worry about carving
Speaker:out this time here. And the Gustar stuff
Speaker:is before and after
Speaker:my colleagues teach it.
Speaker:So I'm still teaching it. Yeah, it's just
Speaker:not in it's not like, hey, it's time for
Speaker:Gustar now. OK, we're done.
Speaker:We're not coming back to it.
Speaker:We're moving on to describing what people
Speaker:look like. You know, it was like you got
Speaker:to spiral back to it or the kids won't
Speaker:remember it because you were talking
Speaker:about spaced repetition.
Speaker:You need to keep coming back to it. And
Speaker:so once I realized that every single one
Speaker:of my stories can have, OK, I'm teaching
Speaker:Spanish one. I've got to put the time in.
Speaker:I've got to put the weather in. I've got
Speaker:to put Gustar in. I've got to put maybe,
Speaker:you know, the sweet 16 verbs in. I've got
Speaker:to put some food in.
Speaker:Hey, that's a story. And that can be a
Speaker:different story every single month of the
Speaker:year or every even every two weeks. I can
Speaker:switch up the story.
Speaker:I've covered the textbook. And it's so
Speaker:much more interesting that way. And
Speaker:what's great about doing it that way,
Speaker:too, is that when you do have to teach
Speaker:that past tense, at least
Speaker:in the Latin based language,
Speaker:the Latin based language where you have
Speaker:the two forms, the past that you have it
Speaker:naturally built in because you've got all
Speaker:this description stuff, all the setting
Speaker:stuff is in the
Speaker:imperfect or the un paffé.
Speaker:And then all the action that happens in
Speaker:the story is in the predator or the passe
Speaker:composé. And then I put dialogue because
Speaker:where does present tense
Speaker:usually come in dialogue?
Speaker:That's where it's naturally because it's
Speaker:try reading a story in present tense.
Speaker:It's unnatural. It feels
Speaker:weird. It feels weird to read it.
Speaker:Hunger Games is present tense. What else?
Speaker:There's a couple other
Speaker:ones that are present tense.
Speaker:There are a few, but it's weird. And then
Speaker:there was a book, Big Lights, Bright
Speaker:City, that was written in second person.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that was that we had.
Speaker:That we had. Choose Your Own Adventure.
Speaker:Those ones seem a little bit more
Speaker:logical, but this other
Speaker:one was just it's weird.
Speaker:We were saying we're walking down the
Speaker:street. And it's like it's it's kind of a
Speaker:weird thing because our brains are set to
Speaker:expect things in certain ways.
Speaker:Third person singular is the most common
Speaker:verb form in any language that has verb
Speaker:forms. That's the most common one.
Speaker:So that's where I start with teaching
Speaker:them because they can write sentences
Speaker:right away instead of
Speaker:starting from the infinitive.
Speaker:But what I find is really interesting is
Speaker:there are things that we don't like to
Speaker:teach because it's really not useful.
Speaker:And there are things we don't like to
Speaker:teach that are hard. And so
Speaker:that's a distinction. Yeah.
Speaker:We still need to teach the stuff that's
Speaker:hard. And we may not like it. We got to
Speaker:find a way to grapple that.
Speaker:But at the same time, the stuff that
Speaker:actually is fluff, that is extra, get rid
Speaker:of that stuff. So we have to be able to
Speaker:make that differentiation.
Speaker:And we talked about earlier that
Speaker:frequency dictionary is where I find a
Speaker:lot of that is important.
Speaker:Yeah, that's a very good distinction
Speaker:because I remember when I first started
Speaker:out. No, I wasn't when I first started
Speaker:out when I first had to
Speaker:start teaching French.
Speaker:And I wasn't used to teaching French. So
Speaker:I was like a 20 year Japanese teacher,
Speaker:but a first year
Speaker:French teacher, you know.
Speaker:And I was like, oh, how am I going to
Speaker:explain passé composé? And so I
Speaker:experimented with a lot of different
Speaker:techniques just as how am I going to
Speaker:explain this to the students?
Speaker:And this is before comprehensible input.
Speaker:So I floundered a lot and I went through
Speaker:several different techniques.
Speaker:But I think I think a lot of being a
Speaker:teacher is just flexibility. OK, you're
Speaker:talking to a bunch of students and you're
Speaker:like, they're not getting it.
Speaker:I better change my tactic. Or you're
Speaker:talking to a bunch of students and
Speaker:they're getting it really quickly.
