November 18, 2024 • 48 mins
Gaslight
Not Moderating Rate of Speech
Establishing Meaning
Out of Bounds
“How do you say…?”
Planning for Comprehensibility
Use of #authres
Gatekeep - "How does lexical coverage affect the processing of L2 texts?" by Ana Pellicer-Sánchez, Stuart Webb, Andi Wang (Applied Linguistics)
“How easy is easy?”
Reading Speed and Motivation #saccade
Neurodiversity and Reading
Girlboss
Park and Pause
Using Frequency Dictionaries
Write and Discuss
References
Novels and Resources by AC Quintero
Conversations about Language Teaching
Presentation by Marcos Benevides: “Extensive Reading: How easy is easy?”
Bill’s Thematic Picture Dictionary for Food (Spanish)
Blog Post by Handsome Bald Man about Write and Discuss
Text us about how you’ve Gaslit, or Girlbossed your language classroom.
Email us at info@slayyypod.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
FishRod (00:00):
hi, everybody, and welcome back to another episode
of SLA, second languageacquisition for everybody.
Today we are thinking about thetopic of sheltering vocabulary.
Sheltering vocabulary, the ideaof sheltering vocabulary is that
you don't just throw tons andtons of new vocabulary willy
nilly at your students as you'regiving them input in writing or
(00:24):
oral input, but instead you aresheltering, you're keeping
small, keeping protected theamount of vocabulary that you
are using so that you canmaximize student comprehension.
and thereby maximizeacquisition.
Now, let's gaslight.
What have been some pitfalls,some pits you've fallen into
(00:46):
when have not been shelteringvocabulary?
Bryan (00:50):
Happen when I just, I focused a little bit too much on
the like natural rate of speechand like, especially like
sometimes it will happen if Ihave a heritage speaker in the
class where like I'm just Theycan understand the natural
speech, so I just temporarilyforget that I need to do as much
as possible to make itcomprehensible for like, you
know, even the student who needsthe most support in the
(01:13):
classroom.
And so, I'll just like say asentence like I would in
English, and then like maybe acouple sentences, and then I
realize like everyone's staringat me.
Like, what the hell is hesaying?
And I'm just like, Oh, wait aminute.
I need to back it up.
Slow down and the variety ofvocabulary that I'm using.
So that's when it happens to me.
Bill (01:33):
For me, I think the most frequent occurrence is that I
will be saying something andI'll be right about to say
something else.
And think, I would have toestablish meaning for this word
in order to be able to use it.
And is that, like, worth themental load right now?
(01:54):
If as we're moving on with areading or something like do or
usually it's in classdiscussions because if it's in a
reading, I'll probably haveglossed it if I think students
might not know what the word is,or I'll preemptively ask, Oh
Okay.
Significa kick here this year,blah, blah, blah.
To establish the meaning, butyeah, I often lose.
(02:18):
Track of my flow if I have tostop and think on how to
simplify language because, youknow, I've always heard shelter
vocabulary, not grammar, so I'vebeen making sure to use like
subjunctive and level one andwith words that seem similar
(02:42):
enough.
To like the, the indicative.
But if I have to like stop andclarify everything, then it's
slowing down class for me andit's also bogging them down too,
(03:02):
because they have to wait for meto reformulate to make sure that
they can understand.
But also, I mean, that's kind oflike our job is to make sure
that we're understood.
So hopefully they're dealingwith it.
Yeah.
When I have to pause and thinkof a different word.
So how can we say, like, I haveto circumlocute, you know, to
(03:28):
make it comprehensible forstudents.
FishRod (03:30):
I always want to say to students is like, you have a
very complex brain in your firstlanguage and you have many
brilliant creative thoughts andyou can't say all of those in
German yet, but we're gettingthere.
But I think it might be helpfulto externalize that as well.
Yeah, it might be even helpfulto say to students, honestly,
(03:50):
like I'm trying to figure out away to say this in German that
we're sure to understand.
And that won't cost us 20minutes.
I don't know, you know,something shorter like that.
I hear that I think for me, ithas also come down to a matter
of training kind of what yourapproach to teaching with
comprehensible input or teachingfor acquisition is, for
instance, I was kind of trainedin a milieu of teachers who were
(04:13):
strongly kind of like selfproclaimed untargeted
comprehensible input teachers,which meant that instead of
picking target structures oflike verbs or nouns or verbs and
nouns together that they choseactivities that would provoke
communication.
And then discovered the languagethat was needed to complete the
activity with students.
(04:34):
So some activities that kind ofget slotted into this, like,
untargeted approach are thingslike a one word image or card
talk or let me think what elsecould be, you know, even a
picture talk to a certain extentcan be fairly untargeted based
on how the conversation goes orweekend chat.
Things where you really, reallydon't know what the students are
going to respond with.
And that is kind of the point,is to develop that language and
(04:56):
develop that conversation.
Bill (04:57):
Yeah.
FishRod (04:58):
But I was excited by that because I was excited to
actually talk to students aboutreal things.
And my perception was thattargeted input was so, just
like, made so small and seemedso limited that it would be
unnatural and strange.
But I found that you do have towalk the line between every word
is new and you have to establishmeaning with either some sort of
(05:20):
acting or gesture or writing onthe board or showing a picture
and stuff like that, that is solaborious and it doesn't
Bill (05:28):
Okay.
You
FishRod (05:58):
that is what makes it fresh and interesting and every
class is different, every yearis different, but also making
sure to provide enoughrepetitions to students through
things like circling questionsand personalization of new
vocabulary.
allows you to, you know, playwith a little bit more
vocabulary, but it also helpsget the repetitions that
(06:20):
students need in order toacquire those words and
structures.
I have also fallen into the trapof becoming just the dictionary
for students, where they, again,we're exploring something
interesting, exciting, and wejust get bogged, or maybe we're
just talking about the weekend,and we get bogged down in a
(06:42):
never ending series of, How doyou say blank questions in
German?
And I can tell it's because oftheir desire to communicate
comprehensibly about what wewant to communicate about.
They're like following theirnatural urge to be a part of a
conversation, but that can alsomake it feel so slow and such a
slog.
If you're getting so much newterms, it's like, well, so and
(07:04):
so mowed the lawn this weekend,but so and so learned how to
paddleboard.
And then so and so did this.
And you're just like, mygoodness.
And so I think one of my, like,learnings for myself is to just
go slower and deeper.
Try to discover the more commonterms, the more high frequency
terms to talk about this side orthe other.
But also use lots of repetitionof the same stuff and kind of
(07:27):
stick with one topic for longerinstead of moving on quickly
because otherwise then that wordis not going to get acquired
anyways.
I would have been thinkingabout, uh, our, uh, How do we
talk about a podcast?
That's like a friend to thepodcast.
Our podcast friends, our podcastfriends over
Bill (07:44):
I think people say friends of the pod.
FishRod (07:46):
friends of the
Bryan (07:47):
of the
FishRod (07:47):
pod conversations
Bill (07:49):
That's something I hear frequently.
FishRod (07:50):
Yeah.
I'm thinking about conversationsabout language teaching and they
in Diane and read, we're talkingabout something similar where
yes, we could teach specificterms about, I don't know
particular items of clothingthat are cultural or the very
specific food or stuff likethat.
But you can also go a level upand do the more high frequency
kind of category word.
(08:11):
And so instead of saying like,Oh, this is a Blank.
And then the blank is, you know,some sort of specific cultural
clothing item, for instance,that you could say something
like, oh, this is a specialclothing.
And so that you can kind ofgloss over that a little bit.
And maybe you include the nameof the special clothing, but you
can also establish meaning forwhat it is.
(08:31):
by using more high frequencyterms instead of getting down
into the nitty gritty ofeverything.
I think that can help sheltervocabulary towards high
frequency structures that aremore useful in a wider variety
of situations and avoid the wildspread of just going every, you
know, how can I say this, howcan I say this, how can I say
this, through their entireEnglish vocabularies, which are
(08:53):
expansive by their age.
Bryan (08:55):
Yeah, I think I start out kind of, I mean, I think I would
say like I kind of indulge thata little in the beginning, but
the fact is that it only happensin the communicative context
that I set up that don't requiresuper advanced vocabulary.
