Some more ideas on speaking practice:
When should I start with speaking practice?
Many teachers believe there should be a ‘silent period’ where beginners concentrate on input without trying to actually speak. We recommend that ChinesePod Elementary level learners begin to seek out opportunities to start speaking. Start off with 2 hours per week and build from there. If you’re at a more advanced level, you will need more practice (depending on your goals, of course.)Who can I practice with?
Practice with a native speaker of Chinese who is familiar with communicative teaching is ideal. However, you will benefit from practicing with almost anyone who is willing to engage with you in the target language, including non-native speakers, as long as they understand the concept of communicative output. [Don’t worry too much about practicing with non-native speakers – practice sessions are designed to get you to open your mouth and mobilize the information you have already studied, rather than to acquire from your interlocutor. The main thing is to practice the skill of communicating ideas.]Who controls the lesson?
Speaking sessions can be highly effective if done properly, but demoralizing (and expensive) if not. The teacher must lead the lesson, but do it through facilitating conversation, rather than dominating it. Too much control by the teacher kills the interactive dynamic. The ultimate goal of fluency practice is to produce autonomous, independent speakers of the language. Only if the learner assumes that role will she develop independence/fluency. (You can learn to do a whole lot with just a little language through effective practice.)- Learner autonomy
As a general rule, the teacher should allow the learner to discover the meanings of new words and items. [Never explain them until the student has had a stab at it and given it some thought.] Furthermore, each learner has unique learning style. The teacher’s job is to identify it and encourage strategies that suit it, rather than forcing his own learning preferences onto the learner. The learner must do the thinking, the guessing and the speaking.- The teacher’s role
Too many teachers see the classroom as a place to demonstrate their superior knowledge. The real skill of teaching fluency is in generating great conversations that challenge the learner without overwhelming him. The teacher should, for example, control the level and flow of input, but not the conversation. He can push the conversation towards a certain topic (in order to put vocabulary into context) but allow it to emerge freely. The approach requires encouragement and restraint, rather than correction and control.
Ken Carroll
I have violated your advice on a couple fronts and benefitted from it. My teachers have no teaching experience, and I not they have directed the structure of the lessons. Well, actually, its been more a mutual learning experience to figure out how to converse.
I also have a question. How effective do you think listening to a recorded monolog and repeating its contents is? (I edit the recording to include gaps 1.5 times as long as the original phrases and try to keep the phrases to 1-3 seconds each.) My drive to work is fairly long so, I spend it practicing in this way.
“We recommend that ChinesePod Elementary level learners begin to seek out opportunities to start speaking.”
Now I know why I have trouble with this. I’m just too impatient for a begginner. I want to have conversations now.
Mind you I can hold limited conversations now, but I very often end up resorting to using some English words.
John, agreed. The way it is written seems to imply that beginners should not speak. That is absolutely not the case! If you are a beginner and you wish to try to speak, by all means try. My point is more theoretical - input precedes production. Some learners prefer to get lots of input begfore thye try - whatever suits. I’ll re-write to make that clear. Thx.
Mark, I’m not completely clear on your first point. As to the question, I think this kind of repetition has some value - though only in a limited way. I think that re-telling or paraphrasing the monolog to another person would be much more effective, especially if it involves conversation. Repetition is essentially a function of the short-term memory. The input won’t pass into the long tern memory without deeper processing (thinking, mobilizing, constructing the items creatively according to the needs of the situation, etc)
I always stress an eclectic approach, of course, so if you enjoy this kind of repetition and feel you will gain from it, by all means do it.
Ken
Some very profound ideas there Ken. IMO one of the key questions is how much input should precede output. I’m convinced that this depends a lot on the learner. Speaking from personal experience I know that I need a lot (and I really mean a huge amount) of input before I can produce any sensible output. In other languages I got this input from TV, movies and especially from reading novels and newspapers and magazines. I am more or less inclined to follow the same route for Chinese, but I’m aware that it will be a lot harder to reach a high enough level to be able to decipher articles, let alone novels. So probably I will have to go the ‘conversation route’ here, however uncomfortable that may make me feel :).
I think I’m with Mark on his first point. The so-called teacher has to step out of the traditional teacher stereotype, and that’s hard. People who have never taught tend to assume they must conform to the old stereotype no matter what you tell them to do, or not to do, but those people are potentially very good. When they say “oh no I couldn’t help you I’ve never done any teaching” you’re in luck. It’s not teaching, and I think non-teachers are better at this than teachers (unless they use very modern methods). Referring to the conversation partner as a teacher can cause a whole lot of expectations and trouble, no matter what you tell them. The title brings a duty to leave you more enlightened than you began, at any cost, to avoid the teacher feeling they have failed.
It is possible, and I (taking either role) prefer it, for the learner to take control, the partner is there to do what the learner has requested, nothing more nothing less. To this end the partner is given control of the _conversation_ part, but not the session. They lead because you request it, but only while you let them.