Speaker:And you're like, oh, oh, I was prepared
Speaker:to spend three days on this, but I can
Speaker:move ahead really fast.
Speaker:So being flexible is the name of the
Speaker:game. And so I think I learned pretty
Speaker:early that this isn't
Speaker:working. I need to throw it away.
Speaker:I cannot keep beating a dead horse if
Speaker:it's not working. It's not working. And
Speaker:I'm sorry, I spent two weeks, nine hours
Speaker:a day trying to put this together.
Speaker:But, you know, I'm older and wiser now
Speaker:and I'm not going to
Speaker:waste any more time on it.
Speaker:Maybe I'll set it aside and I'll come
Speaker:back to it later. Sometimes I do that.
Speaker:Sometimes something like I you know, I
Speaker:love my projects and sometimes the
Speaker:projects kind of they
Speaker:don't work as well as I wanted.
Speaker:And so I'm like, OK, I still like the
Speaker:idea of what I was doing, but I'm going
Speaker:to set it aside for now while things
Speaker:percolate in my brain.
Speaker:And then eventually all the puzzle pieces
Speaker:will slide into place and I'll be like,
Speaker:OK, I can take it out again.
Speaker:Or, you know, this thing didn't work at
Speaker:all. But there's a little bit of it that
Speaker:I like. But sometimes we just have to
Speaker:like let it sit and think about it.
Speaker:No, it's true, because like here's an
Speaker:example of what I have to teach, but it's
Speaker:hard to teach is indirect and direct
Speaker:object pronouns because kids don't know
Speaker:what those are in English.
Speaker:They don't know what they are in English.
Speaker:So there's no point in trying to explain
Speaker:that to them. And in teaching a unit on
Speaker:those, it comes up in
Speaker:the chapters of grammar.
Speaker:Let's teach all the indirect object
Speaker:pronouns right now. All the time. It
Speaker:doesn't help. So what I have found that
Speaker:works for me, this is
Speaker:the difference here.
Speaker:I need to teach this. I can't you know,
Speaker:it's difficult. I can't just throw it
Speaker:away. It's important in the
Speaker:language. You got to use it.
Speaker:So that's something that's hard to teach,
Speaker:but I've got to find a way to reach the
Speaker:kids. And so I don't teach it explicitly.
Speaker:I teach it as vocab. So instead of
Speaker:teaching says, I teach says to him or
Speaker:her. And so I'll teach
Speaker:ledi the as one unit.
Speaker:Okay, like me gusta or take you stuff.
Speaker:Exactly. Or leda here she gives to him or
Speaker:her as one unit. So my kids already know
Speaker:what did I teach with that vocab chunk.
Speaker:You know what that actually probably
Speaker:works really well in Spanish because
Speaker:you're going to be redundant anyway.
Speaker:Leda, I'm yell. Yeah. Right.
Speaker:But it's so it really works well because
Speaker:first of all, it tells them position
Speaker:right away teaches them position right
Speaker:away how it works. So they know it goes
Speaker:before because they
Speaker:never heard me say dale.
Speaker:They've only heard me say leda. So they
Speaker:learn that right away. I teach him that
Speaker:to him or her because the E is covers
Speaker:both genders when a word ends in E. It
Speaker:covers both genders.
Speaker:That's the him or her. And then we can go
Speaker:through and I can say, okay, now that
Speaker:we've said he or she gives to him or her,
Speaker:how do you say he or she gives to me?
Speaker:And I can do it that way and I didn't
Speaker:have to know if it's a director indirect
Speaker:object. They just want to say.
Speaker:I figure they'll pick up. They'll pick up
Speaker:eventually if they read enough, they'll
Speaker:pick up the difference between direct and
Speaker:indirect. Right now I only care if
Speaker:they're using one or the other. But I'm
Speaker:not a parent. Oh, you got wrong. You
Speaker:know, they may figure it out, but they
Speaker:won't know the name and who cares because
Speaker:you don't need to know the
Speaker:name of it to be able to say.
Speaker:But I don't need to know the name of it to be able to speak it. It was like years
Speaker:ago and I always tell the story. It comes
Speaker:off much more sarcastic than it happened
Speaker:in real life, but that's just the way
Speaker:storytelling works. I was interviewed for
Speaker:a language job and she asked me.
Speaker:The principal asked me, how do you teach
Speaker:grammar? And I said, I don't. And she's
Speaker:like, what? What do you mean? You don't
Speaker:teach grammar. You're a language teacher.