So they'll ask me like.
You know, how do you say bunny?
I saw a bunny.
You know, it's like, I can givethem a word here and there and I
(09:18):
find myself with the level onesand a little bit with the level
twos, like I'm often just givingthem the words and I don't
necessarily expect them toacquire them right away and use
them right away in theirvocabulary later on, but as they
get higher in proficiency, Ibecome a lot more insistent on
them, using circumlocution, andI always say, like, you use the
(09:40):
words that you already know, andI do encourage them to use a
dictionary if they have timewhile they're writing, and
eventually I get to a pointwhere I'm just like, I am not
Mr.
Dictionary, you know, you cannottalk to me like I'm Siri, and
just ask me any word all thetime, and they get mad when I do
that, but eventually they'relike, okay, yeah, I understand,
like, it is kind of annoying tohave to write every single word
(10:00):
I want to know on the board, andthen that kind of forces them to
use the language they alreadyhave,
Bill (10:06):
And a couple of things on that, which might be on like the
area of girl bossing, butsomething that I picked up from
Dr.
Terry Waltz was.
From watching some demo videoswas allowing students one or two
words in English.
And because I tell studentslike, I would love for you to
(10:31):
speak up more in class.
Even if you do have to throw inan English word, because like,
try it in Spanish first, ratherthan like defaulting to going to
English to try to get your pointacross because there was one
word that you wanted to say So Iwould much prefer and I'll do it
in English as a second languageinstead.
(10:53):
But like, yeah, like yesterday Ihad to pick up mi teléfono to
make una llamada.
Like, that doesn't breakcommunication.
It shows off what you canalready do.
And, that helps me know whatwords I need to focus on to make
(11:17):
sure that you get them.
So I would love for you toSpanglish.
Which I also think like, therewas, which I'm not going to try
to use the terms because I thinkI might be wrong on my
definitions, but Actful had evenan article in the language
educator a year or so ago.
(11:38):
In support of using your firstlanguage to aid in
communication, because we're ina context in which the students
do share a language.
So it's not breaking downcommunication.
It's helping them continue todiscuss whatever it is that
(11:59):
we're discussing.
And then me as the teacher, likeI said, like I can make note of,
Oh, we need this word still.
I haven't given them enoughinput on this word yet.
So I need to make sure that Iuse that more often so that
students don't have to rely onEnglish to talk about those
things, but it's a process.
(12:21):
Slow and peaceful.
Bryan (12:23):
which is the encouragement of mixing your own
language or the shared languagewith the language that's being
learned in the classroom.
And it helps a lot to developstudents confidence because it
shows that their identities arevalued.
So it comes, I think, primarilyout of the ESL context
encouraging students who doshare a language in the
classroom to use it along withEnglish.
(12:44):
But I think on the other side,we can do that a lot in world
language.
Like, realistically, when you goout in the world, you use your
language, you're probably goingto use an English word if you,
you know, don't have time to oryou're not able to.
Ask how to say it, or you can'tlook it up or something.
And you know that you share someEnglish with the person you're
speaking with.
(13:04):
So it is like a strategycommunication strategy that will
help them to get their messageacross, be successful
communicators.
So I highly encourage it.
And I love it actually, like.
When I notice my students startto do the franglais, like, I
don't even, like, ask them, andthey're just, like, you know, I
may not have a policy in placeat the time that they have to
speak French or whatever, but,like, they'll just start having
(13:26):
half of their sentences beingFrench and half in English.
Eventually, like, it gets up andup, and then I do ask, like, you
know, Alright, it's time toactually do it in French,
because, you know, it's beenfour years or whatever, but
it's, that is a really importantthing to do.
Recognize that it's okay to useyour home language in certain
situations.
There are obviously somecontexts in which you want them
to only use the target language,but they shouldn't feel like.
(13:49):
makes them a communicator orsomething because of that.
Bill (13:53):
So we kind of took a turn, sorry, I was going to say, we
kind of took a turn to output.
Like student output.
So I was wondering if you eitherof you had any more thoughts on
some of the pitfalls ofproviding input and going out of
bounds.
FishRod (14:14):
totally.
I think it's a planningconsideration, right?
Like, this is something that wekind of like when you were
talking about Bill with yourissue is that like, you can
maybe anticipate the things thatneed some explanation or
clarification or some sort ofsupport.
Sort of, you know, while we'regiving input, obviously we have,
we can use all variety of extralinguistic supports like
gestures, facial expressions,drawings on the board in the
(14:37):
language and also in English,you know, there are a lot of
things that we can do live andin the moment to supplement that
thing, but it comes down toplanning and kind of thinking
through.
The activity, the text, thevideo, whatever it is, being
prepared for those things andbeing prepared to have those
supports ready for students sothey can understand.
I think also, you know, kind ofhaving a moment with yourself
(15:00):
and see.
If you're using cognateseffectively, which can mean, you
know, perhaps using more orusing brand names to stand in
for things, right.
You know, using, well, I don'tknow, whatever it use Nike's for
shoes, use blah, blah, blah for,you know.
it is, Kleenex for a, tissue orwhatever it is.
But then also being mindful ofthe fact that sometimes we can
(15:22):
overextend cognates in an effortto make it more comprehensible
to English learners and startwarping the language a bit.
into something that might beconsidered awkward by a speaker
from the language community.
We're teaching about.
So I think you just have to bemindful of those things.
It's a hard line to balancebetween wanting the
comprehensibility and notwanting to take it so far that
(15:45):
the language you're presenting.
Students is just like wearingsome fancy jewelry.
Bill (15:50):
So, are you saying to be mindful and demure with our
cognitive use
FishRod (15:55):
Boo,
Bill (15:56):
is that I feel like that's gone past.
we're getting into the point ofits fringe because it's no
longer in the focus of theyouth.
FishRod (16:07):
but to be cringes to be free billion,
Bill (16:09):
Cringe is to be free, and I am the freest.
FishRod (16:12):
I feel like
Bill (16:13):
any final gaslight thoughts?
Bryan (16:15):
I mean, I guess like it always ends up turning to the
conversation of the place oflike using authentic resources
in the classroom and like, youknow, there's lots of strong
opinions.
in both directions about that,but I do personally think that
you need to both use texts thatare comprehensible and authentic
resources, but it's the way thatyou use them and when, right?
(16:36):
But like yeah, it can be reallydiscouraging if you just throw,
like, a news article at astudent just because it's
related to whatever topic you'retalking about and, like, you
don't do a lot of pre teachingof the vocabulary and, like You
know, providing extra supportsand like, just sometimes I think
as teachers, we might forget alittle bit what it's like to not
(16:57):
know the language, like, youknow, like, we can read and
understand it.
And so we're not really thinkingabout, like, what language
students have already beenexposed to.
We run
FishRod (17:05):
Okay.
Bryan (17:08):
it may be authentic and we do eventually want them to be
able to understand those kindsof texts.
But it's like, you have toreally pick and choose and be
careful because.
It can really affect theirmotivation if they feel like,
oh, I'm not good at learningthis language because I can't
understand a, know, New YorkTimes article in the country of
the language that I'm learning,which is not a realistic
(17:29):
expectation of a first or secondyear student, you know, so.
Bill (17:34):
All right.
Well, how about we take a quickbreak and then we'll come back
for some gatekeeping orungatekeeping.
Right.
Well, for this week, we read thearticle.
How does lexical coverage affectthe processing of L2 texts?
(17:54):
And it is from Ana PellicerSanchez, Stuart Webb, and
FishRod (17:59):
going
Bill (18:00):
Andy Wang.
FishRod (18:01):
out a lot of
Bill (18:03):
Yeah, I wanted to start off with what were their
questions here?
FishRod (18:06):
I think, you know,
Bill (18:08):
they wanted to look at to what extent does lexical
coverage the cognitive effortinvolved in text reading, as
reflected by tracking measures,which is This is a really cool
research tool that Brian isfired up about and maybe has
some thoughts on.
(18:30):
And to what extent does lexicalcoverage affect processing of
unknown words?
And does processing time onunknown words predict
participants ability to recalltheir meanings?
And, does lexical coveragemodulate this relationship?