Maybe I’m hung up on this, but I’d decline any offer of assistance where the term “teacher” was used, unless the person really was a teacher with experience using modern adult education principles, and knew exactly what was required. Any other kind of person wearing a teacher’s hat will not be convinced of what is required no matter what either of you ask or claim, due to their perceived status and obligations, and therefore will be worse than useless for simple conversation practice. Yeah I’m raving so I must be hung up about it
Ken I think you and I might be leaning in slightly different directions on this? Maybe it just sounds that way? Or maybe we do have different views because we are drawing on different sets of experience. In that case, yours would be the correct one for me to adopt but I’d have to understand it better in order to use it.
I didn’t make the (semantic) distinction between a ‘real teacher’ (in the traditional sense) and someone who acts in the role of conversation facilitator. To my mind, someone who can get learners to radically improve their fluency is a true teacher - more so than the traditional ‘teacher’ who just lectures. (Just because you are teaching something it doesn’t mean that anyone is actually learning!) Even in a lowly fluency class, the effective teacher is constantly creating strategies to maximize the learning: new topics, new directions, cognitive tricks, analysis, nmemonics, etc, and all of this based on a motivating dynamic. With a great teacher, you don’t just learn content or words, you learn strategies - you learn how to learn (meta learning). This applies to a fluency class as to any other.
The teacher in this situation may choose not not make the rationale for these strategies explicit, in which case the student learns inductively, ‘by doing’. After using these strategies for some time the student discovers that there is profound logic behind them - he gets it. Thus he has learned more than just the words - he has learned about how to learn. But the truly poetic thing is that often the learner credits himself with the discoveries! (Good for motivation.)
In the end, the most important thing is that the student develops fluency. Some students recognize the insightful stategies that such good teachers apply, others do not. I’ve seen teachers spend hours upon hours prepping classes, looking for ways to maximize discussion, vocab, learning, etc. The class flows along with everyone powering on, speaking, learning and having a good time. It looks easy but it tokk hours of prep. Sometimes the learners recgnize the work that has gone into this - at other times they do not.
To me, there is most definitely an art to teaching fluency. In the absence of this kind of experienced, passionate, teachers, you can use simple strategies with people who are not in any sense teachers. As long as you get plenty of practice, that’s the key. Whether you call those people ‘teachers’ is up to you.
Ken
Ken - Thank you so much for this ongoing series. I’m in my second week of speaking with a native, and your posts on the topic could not have been more timely. I’m starting to take your ideas and incorporate them into our conversations. Keep up the great work!
FORGETTING TILL I REMEMBER - I notice that I may really only have one truely effective method of learning and when I’m ‘on’ it works. I bring it up because lots of commentors on this thread have referred to ‘taking control of the situation’. What I do is find situations to insert the word or phrase, it requires quite a lot of creativity on my part, and I have to persevere over several days. Usually the new word or phrase has not come from a vocab list or other educational -type of input, not even a Cpod lesson. The best words/phrases start out as sounds that I decide to ‘engage’. As I engage this sound, it eventually holds meaning and places itself for use in speaking, writing or listening.
I’ll give an example. I’ve been playing a lot of tennis lately, it’s a frustrating sport. I’ve looked up the word in Chinese for frustrating and tried to use it, I forgot it. I asked someone while playing how to say ‘frustrating’, then I forgot what they said. Weeks later I said, okay–I really need to know how to convey this–so this time I didn’t ask someone how to say the equivalent in Chinese for the word frustrating. I asked someone after missing a shot, how do I say this feeling, like I’m upset, but not the word upset, this?@@!” So they said ‘qi-fen’. Then of course later I forgot it, so I asked again. Luckily I miss a lot of shots. Qi - fen. At dinner later–having forgotten I asked again. The next day I tried to look it up, I think I have the first character, not sure which is the second. But anyway as you can tell, several days later I now know this word, at least how to say it. I can use it appropriately, I’m pretty sure I’ll remember it. Actually it seems hard for me to forget it.
It takes patient friends, teachers, and acquaintences to do this. If you don’t actively try to bring it up, it goes away. It’s also the same if a friend uses the same word/phrase over and over in proper situations with you, they don’t have to explain it, just use it till you ‘get it’. It helps when they know you are learning and they naturally insert it over and over till you can’t not know it. I think parents-and-children do this and it’s not easy to ‘artificially’ create. But it does really work. The challenge is that it’s not that easy to do. If a day goes by without it being re-applied, it goes away. If you cannot find situations to re-apply it, it goes away. If your teacher wants to move on to new vocabulary while you are re-rehearsing your words/phrases–you forget. If you get ‘lazy’ and don’t re-bring it up, it goes away. Speaking practice–not so easy!
Now I’m learning the word ‘chuan’ 传 as in to transfer my call. I haven’t figured out the proper sentence yet, I’ve already asked the nice receptionist who answered the phone. Already asked another desk clerk that I saw today. I know they both told me the whole sentence, but it’s only on this second round that I’m just now remembering the word ‘chuan’. I’ve put in a comment asking about this on Cpod, hopefully they’ll give me a good sentence to put this word in. I feel kinda like a pest, I’m gonna ask people again tommorrow, maybe the whole phrase will then stick, heck I’m just writing about it here so that I won’t forget it…..you know.