Speaker:I go, I don't. And so then I asked her.
Speaker:What we what were you? What did you teach
Speaker:before you gave a principal hoping it
Speaker:wasn't science or math? She said English.
Speaker:And I said, great. Were you a literature
Speaker:teacher or composition grammar teacher?
Speaker:Because I was the comp grammar teacher
Speaker:said perfect. She's
Speaker:falling right into my trap.
Speaker:And I asked, OK, can you please conjugate
Speaker:for me in the plus one
Speaker:perfect the verb to be.
Speaker:She's looking at me and she's like, what?
Speaker:I'm like, to be is the most common verb
Speaker:in the English language and plus quam
Speaker:perfect is not an unusual tense. We use
Speaker:the tense all the time. So can you give
Speaker:it? I said, let me help you
Speaker:out. It's the past perfect.
Speaker:And all five forms. And she says, sorry,
Speaker:my dog is barking back here. So she says,
Speaker:she goes, I don't know what you're
Speaker:asking. I said, all five forms give me
Speaker:the I, the you, the
Speaker:he, the she, the we form.
Speaker:And in English, we don't learn
Speaker:conjugations in English like that. We've
Speaker:never learned it. Now, it's just it's
Speaker:unnatural. And I don't know if they do
Speaker:that in other languages. They learn the
Speaker:conjugations in that
Speaker:formal chart way. I don't know.
Speaker:But in English, we never did. But so she
Speaker:goes, I still don't get what you're
Speaker:asking. And I said, OK, here, let me show
Speaker:you. And I go, he had been or I had been,
Speaker:you had been, he or she had been.
Speaker:We had been, they had been. They hadn't
Speaker:even changed. They're all five. The same.
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah. And so she goes, she crosses
Speaker:the question off her list. I go, you are.
Speaker:You speak English fluently, beautifully.
Speaker:I don't hear any errors. Yet you don't
Speaker:know what that tense is called and you
Speaker:don't know how to conjugate all five
Speaker:forms. So it's the difference between
Speaker:being able to build a car and drive a
Speaker:car. Yes, they're related, but they're
Speaker:not interdependent upon each other.
Speaker:You can know how to build a car and not
Speaker:know how to drive it. Yeah. And you can
Speaker:drive it and never know how to build her
Speaker:while the parts are called. So.
Speaker:And I, in fact, I had a funny story about
Speaker:a kid years ago, first couple of years of
Speaker:teaching. She had this bruise on the on
Speaker:the back of her neck.
Speaker:And I'm like, how did you get that
Speaker:bruise? She goes, I got it from the from
Speaker:the rear view mirror.
Speaker:And I'm like, how, how can you possibly
Speaker:get a bruise on the back of your head
Speaker:from the rear view mirror? I couldn't
Speaker:figure this out. I'm trying to get her.
Speaker:I'm not trying to make her look dumb. I'm
Speaker:just trying to understand because I'm
Speaker:like, you'd have to be sitting like on
Speaker:the hump on the console of the car facing
Speaker:the back for this to happen.
Speaker:And I'm just trying to picture how this
Speaker:is working. And then she goes, no, I was
Speaker:standing outside and I got hit by the
Speaker:what the side mirror. That's
Speaker:what she was trying to say.
Speaker:But she kept saying the rear view mirror.
Speaker:And she goes, well, it looks to the rear.
Speaker:I said all mirrors look to the rear.
Speaker:Yeah. But see, she didn't she knew how to
Speaker:drive, but she didn't even
Speaker:know the parts of the car.
Speaker:And so it's the same thing. My kids don't
Speaker:need to know the parts of the language to
Speaker:be able to speak the language. And if you
Speaker:go to an average Joe Schmo in the mall
Speaker:and ask them what a direct object is,
Speaker:they're not going to know.
Speaker:We're not teaching those
Speaker:terms in English class anymore.
Speaker:I've had kids ask me what a verb and an
Speaker:adverb are in high school.
Speaker:I had I had a student my very first year
Speaker:teaching about second semester at second
Speaker:semester had started for a while and he
Speaker:raises his hand and he says, I should
Speaker:have asked this a long time ago.
Speaker:But what's a verb? And I was like, oh,
Speaker:man, I first year teacher rookie mistake,
Speaker:not realizing that my students didn't
Speaker:understand what I was saying when I was
Speaker:like, OK, this is a verb and this is how
Speaker:it's going to inflex because Japanese.