(18:50):
So, they used eye tracking toexamine how lexical coverage,
the, the the breadth ofvocabulary affects the
processing of a textspecifically with Unknown
vocabulary, and if there was arelationship on how long readers
stayed on a word.
as well as the relationshipbetween processing time on the
(19:14):
unknown vocabulary and learning.
So, they used.
94 second language advancedlearners of English.
And they did have to remove datafrom some of the participants
because of issues withtechnology.
(19:34):
So they were all postgraduatestudents at a university in the
UK from a variety of differentfirst language backgrounds.
So kind of, you know, we have tobe humble in our understanding.
There are definitely some.
(19:55):
Benefits that we can take fromthis study, but they did not
find a significant impact on theamount of attention spent on
unknown vocabulary.
And they said the presence ofhigher number of unknown pseudo
words.
Did not seem to impact theamount of attention devoted to
(20:18):
process them.
And they also said that theydidn't seem to spend more time
processing the unknown wordswhen there were fewer of them as
they initially hypothesized.
So they thought maybe like, Oh,if there's fewer unknown words,
maybe they'll spend less timebecause they don't have to do
that process of figuring outunknown words over and over and
(20:41):
over.
So maybe.
There's less unknown words,maybe amount of time that they
spend on unknown words willshrink.
They did find that processingtimes were significant
predictors of vocabulary gains.
The lexical coverage does notseem to have a major effect on
(21:03):
the cognitive effort inprocessing the text and new
vocabulary.
They also found that theprocessing times were a
predictor of vocabulary gains.
So they saw that the amount ofnew vocabulary didn't seem to
have an effect on cognitiveeffort.
(21:24):
in processing the text and newvocabulary and that small
increments adding little bylittle new vocabulary might not
necessarily make texts easier toread.
So if there's no difference in,they're taking the same amount
of time with new words as theyare with a few new words as
(21:48):
well, as with A bunch of newwords.
It didn't really change how muchstudents were paying attention
and really what that means forus is when we come across a new
word, establish meaning, try touse it give them opportunities
to engage with the newvocabulary, hopefully in a new
(22:13):
way.
A way that will like still be ontask.
So like, if you're reading abouta specific culture or a specific
event, and there's a new word,try to tie the word in to use it
in ways that are related to thecontext.
(22:36):
So that's just like a quick,quick overview.
Ben, I know that you had saidthat you pulled something.
That you found interesting andhelpful for teachers.
And Brian, I know you wanted totake a swing at the eye
tracking.
FishRod (22:54):
Totally.
Yeah, I, you know, that's kindof, as Bill summarized, like
they didn't find a lot ofsupport for their hypothesis
that, you know, learners wouldslow down more and process fewer
numbers of new vocabulary termsbetter that was not necessarily
the case.
But I think the literaturereview actually was very helpful
for me.
(23:15):
To recognize that this articleis about processing, which is
like, just how much time arethey spent, like, letting their
eyes rest on these new terms andthink about them?
And I think that starting from abaseline via their literature
review that.
In order for texts to be kind ofminimally comprehensible, there
has to be 90 percent coverage ofthe vocabulary in the text.
(23:38):
That means 90 percent of thewords were familiar, just like,
that's the lowest that theywent.
And they mentioned in thearticle that, a student without
the teacher could maybe managethat like a TV show with 90
percent coverage of thevocabulary and TV show because
there are a lot of visuals thathelp kind of support what the
learner is seeing in it.
That help of comprehension,whereas like studies have shown
(23:59):
that like you're getting kind ofminimal kind of barely holding
on comprehension at 95 percentcoverage and that 98 is more
optimal for like reading forcomprehension.
Yeah.
And so I think that just thatpart of the literature review,
even if they didn't find thatthe in terms of processing, you
know, gains or benefits forvocabulary learning or whatever,
and the time that they lingeredon new vocabulary, even if that
(24:22):
wasn't present in this study,they were also working in an
incredibly narrow range anyways,that has been fairly well
established in reading researchto kind of be the sweet spot.
So I think it brings us back tous again, is that like, when
we're giving students somethingto read.
that is, you know, made forcomprehension, made for them to
acquire lots from it.
(24:42):
We need to be thinking aboutthat vocabulary coverage and
keeping it in that 90 percentplus range.
Otherwise, you know, theirglobal kind of comprehension of
the whole text is going to bedifficult.
And, you know, they might not begetting as much acquisition from
it as if we gave them targeteddoses of input of where, you
know, using By and largevocabulary that they were
familiar with.
(25:03):
I think the other thing that Ikind of took away from this is
how it might affect motivation.
Kind of like Brian had touchedon earlier, where they noticed
that the saccades, which arejust like how, how many
essentially words in a groupthat your I can take in at once
before it jumps to the nextgroup of words to take them all
in.
Because when we're reading,we're not necessarily.
(25:25):
doing one word at a time whenwe're reading fluently.
We're kind of taking in agrouping of words and putting it
all together in meaning.
that these saccades were much,and I don't even know if that's,
I'm gonna find out later, it'slike, saccades, saccades, or
something, like, like a Greekphilosopher, I don't know.
But anyways, that these weremuch shorter there were many
more new vocabulary terms whichmeant that, I bet for the
(25:50):
reader, it felt much moreeffortful.
If you're having to process textin these smaller chunks and go
like, Oh, I have to inch alongin this text or I'm going to
miss something because there'sso much new vocabulary that
likely felt more effortful, evenif it didn't take significantly
more clock time, it probablyjust felt like more of a chore.
And are students going to bemotivated by something that they
(26:13):
feel is a total chore all thetime?
Maybe not.
And so giving them.
reading that feels morecomfortable and fluent can be
more motivating.
But I think it's like Brian saidearlier that it's a question of
just kind of like the whens,right?
Like, when do we use authenticresources and for what purposes?
It might be, you know, theymight be more suited for
(26:33):
teaching things aboutinterculturality showing
particular language and contextor, or, or we also want to give
fluent reading experiences toour students because that can be
very motivating for theircompetence.
Bill (26:45):
Yeah, and that reminds me of the often requested
presentation on how easy iseasy.
Which floats around in some ofthe Facebook groups from time to
time.
And it's a great presentationand we'll share it in the show
notes, but it shows in Englishwhat a text looks like if it's a
(27:10):
hundred percent comprehensible,98 percent comprehensible.
95 percent comprehensible allthe way down to, I think, 50
percent comprehensible.
I forget how low it goes, butthey just use nonsense words to
trip up the reader.
(27:31):
And like, I used thepresentation with parent night
this past year to kind of likeemphasize, Hey, please make sure
your kids are letting me knowwhen something is unclear.
Because otherwise, this is whatit feels like.
And when we got to the partwhere it's even like at 80%,
(27:55):
people are checking out and Theydon't want to follow along
anymore.
Bryan (27:58):
And I guess just about the eye tracking obviously I'm
not incredibly versed in usingthis as a research method
because I've never done thatbefore, and it was enlightening
to read about this and see thatmaybe know, the results of the
study may not indicate a wholelot in terms of the way that eye
(28:20):
tracking is affected by thedifferent.
Levels of vocabulary that areknown, but I do wonder whether
like.
Things like neurodiversity couldplay into the way that we use
our eyes to process text.
I know that sometimes readersmight around a little bit in
terms of, looking for the mostinteresting part of the text,
(28:44):
but then they go back and readit again, and it may not
actually take them longer toread, it's just that they don't
read it in the order that mightbe expected, so would that be
interpreted in the research assomeone who is not processing
words well, I don't really knowit's just something that kind of
comes to mind when I think aboutdifferent kinds of readers.
(29:04):
But yeah, it seems exciting, thekinds of information we can get
from things like this.
And I don't know, maybe one daywe will all be wearing headsets
that track all of our eyemovements as we read during
class.
Sorry, I don't know where I wasgoing with that.
Anyway, all pretty interestingto me, and I'm excited to see
(29:25):
what new studies come out thatuse this because I know it's
something that's only come up inrecent years.
FishRod (29:32):
It is saccade, by the way.
Bill (29:35):
All right, so now that we've talked about some of our
issues, we've taken a look atsome of the research around.
text coverage and vocabularychoice.
How have we girlbossed in termsof out of bounds vocabulary and
the like.