Speaker:We don't have to conjugate Japanese,
Speaker:thank goodness. But yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. I
Speaker:remember I when there was a few years
Speaker:like 2005 to 2010, I didn't have to teach
Speaker:what a verb was because there was some
Speaker:kind of commercial or something on that.
Speaker:You says, verbs, the things you do was
Speaker:was kind of a catchphrase and some
Speaker:commercial or something. I just show
Speaker:schoolhouse rock. I'm like, OK, yeah, we
Speaker:go. Schoolhouse rock.
Speaker:It has to be back. It should be required
Speaker:viewing. They should be putting it back
Speaker:on TV again because you learn so much
Speaker:from schoolhouse rock.
Speaker:I just showed schoolhouse rock in my
Speaker:health class because I'm like, this is
Speaker:this is everything that you need to learn
Speaker:for this chapter there. We're done. OK.
Speaker:Yeah. And you know, there's a it came out
Speaker:like 15 years ago, but modern rock bands
Speaker:redid all the songs. They did. Yeah.
Speaker:So then I play those modern ones because
Speaker:they recognize some of the bands that
Speaker:that were popular like in the 90s. And so
Speaker:they remember some of those bands. So
Speaker:then the songs are a little bit more fun
Speaker:that way because they're not as corny as
Speaker:they were in the 70s.
Speaker:But because we all remember that all of
Speaker:us who grew up in the 70s and 80s know
Speaker:that the schoolhouse rock, you know,
Speaker:yeah, how about junction junction? What's
Speaker:your function? You know, all those.
Speaker:So it's really important to translate
Speaker:them and songs. There's a reason we teach
Speaker:songs because they teach things in songs.
Speaker:Yeah. There's there's
Speaker:structure in song and repetition.
Speaker:And that those songs are going to go
Speaker:around their heads on their deathbeds.
Speaker:So. And it's funny is I don't know if
Speaker:this happens with you, but I can't recite
Speaker:a song from memory just like
Speaker:tell me the song go right now.
Speaker:But as soon as I hear the music, I know
Speaker:every single word because our brains
Speaker:attach that, you know, we have our little
Speaker:hooks that our brains go on. Images is a
Speaker:hook. Sound and music is
Speaker:a hook. Vision is a hook.
Speaker:So whenever you have those kinds of
Speaker:things, that's what your brain hangs on
Speaker:to help remember it stuff. But music is a
Speaker:really strong, strong thing. So I go the
Speaker:songs we sing a lot of times are corny
Speaker:songs. But there's a reason why I teach
Speaker:each one of these songs.
Speaker:What's the same area of the brain does
Speaker:music and language? So yeah, you got to
Speaker:capitalize on it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker:So when you are end up cutting things
Speaker:from your language, from your units, what
Speaker:do you tend to fill it
Speaker:with? That's a good question.
Speaker:So once I went to comprehensible input, I
Speaker:found I was moving faster through stuff
Speaker:because we're always coming back to it.
Speaker:Yeah. And, you know, you know, I love my
Speaker:projects, which are
Speaker:games. They're always games.
Speaker:So like this last year, you know, it's
Speaker:like, it's a language class. The kids are
Speaker:interested in clothing. And I don't want
Speaker:to like carve out time to teach clothing.
Speaker:But I was like, well, maybe I'll dust off
Speaker:the shelf and old project I had that was
Speaker:the Paris fashion show.
Speaker:And I've got I've got a suitcase full of
Speaker:ugly clothes because my mother is an
Speaker:actual shopaholic and she will send my
Speaker:kids the ugliest things. And I'm like,
Speaker:no, we're not donating that. It's going
Speaker:to school because it's the kids think
Speaker:it's funny, you know.
Speaker:So I was like, well, maybe I'll dust that
Speaker:off. But, you know, when when time came
Speaker:for it, just the energy level of the
Speaker:class wasn't there. And they already knew
Speaker:their clothing because we had put
Speaker:clothing in every single
Speaker:TPRS story up to that point.
Speaker:And, you know, I did I did a little GLAAD
Speaker:technique. The pictorial input chart,
Speaker:GLAAD is guided language acquisition
Speaker:development. And so I just did a little
Speaker:pictorial input chart, which for me was
Speaker:having the kids fold
Speaker:this origami suitcase.