FishRod (29:56):
I think it is a measure, like, in class we have
so much more opportunity forcomprehension supports and so we
need to be making use of thoseto make sure that students are
comprehending, but also checkingfor comprehension, like,
certainly, that students arecomprehending.
Bryan (30:10):
Okay.
all for
FishRod (30:17):
comprehensible, but actually comprehended.
And so we can,
Bryan (30:21):
today
FishRod (30:24):
of input on a variety of topics pretty broad input by
using comprehension supports, toensure that it is being
comprehended.
And we want to give repetitionson those new terms as well, so
that they are not one and done,you know, things that live
shortly in our students brainsand then move out Bill, you had
talked to in kind of ourpreparation about park and
(30:46):
pause.
Do you want to expand on that?
Bill (30:49):
Sure I actually just in general, I think me personally,
I've been doing my part to girlboss.
Out of bounds vocabulary inclass I think, but one of the
things that I try to do is parkand pause when an unknown word
(31:09):
comes up and students tell methat it's an unknown word to
them, I want to try to park andpause.
and pause.
On that word.
So I pull that out.
And then I park on it.
And like I said, like, I try tokeep it in context of whatever
it is that we're talking about.
An example that I had talkedabout with you all before we
(31:30):
started recording was yesterdayin Spanish word, the phrase say
throughout the day it's aboutcame up and I used it and
students said, what's that mean?
And I was like, Ooh, a greatopportunity to use a really
useful phrase over and over andover.
Because between me and all ofyou we weren't really getting
(31:53):
very productive with what wewanted to talk, what I wanted to
talk about anyway.
So we just use the phrase C'estTrat Today.
It's about, and talked about ourfavorite TV shows.
So it wasn't a phrase that theyknew before, but because I was
able to just stop and use itover and over and over now they
were better prepared for todaywhen we saw that phrase, se
(32:15):
today in a different context.
So we just talked about like,oh, what's, what's your favorite
show?
What's your favorite show about?
Is it about a man?
Is it about a woman?
Is it about a couple?
Is it about a mystery stuff likethat.
And we got a lot of repetitionof that phrase because students
(32:35):
told me that they didn't knowwhat it was.
And then I was able to take themoment to.
Establish meaning and then Ilike to call it like jump
starting acquisition where likeflood the input with a specific
phrase over and over and overnot guaranteeing that they'll
(32:56):
internalize the phrase, but atleast maybe it'll be easier to
pull out of their memory when itcomes up again.
So that's one way that I try tomitigate confusion when.
Words unknown words come up inclass
FishRod (33:14):
I love that too because I think that could also serve to
slow the teacher down when it'sso easy to power through new
words and then add new word andthen new word and more new word.
It's helpful to have strategieslike that.
As a reminder, like, oh, this isa new word.
I'm going to park on it for awhile and kind of, like you
said, just flood with that word.
So then maybe in the future whenyou're trying to use that word
(33:36):
again as part of something elsewhere there also is new
language.
You don't have to flood that oneas hard, right?
I liken an acquisition to kindof like when you're painting
with a spongy paint roller thatyou get like that very thin
layer at first.
And then when you hit it againwith another layer, the layer
gets, more opaque and thateventually you get to the
desired, paint.
(33:56):
opacity that you wanted coveringwhatever you were covering.
But it takes a couple of goesover with the sponge roller and
the sponge roller doesn't get itperfectly, clear, all the first
time.
Bill (34:05):
sometimes you still need topcoat later
FishRod (34:07):
totally.
So I think the park and pauseslows us down and gives us, you
know, a better chance with thatnew stuff and prevents us from
flooding too much into theinput.
Because again, 90 to 100 percentrange for reading texts is where
students are comprehending itfrom just barely to fully And,
you know, even the articlementions that, like, even with
(34:27):
100 percent comprehension of allthe word, like, there's so many
things that go into readingcomprehension that, know, who
knows if that means they just,like, perfectly understand
something, right?
But we want to give them thebest chance possible, and so we
need to be sheltering ourvocabulary to give them that
best chance possible.
And so using these strategies, Ithink, slows us down helps us
get that good concentrated inputof stuff that is useful.
Bill (34:49):
note, but a question do you ever?
Get students that like they onyou establish the meaning once
they understand it And then theyjust start getting bored because
you have to use it over and overand over because just because
you understood it once Doesn'tmean that you're That you've
acquired it.
Like, I understand that it'seasy right now in the moment,
because I just told you what itmeant, but I really need to lay
(35:13):
on those layers of pain and Ineed you to play the game so
that you can actually use thelanguage later.
FishRod (35:22):
I think that kind of reminds me to myself something
that I haven't maybe this yearbeen doing as well is just kind
of like the preventativeeducation of the students of the
process and what it looks likethat like, yeah, sometimes it
will feel easy and like, that'sgreat.
You know, Grant Boulanger hasthat great poster of like, we
(35:43):
first we learned to, does he dolisten first?
Bill (35:46):
I think it's listen, then read, then write, then speak in.
FishRod (35:49):
we read and then speak what we, you know, wrote that
sort of like kind of sequencingthat puts like oral and written
input first.
I would like to open more honestconversations with my students
about like, Are you able to saythat?
to use that?
Kind of without my support allthe time, 100 percent of the
time.
Because I did it, it's funny, Ihad it with my level ones, I had
(36:10):
a couple weeks where we weredoing pretty samey sort of like,
Special person interviewsoverlapping with card talk and
stuff, And I had kids be like,It feels like we're just
kidding, it's like sorepetitious or whatever But then
we did like a week of storiesaround Halloween and they were
like, Oh my gosh, it was so muchtoo much new vocabulary, even
though I knew I was using all mytechniques and stuff like that.
And so I think.
(36:31):
like that's a conversation wherelike I could teach you a new
word every day and it would behard for you probably, you know
what I mean, or by a new word,obviously, you know, a bunch of
new words every day but we needthe repetition.
Like, that's just how we, that'show we get the acquisition
going.
That's how I'm, we get yourbrain so full of the language
that you're able to use it easypeasy.
Bill (36:50):
Yeah, I even just a student today asked, like, why
do, we ended up spending muchlonger on the Legend of La
Llorona in Spanish one than Iintended to this year.
But a student asked, like, whydo we spend like 3 weeks on the
same story?
It's like, well, you canunderstand it, but can you
yourself retell the story yet?
(37:13):
And like, oh, yeah, I guess.
It's like, and I want to make iteasy for you to be able to
retell it.
And so like, I'll do my best tomake sure that even if it is
something that you canunderstand really easy, that
we're doing things to processlanguage as well.
FishRod (37:32):
to your side that just brought up as well is that I've
had a couple of students in myupper level class.
So 3rd and 4th years who we werejust kind of reflecting writing,
you know, right?
Reflection in English about howthings were going and quite a
few of them had expressed kindof discontent with, like, how
ungrammatical they felt.
their language was and I waslike, Hey, y'all, this is
(37:53):
actually a good thing becauseyou have developed enough taste
to understand that the Germanthat comes flooding out your
mouth and sometimes out of yourpen is like wacky and you like
know that it's wrong, likeyou're aware that it's wrong,
but you would not have thatawareness unless you had soaked
up a lot of language.
And so we just have to keepgoing with that language soaking
up until stuff that you read andlisten to becomes in the same
(38:15):
style as what you're able tosay, right?
that those start matching alittle bit more.
Bill (38:20):
This is why we should be around for these little nuggets,
FishRod (38:23):
Yeah, like, it's the, you are developing, and German
has a lovely word, languagefeeling, which just means, you
know, sense of what is right andwhat is wrong, that kind of
intuitive, acquired sense thatwe have in our languages that we
speak proficiently, even yeah.
Like, I'm like, yes, you aredeveloping that, and it's a good
(38:44):
thing.
So you're in the frustratingintermediate valley, where you
do some U shaped learning, andthings get weird for a minute.
really mad, and yet, you have asense that things are wrong,
which means that you knowbetter, somehow, somewhere deep
in that, that brilliant littlenoggin of yours.
So,
Bill (39:00):
is the Intermediate,
FishRod (39:02):
it is frustrating.
Bill (39:03):
is the Intermediate Valley anything like the Uncanny
Valley?
Like, it's almost language.
FishRod (39:09):
creating something, yeah,
Bill (39:11):
Intermediate learners are just like messy, messy, messy
with the language.
And it's a beautiful mess.
So I don't mean to like, saythat it's not language.
It is language.
They are communicating.
That's the purpose.
Just trying to be funny.
FishRod (39:27):
but no, it totally isn't.
Bryan (39:28):
say something that is a little perhaps controversial,
FishRod (39:31):
Yes.
Bryan (39:33):
Well, I personally believe that we need to, well,
let me put it this way, Iexplicitly teach my students
about guessing meaning fromcontext because that is one of
the interpretive skills thatActful lays out for like, you
know, Rubik's four doing anintegrated performance
assessment because when they'reout there in the world, chances
(39:54):
are they're going to run intosome words that they don't know,
and they're going to have tokind of figure out.
global meaning based on thewords that they do know.
So I create a lot of exercisesif I am using an authentic text
where I take some word like asentence where I know they know
most of the words, but there'sgoing to be one word that they
absolutely don't know or mighttrip them up.
(40:15):
But I know they might see againdown the road and I teach them
strategies, you know, Iexplicitly teach them like what
prefixes are, suffixes are like,model like when I'm reading
things to them, like I would goabout guessing what a specific
word or phrase or whatever itmeans so that they can then do
(40:35):
it.
And we practice it a lot.
And I
Bill (40:38):
Transcription by CastingWords
Bryan (40:53):
like I think They need both like they need to be able
to acquire language that they'reexperiencing and also they need
to have that kind of likecognitive skill of guessing
meaning because it's justfrankly, like, they will have to
do that if they actually use thelanguage out in the world.
FishRod (41:13):
Who did I hear?
Someone was just talking about,like, and maybe it was, again
friends of the podcast,conversations about, like,
language teaching talking about,like, that.
What makes a very powerfullearner of another language and
the skills of interculturalityis being an observer.
Right?
Like using all of your clues,using your best observation
skills all the time to try tofigure things out.
(41:34):
Because yeah, it is easymentally to get into the place
of like reading fluently word.
I don't know time to stop, youknow, like that.
I see that.
And I understand that.
I think that if we, like yousaid, if we can model those
skills for being a very goodobserver, like, huh, I'm looking
at this article.
It has some headings.
I see some pictures like, youknow, thinking more, you know,
giving those a little bit ofmetacognitive strategies for
(41:55):
eventually when they are out inthe French wild or out in the
German wild, out in the Spanishwild, like I think making them
those observers they'reHopefully we'll also kind of
like, you know, it's an elementof their skills of
interculturality, which arebeing an observer able to kind
of outside of themselves to seekind of the bigger, bigger
pictures, in contexts andinteractions and sort of stuff.
Bill (42:20):
And one more, like actionable suggestion that I do
when I'm working with someconsistency is when a student
does ask for clarification of aword thanking them publicly.
And what I do less consistentlyis get everyone in the class to
(42:44):
thank them for making sure thatwe all understand.
So that's something that I needto work on.
And then, oh yeah, I had an ideaearlier and thanks Brian for the
reminder Because who was ittalking about clothes and like
all those specific pieces ofclothing.
Yeah, then something that I'vebeen working on, I use a
frequency dictionary from, Ithink it's from Mark Davies.
(43:08):
it's almost invaluable, likebeing able to if I'm writing
something for students, I try tocheck the frequency dictionary
because if it's a more frequentword, they're more likely to
encounter it elsewhere, whichwill give them.
More repetitions of the word indifferent contexts.
(43:28):
But a handy dandy thing thatthey have in that dictionary are
different thematic lists.
so like a list of most frequentanimals or most frequent pieces
of clothing, most frequent foodsmost frequent transportation
nouns.
I'll take like maybe 25 to 50,which sounds like a lot, and I
(43:52):
get that.
And I will make a one sheetPictionary for students.
So, today I gave my Spanish 4students one that had a bunch of
different foods, because we'reabout to talk about food
deserts, and, like, usingleftovers.
to make sure that we don't wastefood.
(44:13):
So I wanted to make sure that weall had similar vocabulary
related to food.
So I gave them this, it's got 50different food words.
I don't expect them to learn andacquire every single one of
them, but I give it to them, letthem put a whole punch in it so
they can keep it in theirbinders.
And then they've got thatreference for at least.
(44:35):
Until they throw with theirbinder away at the end of the
school year but we do otherthings with us.
Like, we'll play fly swatter orlike modified fly swatter with
it.
So, like partners will put it inbetween them and I'll call out a
word.
Maybe I'll call out a word inEnglish and they have to, like,
be the first to touch thepicture with their finger or
(44:57):
something like that.
Or today we did the, like thePictionary game on GimKit with
it.
So they had like the supportbecause on that game, you have
to type in your answers.
So I want to make sure that theyhave the spelling, right.
So they can actually participateand have fun.
Because if they have to guessthe spelling of it over and over
and over, then.
(45:19):
That's not fun and it getsreally cumbersome.
So yeah, those are a couple oflike actionable things that I
do.
I don't know if I've shared mythematic lists anywhere, but I
also don't know if I'm ready toshare them yet.
So just be on the lookout forthose.
FishRod (45:37):
You can't do this to us, Bill.
Bill (45:39):
I know
FishRod (45:40):
No, I think,
Bill (45:40):
I'll share the food one in the show notes.
FishRod (45:43):
Yeah.
and I would say recommend to ourlisteners as well, if you can
find a frequency dictionary thatis so illuminating of like, what
am I spending time on?
Am I teaching my kids the mostcommon collocations of various,
you know, verbs and nouns andall sorts of things together.
That has been very interestingfor me.
My one final tip in terms of howto girlboss sheltering vocab is
(46:04):
to use the technique of rightand discuss is that instead of
sometimes I used to let myconversations get so carried
away and we would just talkabout whatever came up
Bill (46:13):
Okay.
You
FishRod (46:43):
as language instead of just as an isolated term.
And then you have a text that islevel appropriate and was
comprehensible to your studentsthat you can reuse later for
various purposes.
And, you know, assign it ashomework, read it as the warm up
the following day, get morerepetitions on those terms again
so that you're getting bettertext coverage in the future by,
you know, not just lettingthose, new terms to slip by.
(47:06):
So I'm
Bill (47:07):
And
Bryan (47:28):
students comprehend enough of the text or, you know,
whatever language they'rereceiving, but also ways that
they can be taught to handleunfamiliar vocabulary.
And yeah, see you next time.
Bill (47:41):
keep on slayin bye!
hi, everybody, and welcome back to another episode
of SLA, second languageacquisition for everybody.
Today we are thinking about thetopic of sheltering vocabulary.
Sheltering vocabulary, the ideaof sheltering vocabulary is that
you don't just throw tons andtons of new vocabulary willy
nilly at your students as you'regiving them input in writing or
(00:24):
oral input, but instead you aresheltering, you're keeping
small, keeping protected theamount of vocabulary that you
are using so that you canmaximize student comprehension.
and thereby maximizeacquisition.
Now, let's gaslight.
What have been some pitfalls,some pits you've fallen into
(00:46):
when have not been shelteringvocabulary?
Bryan (00:50):
Happen when I just, I focused a little bit too much on
the like natural rate of speechand like, especially like
sometimes it will happen if Ihave a heritage speaker in the
class where like I'm just Theycan understand the natural
speech, so I just temporarilyforget that I need to do as much
as possible to make itcomprehensible for like, you
know, even the student who needsthe most support in the
(01:13):
classroom.
And so, I'll just like say asentence like I would in
English, and then like maybe acouple sentences, and then I
realize like everyone's staringat me.
Like, what the hell is hesaying?
And I'm just like, Oh, wait aminute.
I need to back it up.
Slow down and the variety ofvocabulary that I'm using.
So that's when it happens to me.
Bill (01:33):
For me, I think the most frequent occurrence is that I
will be saying something andI'll be right about to say
something else.
And think, I would have toestablish meaning for this word
in order to be able to use it.
And is that, like, worth themental load right now?