Speaker:So they had to know left, right, up,
Speaker:down, fold, unfold and all that. And then
Speaker:they drop it like, OK, so what are we
Speaker:going to pack in the suitcase? It's July.
Speaker:So what are we going to put in? Do you
Speaker:want do you want a warm coat? No, you
Speaker:don't want a warm coat.
Speaker:So we just did it like comprehensible
Speaker:input and combining pictorial input
Speaker:chart. And they they colored in what they
Speaker:wanted on little card stock
Speaker:and packed it in their suitcase.
Speaker:And when that was done, I was like, well,
Speaker:I don't think we're going to do the
Speaker:project with the Paris fashion show. We
Speaker:have time for something else.
Speaker:So I was like, all right. Yeah, I'm
Speaker:taking you guys undersea to meet Jacques
Speaker:Cousteau. So I have a Minecraft world
Speaker:that I made where they
Speaker:have to rebuild Conshelf 2.
Speaker:And if anybody is listening, wants that
Speaker:Minecraft world, contact me. I'm happy to
Speaker:share it all. Everything's published on
Speaker:Minecraft.net, whatever the
Speaker:Minecraft education stuff.
Speaker:I you know, we don't have any time. Don't
Speaker:reinvent the wheel. Ask ask each other
Speaker:for stuff. Well, we're always very good
Speaker:about giving each other stuff. Right.
Speaker:So this was really fun. They had to go
Speaker:undersea in Minecraft, rebuild Conshelf.
Speaker:And then I in my youth, I
Speaker:did a lot of crazy stuff.
Speaker:And one was a friend of my husband is a
Speaker:bat expert and we were living in Arizona
Speaker:and they were strip mining companies and
Speaker:they had to make sure they
Speaker:weren't killing the bats.
Speaker:So we would go out in the desert in the
Speaker:middle of the night and the friend would
Speaker:grab the bats and like put like glow
Speaker:stick from Halloween.
Speaker:They put them on the bats legs and then
Speaker:release them. And the bats would be
Speaker:flying around and my husband and I would
Speaker:be in the desert at night
Speaker:with binoculars looking.
Speaker:Oh, the bat is coming from the southwest
Speaker:and it's going to the northeast. It's
Speaker:about five miles an hour. So I had my
Speaker:students do an actual
Speaker:scientific research just with that.
Speaker:What direction are they coming from?
Speaker:Where are they going to? And it was just
Speaker:the glow squids in Minecraft.
Speaker:So because we had basically covered
Speaker:everything earlier, we had time for
Speaker:something more fun. And yeah, I'm going
Speaker:to fill it with
Speaker:whatever the class is into.
Speaker:Wherever their interests take them. But
Speaker:now they know north, south, east, west,
Speaker:which they weren't going to learn
Speaker:otherwise because I
Speaker:hadn't put that into anything.
Speaker:Yeah, just make it comprehensible.
Speaker:For me, I will say less is more. Don't
Speaker:fill it with anything. Go deeper in what
Speaker:you're already teaching.
Speaker:Yeah. So for me, that's always because
Speaker:Mike Pito is a genius when he came up
Speaker:with the sweet 16. So he expanded on Dr.
Speaker:Terry Waltz's Super 7
Speaker:and he made it sweet 16.
Speaker:And he used that as his sole curriculum
Speaker:for levels one through AP. Those 16 verbs
Speaker:in Spanish, it's 15 in most languages,
Speaker:but languages that have
Speaker:two forms of to be is 16.
Speaker:So he based his curriculum off that and
Speaker:he was a department chair. So the whole
Speaker:school's curriculum was based off those
Speaker:16 verbs, because if you know those 16
Speaker:verbs inside and out, you can pretty much
Speaker:talk about anything.
Speaker:You might not have the most sophisticated
Speaker:vocabulary, but those words give you the
Speaker:biggest bang for the buck.
Speaker:Nouns are pretty easy because they're
Speaker:solid. I mean, we know that from Helen
Speaker:Keller. Nouns were the first things she
Speaker:learned, right? If you
Speaker:know the verbs, you can...
Speaker:It just gives you such a
Speaker:foothold into the language.
Speaker:Yeah. Because you can have, at least in
Speaker:Spanish, you can have a sentence with
Speaker:only a verb, but you can't have a
Speaker:sentence with just a noun.
Speaker:Yeah. It's not a sentence.