(01:54):
If as we're moving on with areading or something like do or
usually it's in classdiscussions because if it's in a
reading, I'll probably haveglossed it if I think students
might not know what the word is,or I'll preemptively ask, Oh
Okay.
Significa kick here this year,blah, blah, blah.
To establish the meaning, butyeah, I often lose.
(02:18):
Track of my flow if I have tostop and think on how to
simplify language because, youknow, I've always heard shelter
vocabulary, not grammar, so I'vebeen making sure to use like
subjunctive and level one andwith words that seem similar
(02:42):
enough.
To like the, the indicative.
But if I have to like stop andclarify everything, then it's
slowing down class for me andit's also bogging them down too,
(03:02):
because they have to wait for meto reformulate to make sure that
they can understand.
But also, I mean, that's kind oflike our job is to make sure
that we're understood.
So hopefully they're dealingwith it.
Yeah.
When I have to pause and thinkof a different word.
So how can we say, like, I haveto circumlocute, you know, to
(03:28):
make it comprehensible forstudents.
FishRod (03:30):
I always want to say to students is like, you have a
very complex brain in your firstlanguage and you have many
brilliant creative thoughts andyou can't say all of those in
German yet, but we're gettingthere.
But I think it might be helpfulto externalize that as well.
Yeah, it might be even helpfulto say to students, honestly,
(03:50):
like I'm trying to figure out away to say this in German that
we're sure to understand.
And that won't cost us 20minutes.
I don't know, you know,something shorter like that.
I hear that I think for me, ithas also come down to a matter
of training kind of what yourapproach to teaching with
comprehensible input or teachingfor acquisition is, for
instance, I was kind of trainedin a milieu of teachers who were
(04:13):
strongly kind of like selfproclaimed untargeted
comprehensible input teachers,which meant that instead of
picking target structures oflike verbs or nouns or verbs and
nouns together that they choseactivities that would provoke
communication.
And then discovered the languagethat was needed to complete the
activity with students.
(04:34):
So some activities that kind ofget slotted into this, like,
untargeted approach are thingslike a one word image or card
talk or let me think what elsecould be, you know, even a
picture talk to a certain extentcan be fairly untargeted based
on how the conversation goes orweekend chat.
Things where you really, reallydon't know what the students are
going to respond with.
And that is kind of the point,is to develop that language and
(04:56):
develop that conversation.
Bill (04:57):
Yeah.
FishRod (04:58):
But I was excited by that because I was excited to
actually talk to students aboutreal things.
And my perception was thattargeted input was so, just
like, made so small and seemedso limited that it would be
unnatural and strange.
But I found that you do have towalk the line between every word
is new and you have to establishmeaning with either some sort of
(05:20):
acting or gesture or writing onthe board or showing a picture
and stuff like that, that is solaborious and it doesn't
Bill (05:28):
Okay.
You
FishRod (05:58):
that is what makes it fresh and interesting and every
class is different, every yearis different, but also making
sure to provide enoughrepetitions to students through
things like circling questionsand personalization of new
vocabulary.
allows you to, you know, playwith a little bit more
vocabulary, but it also helpsget the repetitions that
(06:20):
students need in order toacquire those words and
structures.
I have also fallen into the trapof becoming just the dictionary
for students, where they, again,we're exploring something
interesting, exciting, and wejust get bogged, or maybe we're
just talking about the weekend,and we get bogged down in a
(06:42):
never ending series of, How doyou say blank questions in
German?
And I can tell it's because oftheir desire to communicate
comprehensibly about what wewant to communicate about.
They're like following theirnatural urge to be a part of a
conversation, but that can alsomake it feel so slow and such a
slog.
If you're getting so much newterms, it's like, well, so and
(07:04):
so mowed the lawn this weekend,but so and so learned how to
paddleboard.
And then so and so did this.
And you're just like, mygoodness.
And so I think one of my, like,learnings for myself is to just
go slower and deeper.
Try to discover the more commonterms, the more high frequency
terms to talk about this side orthe other.
But also use lots of repetitionof the same stuff and kind of
(07:27):
stick with one topic for longerinstead of moving on quickly
because otherwise then that wordis not going to get acquired
anyways.
I would have been thinkingabout, uh, our, uh, How do we
talk about a podcast?
That's like a friend to thepodcast.
Our podcast friends, our podcastfriends over
Bill (07:44):
I think people say friends of the pod.
FishRod (07:46):
friends of the
Bryan (07:47):
of the
FishRod (07:47):
pod conversations
Bill (07:49):
That's something I hear frequently.
FishRod (07:50):
Yeah.
I'm thinking about conversationsabout language teaching and they
in Diane and read, we're talkingabout something similar where
yes, we could teach specificterms about, I don't know
particular items of clothingthat are cultural or the very
specific food or stuff likethat.
But you can also go a level upand do the more high frequency
kind of category word.
(08:11):
And so instead of saying like,Oh, this is a Blank.
And then the blank is, you know,some sort of specific cultural
clothing item, for instance,that you could say something
like, oh, this is a specialclothing.
And so that you can kind ofgloss over that a little bit.
And maybe you include the nameof the special clothing, but you
can also establish meaning forwhat it is.
(08:31):
by using more high frequencyterms instead of getting down
into the nitty gritty ofeverything.
I think that can help sheltervocabulary towards high
frequency structures that aremore useful in a wider variety
of situations and avoid the wildspread of just going every, you
know, how can I say this, howcan I say this, how can I say
this, through their entireEnglish vocabularies, which are
(08:53):
expansive by their age.
Bryan (08:55):
Yeah, I think I start out kind of, I mean, I think I would
say like I kind of indulge thata little in the beginning, but
the fact is that it only happensin the communicative context
that I set up that don't requiresuper advanced vocabulary.
So they'll ask me like.
You know, how do you say bunny?
I saw a bunny.
You know, it's like, I can givethem a word here and there and I
(09:18):
find myself with the level onesand a little bit with the level
twos, like I'm often just givingthem the words and I don't
necessarily expect them toacquire them right away and use
them right away in theirvocabulary later on, but as they
get higher in proficiency, Ibecome a lot more insistent on
them, using circumlocution, andI always say, like, you use the
(09:40):
words that you already know, andI do encourage them to use a
dictionary if they have timewhile they're writing, and
eventually I get to a pointwhere I'm just like, I am not
Mr.
Dictionary, you know, you cannottalk to me like I'm Siri, and
just ask me any word all thetime, and they get mad when I do
that, but eventually they'relike, okay, yeah, I understand,
like, it is kind of annoying tohave to write every single word
(10:00):
I want to know on the board, andthen that kind of forces them to
use the language they alreadyhave,
Bill (10:06):
And a couple of things on that, which might be on like the
area of girl bossing, butsomething that I picked up from
Dr.
Terry Waltz was.
From watching some demo videoswas allowing students one or two
words in English.
And because I tell studentslike, I would love for you to
(10:31):
speak up more in class.
Even if you do have to throw inan English word, because like,
try it in Spanish first, ratherthan like defaulting to going to
English to try to get your pointacross because there was one
word that you wanted to say So Iwould much prefer and I'll do it
in English as a second languageinstead.
(10:53):
But like, yeah, like yesterday Ihad to pick up mi teléfono to
make una llamada.
Like, that doesn't breakcommunication.
It shows off what you canalready do.
And, that helps me know whatwords I need to focus on to make
(11:17):
sure that you get them.
So I would love for you toSpanglish.
Which I also think like, therewas, which I'm not going to try
to use the terms because I thinkI might be wrong on my
definitions, but Actful had evenan article in the language
educator a year or so ago.
(11:38):
In support of using your firstlanguage to aid in
communication, because we're ina context in which the students
do share a language.
So it's not breaking downcommunication.
It's helping them continue todiscuss whatever it is that
(11:59):
we're discussing.
And then me as the teacher, likeI said, like I can make note of,
Oh, we need this word still.
I haven't given them enoughinput on this word yet.
So I need to make sure that Iuse that more often so that
students don't have to rely onEnglish to talk about those
things, but it's a process.
(12:21):
Slow and peaceful.
Bryan (12:23):
which is the encouragement of mixing your own
language or the shared languagewith the language that's being
learned in the classroom.
And it helps a lot to developstudents confidence because it
shows that their identities arevalued.
So it comes, I think, primarilyout of the ESL context
encouraging students who doshare a language in the
classroom to use it along withEnglish.
(12:44):
But I think on the other side,we can do that a lot in world
language.
Like, realistically, when you goout in the world, you use your
language, you're probably goingto use an English word if you,
you know, don't have time to oryou're not able to.
Ask how to say it, or you can'tlook it up or something.
And you know that you share someEnglish with the person you're
speaking with.
(13:04):
So it is like a strategycommunication strategy that will
help them to get their messageacross, be successful
communicators.
So I highly encourage it.
And I love it actually, like.
When I notice my students startto do the franglais, like, I
don't even, like, ask them, andthey're just, like, you know, I
may not have a policy in placeat the time that they have to
speak French or whatever, but,like, they'll just start having
(13:26):
half of their sentences beingFrench and half in English.
Eventually, like, it gets up andup, and then I do ask, like, you
know, Alright, it's time toactually do it in French,
because, you know, it's beenfour years or whatever, but
it's, that is a really importantthing to do.
Recognize that it's okay to useyour home language in certain
situations.
There are obviously somecontexts in which you want them
to only use the target language,but they shouldn't feel like.
(13:49):
makes them a communicator orsomething because of that.
Bill (13:53):
So we kind of took a turn, sorry, I was going to say, we
kind of took a turn to output.
Like student output.
So I was wondering if you eitherof you had any more thoughts on
some of the pitfalls ofproviding input and going out of
bounds.
FishRod (14:14):
totally.
I think it's a planningconsideration, right?
Like, this is something that wekind of like when you were
talking about Bill with yourissue is that like, you can
maybe anticipate the things thatneed some explanation or
clarification or some sort ofsupport.
Sort of, you know, while we'regiving input, obviously we have,
we can use all variety of extralinguistic supports like
gestures, facial expressions,drawings on the board in the
(14:37):
language and also in English,you know, there are a lot of
things that we can do live andin the moment to supplement that
thing, but it comes down toplanning and kind of thinking
through.
The activity, the text, thevideo, whatever it is, being
prepared for those things andbeing prepared to have those
supports ready for students sothey can understand.
I think also, you know, kind ofhaving a moment with yourself
(15:00):
and see.
If you're using cognateseffectively, which can mean, you
know, perhaps using more orusing brand names to stand in
for things, right.
You know, using, well, I don'tknow, whatever it use Nike's for
shoes, use blah, blah, blah for,you know.
it is, Kleenex for a, tissue orwhatever it is.
But then also being mindful ofthe fact that sometimes we can
(15:22):
overextend cognates in an effortto make it more comprehensible
to English learners and startwarping the language a bit.
into something that might beconsidered awkward by a speaker
from the language community.
We're teaching about.
So I think you just have to bemindful of those things.
It's a hard line to balancebetween wanting the
comprehensibility and notwanting to take it so far that
(15:45):
the language you're presenting.
Students is just like wearingsome fancy jewelry.
Bill (15:50):
So, are you saying to be mindful and demure with our
cognitive use
FishRod (15:55):
Boo,
Bill (15:56):
is that I feel like that's gone past.
we're getting into the point ofits fringe because it's no
longer in the focus of theyouth.
FishRod (16:07):
but to be cringes to be free billion,
Bill (16:09):
Cringe is to be free, and I am the freest.
FishRod (16:12):
I feel like
Bill (16:13):
any final gaslight thoughts?
Bryan (16:15):
I mean, I guess like it always ends up turning to the
conversation of the place oflike using authentic resources
in the classroom and like, youknow, there's lots of strong
opinions.
in both directions about that,but I do personally think that
you need to both use texts thatare comprehensible and authentic
resources, but it's the way thatyou use them and when, right?
(16:36):
But like yeah, it can be reallydiscouraging if you just throw,
like, a news article at astudent just because it's
related to whatever topic you'retalking about and, like, you
don't do a lot of pre teachingof the vocabulary and, like You
know, providing extra supportsand like, just sometimes I think
as teachers, we might forget alittle bit what it's like to not
(16:57):
know the language, like, youknow, like, we can read and
understand it.
And so we're not really thinkingabout, like, what language
students have already beenexposed to.
We run
FishRod (17:05):
Okay.
Bryan (17:08):
it may be authentic and we do eventually want them to be
able to understand those kindsof texts.
But it's like, you have toreally pick and choose and be
careful because.
It can really affect theirmotivation if they feel like,
oh, I'm not good at learningthis language because I can't
understand a, know, New YorkTimes article in the country of
the language that I'm learning,which is not a realistic
(17:29):
expectation of a first or secondyear student, you know, so.
Bill (17:34):
All right.
Well, how about we take a quickbreak and then we'll come back
for some gatekeeping orungatekeeping.
Right.
Well, for this week, we read thearticle.
How does lexical coverage affectthe processing of L2 texts?
(17:54):
And it is from Ana PellicerSanchez, Stuart Webb, and
FishRod (17:59):
going
Bill (18:00):
Andy Wang.
FishRod (18:01):
out a lot of
Bill (18:03):
Yeah, I wanted to start off with what were their
questions here?
FishRod (18:06):
I think, you know,
Bill (18:08):
they wanted to look at to what extent does lexical
coverage the cognitive effortinvolved in text reading, as
reflected by tracking measures,which is This is a really cool
research tool that Brian isfired up about and maybe has
some thoughts on.
(18:30):
And to what extent does lexicalcoverage affect processing of
unknown words?
And does processing time onunknown words predict
participants ability to recalltheir meanings?
And, does lexical coveragemodulate this relationship?
(18:50):
So, they used eye tracking toexamine how lexical coverage,
the, the the breadth ofvocabulary affects the
processing of a textspecifically with Unknown
vocabulary, and if there was arelationship on how long readers
stayed on a word.
as well as the relationshipbetween processing time on the
(19:14):
unknown vocabulary and learning.
So, they used.
94 second language advancedlearners of English.
And they did have to remove datafrom some of the participants
because of issues withtechnology.
(19:34):
So they were all postgraduatestudents at a university in the
UK from a variety of differentfirst language backgrounds.
So kind of, you know, we have tobe humble in our understanding.
There are definitely some.
(19:55):
Benefits that we can take fromthis study, but they did not
find a significant impact on theamount of attention spent on
unknown vocabulary.
And they said the presence ofhigher number of unknown pseudo
words.
Did not seem to impact theamount of attention devoted to
(20:18):
process them.
And they also said that theydidn't seem to spend more time
processing the unknown wordswhen there were fewer of them as
they initially hypothesized.
So they thought maybe like, Oh,if there's fewer unknown words,
maybe they'll spend less timebecause they don't have to do
that process of figuring outunknown words over and over and
(20:41):
over.
So maybe.
There's less unknown words,maybe amount of time that they
spend on unknown words willshrink.
They did find that processingtimes were significant
predictors of vocabulary gains.
The lexical coverage does notseem to have a major effect on
(21:03):
the cognitive effort inprocessing the text and new
vocabulary.
They also found that theprocessing times were a
predictor of vocabulary gains.
So they saw that the amount ofnew vocabulary didn't seem to
have an effect on cognitiveeffort.
(21:24):
in processing the text and newvocabulary and that small
increments adding little bylittle new vocabulary might not
necessarily make texts easier toread.
So if there's no difference in,they're taking the same amount
of time with new words as theyare with a few new words as
(21:48):
well, as with A bunch of newwords.
It didn't really change how muchstudents were paying attention
and really what that means forus is when we come across a new
word, establish meaning, try touse it give them opportunities
to engage with the newvocabulary, hopefully in a new
(22:13):
way.
A way that will like still be ontask.
So like, if you're reading abouta specific culture or a specific
event, and there's a new word,try to tie the word in to use it
in ways that are related to thecontext.
(22:36):
So that's just like a quick,quick overview.
Ben, I know that you had saidthat you pulled something.
That you found interesting andhelpful for teachers.
And Brian, I know you wanted totake a swing at the eye
tracking.
FishRod (22:54):
Totally.
Yeah, I, you know, that's kindof, as Bill summarized, like
they didn't find a lot ofsupport for their hypothesis
that, you know, learners wouldslow down more and process fewer
numbers of new vocabulary termsbetter that was not necessarily
the case.