Speaker:If you teach the verbs, you get the nouns
Speaker:and the direct objects and everything
Speaker:else for free is what I call it. So my
Speaker:curriculum is just
Speaker:based on those 16 verbs.
Speaker:And so less is more. When I teach and
Speaker:focus on just those 16 verbs, yes, they
Speaker:get boy and girl and man and woman and
Speaker:house and all the other things, because
Speaker:you have to have something.
Speaker:You have to talk to somebody.
Speaker:So those things come out automatically
Speaker:without any, you know, without me having
Speaker:to try to force them in. They're there
Speaker:naturally because you
Speaker:need them for verbs.
Speaker:But the verb to the
Speaker:foundation, absolutely.
Speaker:Yeah. So I find that to be really, really
Speaker:good. So if you can find a way to make
Speaker:that your curriculum,
Speaker:that is the best way to go.
Speaker:I think so less is more going deeper. My
Speaker:kids knew much more language than the
Speaker:kids who went through every vocabulary
Speaker:list of the book because we went in depth
Speaker:and the book had that we talked about was
Speaker:the most meaningful to
Speaker:the kids at that time.
Speaker:So you're like, I know one teacher told
Speaker:me, she goes, well, it's not in the top
Speaker:2000, but my kids love fishing and
Speaker:hunting. So all that vocabulary hook and
Speaker:bullet and all that stuff.
Speaker:I go, that's high interest. That's the
Speaker:exception of the rule. So you teach that
Speaker:because then your kids, your kids will
Speaker:learn the stuff around the stuff that
Speaker:they're interested in. My kids are
Speaker:suburban kids. My kids do
Speaker:not go fishing or go hunting.
Speaker:They go to the mall. They watch movies.
Speaker:So that's their context. That's their
Speaker:wilderness. The mall is their wilderness
Speaker:that they explore. So you have to reach
Speaker:into what your kids are interested in
Speaker:because we teach the
Speaker:kids never the curriculum.
Speaker:That was, oh, it's something fall back. I
Speaker:thought this is an artifact on your
Speaker:screen or no, my dog knocked over my
Speaker:green screen and now
Speaker:it's all going to fall over.
Speaker:I was like, why is my what hit my fan?
Speaker:Okay, live television. Here we go. Baby
Speaker:girl, my little girl.
Speaker:So I think less is more. So I would
Speaker:whenever you cut, don't fill it with
Speaker:anything new. Go deeper or like you said,
Speaker:play a game with stuff you already know.
Speaker:So that's a way of going
Speaker:deeper with it, making it more fun.
Speaker:But don't feel the need to add to your
Speaker:curriculum because you took something
Speaker:out. That's, I think, the key there. If
Speaker:we can just get them solid on the basics.
Speaker:I mean, a lot of what we do is just
Speaker:lowering their effective filter. You
Speaker:know, they are like, oh, no, I'm going to
Speaker:sound stupid if I try to say are allowed.
Speaker:You know what? I just
Speaker:won't say are at all.
Speaker:And nobody's going to laugh at me. And
Speaker:I'll say face, you know, so if we can get
Speaker:them really confident on just a few
Speaker:things, all the other stuff will come.
Speaker:All the other stuff will come easily.
Speaker:So just focus on the foundation. Focus on
Speaker:circumlocution. Hey, guys, this is what
Speaker:to do when you're stuck. Don't stop dead
Speaker:in your tracks. You've got enough words
Speaker:where you can talk around it. You know,
Speaker:you know the word for
Speaker:big little tall, short.
Speaker:You know the colors. You can describe the
Speaker:noun that you're missing and then you can
Speaker:figure out the noun and it'll stick
Speaker:deeper because you had a little bit of
Speaker:productive struggle.
Speaker:And everything will be like they're just
Speaker:so much more confident. OK, like back in
Speaker:my first year teaching Spanish when I was
Speaker:trying to do every single
Speaker:gustar thing that the book had.
Speaker:Some of it was dumb, like reading
Speaker:magazines. Even back then. Oh, how long
Speaker:have I been teaching Spanish? 12 years,
Speaker:even 12 years ago, nobody
Speaker:was reading magazines anymore.
Speaker:They don't need to know the word
Speaker:revistas. Yeah, my textbook had the word
Speaker:CBR cafe. They don't
Speaker:need the word CBR cafe.
Speaker:So that's like a waste of their brain
Speaker:power to memorize those words. Yeah, DVD
Speaker:player. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:They don't need those words.
Speaker:Just because the textbook has it doesn't
Speaker:mean you have to teach it. If they're
Speaker:just solid on the foundation, this is how
Speaker:you talk about your
Speaker:personal likes and dislikes.
Speaker:And then they went on to second year and
Speaker:they knew how to talk about their
Speaker:personal likes and dislikes. The teachers
Speaker:didn't notice that they didn't know the
Speaker:word CBR cafe or revista
Speaker:or they didn't notice that.
Speaker:Here's one word, two words that the book
Speaker:tried to get for me. Yeah, into modern
Speaker:and it's a modern word,
Speaker:but nobody ever uses it.
Speaker:We had to teach a music streaming service
Speaker:and a video streaming service. Nobody
Speaker:says that. They say
Speaker:Spotify, Netflix, YouTube.
Speaker:I mean, nobody says even in English,
Speaker:what's your favorite
Speaker:music streaming service?
Speaker:No, nobody is they're trying to be
Speaker:modern, but I'm not teaching it because
Speaker:you say, do you watch Netflix? Do you
Speaker:watch YouTube? Do you
Speaker:listen to Spotify or Apple Music?
Speaker:You know, it's funny. So when you go
Speaker:through, look at stuff that's interesting
Speaker:for your kids and stuff that's high
Speaker:frequency and make the cuts from there.
Speaker:We're at our time already. So I'm going
Speaker:to leave you with this with this
Speaker:question. What is officially going to
Speaker:make your cut before you start next year?
Speaker:Let us know in your comments. Both of us
Speaker:would love to read and see what you guys
Speaker:have to say. Absolutely.
Speaker:And do you have a final thing that you'd
Speaker:like to say, Pamela, before we leave for
Speaker:today? Let's see. My takeaways are be
Speaker:invested in what you do.
Speaker:If you're not enjoying it, either find an
Speaker:angle or get rid of it because it's
Speaker:meaningless unless
Speaker:you're interested into it.
Speaker:And you can. I mean, if you have to, you
Speaker:can find an angle for something. It might
Speaker:take a little bit of banging your head
Speaker:against the wall, but you
Speaker:can find an angle for it.
Speaker:But just keep on keeping on. See how you
Speaker:can connect things because it's far
Speaker:better for your students not to learn
Speaker:things in isolation.
Speaker:But if everything is all connected and
Speaker:they keep spiraling back to it, they're
Speaker:going to remember it better. So I guess
Speaker:that's my big pluses.
Speaker:And my thing is less is more just because
Speaker:you're removing something does not mean
Speaker:you have to replace it. You're removing
Speaker:it so that you have more room to go in
Speaker:depth to teach things.
Speaker:So kids will learn it better and more. So
Speaker:I think that's really an important
Speaker:lesson. I wish textbooks and curriculum
Speaker:makers and governments
Speaker:would understand that.
Speaker:Kids will learn things better if we're
Speaker:not cramming more in the curriculum. We
Speaker:are taking a step back and looking at the
Speaker:bigger concepts and teaching those
Speaker:concepts that the brain then can apply to
Speaker:more generalizations.
Speaker:I think that is a very important lesson
Speaker:that a lot of us need to still learn
Speaker:along the way. So with that, that wraps
Speaker:up episode number thirty three.
Speaker:Thanks for spending part of your weekend
Speaker:with us instead of doing literally
Speaker:anything else and for being the kind of
Speaker:teacher who's willing to admit some of
Speaker:your units should have
Speaker:been retired years ago.
Speaker:Pamela, thank you as
Speaker:always for joining us.
Speaker:Only a former translator would have a
Speaker:framework for essential versus just
Speaker:sitting there and somehow you made
Speaker:cutting things sound like
Speaker:self-dare instead of failure.
Speaker:And I'm stealing that. If you got
Speaker:anything out of today, it's permission.
Speaker:The thing you hate teaching is allowed to
Speaker:die and you're allowed
Speaker:to feel fine about it.
Speaker:Do me a favor and subscribe so you don't
Speaker:lose us. Leave a review if you're feeling
Speaker:generous and send this to the teacher
Speaker:down the hall who's still teaching that
Speaker:one unit you both know needs to go.
Speaker:Watch us live on YouTube or catch a
Speaker:replay wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker:Ditch the drills. Your streaming service.
Speaker:Yes, streaming service. Trust the process
Speaker:and I'll see you next
Speaker:time on Comprehend This.