But I think the literaturereview actually was very helpful
for me.
(23:15):
To recognize that this articleis about processing, which is
like, just how much time arethey spent, like, letting their
eyes rest on these new terms andthink about them?
And I think that starting from abaseline via their literature
review that.
In order for texts to be kind ofminimally comprehensible, there
has to be 90 percent coverage ofthe vocabulary in the text.
(23:38):
That means 90 percent of thewords were familiar, just like,
that's the lowest that theywent.
And they mentioned in thearticle that, a student without
the teacher could maybe managethat like a TV show with 90
percent coverage of thevocabulary and TV show because
there are a lot of visuals thathelp kind of support what the
learner is seeing in it.
That help of comprehension,whereas like studies have shown
(23:59):
that like you're getting kind ofminimal kind of barely holding
on comprehension at 95 percentcoverage and that 98 is more
optimal for like reading forcomprehension.
Yeah.
And so I think that just thatpart of the literature review,
even if they didn't find thatthe in terms of processing, you
know, gains or benefits forvocabulary learning or whatever,
and the time that they lingeredon new vocabulary, even if that
(24:22):
wasn't present in this study,they were also working in an
incredibly narrow range anyways,that has been fairly well
established in reading researchto kind of be the sweet spot.
So I think it brings us back tous again, is that like, when
we're giving students somethingto read.
that is, you know, made forcomprehension, made for them to
acquire lots from it.
(24:42):
We need to be thinking aboutthat vocabulary coverage and
keeping it in that 90 percentplus range.
Otherwise, you know, theirglobal kind of comprehension of
the whole text is going to bedifficult.
And, you know, they might not begetting as much acquisition from
it as if we gave them targeteddoses of input of where, you
know, using By and largevocabulary that they were
familiar with.
(25:03):
I think the other thing that Ikind of took away from this is
how it might affect motivation.
Kind of like Brian had touchedon earlier, where they noticed
that the saccades, which arejust like how, how many
essentially words in a groupthat your I can take in at once
before it jumps to the nextgroup of words to take them all
in.
Because when we're reading,we're not necessarily.
(25:25):
doing one word at a time whenwe're reading fluently.
We're kind of taking in agrouping of words and putting it
all together in meaning.
that these saccades were much,and I don't even know if that's,
I'm gonna find out later, it'slike, saccades, saccades, or
something, like, like a Greekphilosopher, I don't know.
But anyways, that these weremuch shorter there were many
more new vocabulary terms whichmeant that, I bet for the
(25:50):
reader, it felt much moreeffortful.
If you're having to process textin these smaller chunks and go
like, Oh, I have to inch alongin this text or I'm going to
miss something because there'sso much new vocabulary that
likely felt more effortful, evenif it didn't take significantly
more clock time, it probablyjust felt like more of a chore.
And are students going to bemotivated by something that they
(26:13):
feel is a total chore all thetime?
Maybe not.
And so giving them.
reading that feels morecomfortable and fluent can be
more motivating.
But I think it's like Brian saidearlier that it's a question of
just kind of like the whens,right?
Like, when do we use authenticresources and for what purposes?
It might be, you know, theymight be more suited for
(26:33):
teaching things aboutinterculturality showing
particular language and contextor, or, or we also want to give
fluent reading experiences toour students because that can be
very motivating for theircompetence.
Bill (26:45):
Yeah, and that reminds me of the often requested
presentation on how easy iseasy.
Which floats around in some ofthe Facebook groups from time to
time.
And it's a great presentationand we'll share it in the show
notes, but it shows in Englishwhat a text looks like if it's a
(27:10):
hundred percent comprehensible,98 percent comprehensible.
95 percent comprehensible allthe way down to, I think, 50
percent comprehensible.
I forget how low it goes, butthey just use nonsense words to
trip up the reader.
(27:31):
And like, I used thepresentation with parent night
this past year to kind of likeemphasize, Hey, please make sure
your kids are letting me knowwhen something is unclear.
Because otherwise, this is whatit feels like.
And when we got to the partwhere it's even like at 80%,
(27:55):
people are checking out and Theydon't want to follow along
anymore.
Bryan (27:58):
And I guess just about the eye tracking obviously I'm
not incredibly versed in usingthis as a research method
because I've never done thatbefore, and it was enlightening
to read about this and see thatmaybe know, the results of the
study may not indicate a wholelot in terms of the way that eye
(28:20):
tracking is affected by thedifferent.
Levels of vocabulary that areknown, but I do wonder whether
like.
Things like neurodiversity couldplay into the way that we use
our eyes to process text.
I know that sometimes readersmight around a little bit in
terms of, looking for the mostinteresting part of the text,
(28:44):
but then they go back and readit again, and it may not
actually take them longer toread, it's just that they don't
read it in the order that mightbe expected, so would that be
interpreted in the research assomeone who is not processing
words well, I don't really knowit's just something that kind of
comes to mind when I think aboutdifferent kinds of readers.
(29:04):
But yeah, it seems exciting, thekinds of information we can get
from things like this.
And I don't know, maybe one daywe will all be wearing headsets
that track all of our eyemovements as we read during
class.
Sorry, I don't know where I wasgoing with that.
Anyway, all pretty interestingto me, and I'm excited to see
(29:25):
what new studies come out thatuse this because I know it's
something that's only come up inrecent years.
FishRod (29:32):
It is saccade, by the way.
Bill (29:35):
All right, so now that we've talked about some of our
issues, we've taken a look atsome of the research around.
text coverage and vocabularychoice.
How have we girlbossed in termsof out of bounds vocabulary and
the like.
FishRod (29:56):
I think it is a measure, like, in class we have
so much more opportunity forcomprehension supports and so we
need to be making use of thoseto make sure that students are
comprehending, but also checkingfor comprehension, like,
certainly, that students arecomprehending.
Bryan (30:10):
Okay.
all for
FishRod (30:17):
comprehensible, but actually comprehended.
And so we can,
Bryan (30:21):
today
FishRod (30:24):
of input on a variety of topics pretty broad input by
using comprehension supports, toensure that it is being
comprehended.
And we want to give repetitionson those new terms as well, so
that they are not one and done,you know, things that live
shortly in our students brainsand then move out Bill, you had
talked to in kind of ourpreparation about park and
(30:46):
pause.
Do you want to expand on that?
Bill (30:49):
Sure I actually just in general, I think me personally,
I've been doing my part to girlboss.
Out of bounds vocabulary inclass I think, but one of the
things that I try to do is parkand pause when an unknown word
(31:09):
comes up and students tell methat it's an unknown word to
them, I want to try to park andpause.
and pause.
On that word.
So I pull that out.
And then I park on it.
And like I said, like, I try tokeep it in context of whatever
it is that we're talking about.
An example that I had talkedabout with you all before we
(31:30):
started recording was yesterdayin Spanish word, the phrase say
throughout the day it's aboutcame up and I used it and
students said, what's that mean?
And I was like, Ooh, a greatopportunity to use a really
useful phrase over and over andover.
Because between me and all ofyou we weren't really getting
(31:53):
very productive with what wewanted to talk, what I wanted to
talk about anyway.
So we just use the phrase C'estTrat Today.
It's about, and talked about ourfavorite TV shows.
So it wasn't a phrase that theyknew before, but because I was
able to just stop and use itover and over and over now they
were better prepared for todaywhen we saw that phrase, se
(32:15):
today in a different context.
So we just talked about like,oh, what's, what's your favorite
show?
What's your favorite show about?
Is it about a man?
Is it about a woman?
Is it about a couple?
Is it about a mystery stuff likethat.
And we got a lot of repetitionof that phrase because students
(32:35):
told me that they didn't knowwhat it was.
And then I was able to take themoment to.
Establish meaning and then Ilike to call it like jump
starting acquisition where likeflood the input with a specific
phrase over and over and overnot guaranteeing that they'll
(32:56):
internalize the phrase, but atleast maybe it'll be easier to
pull out of their memory when itcomes up again.
So that's one way that I try tomitigate confusion when.
Words unknown words come up inclass
FishRod (33:14):
I love that too because I think that could also serve to
slow the teacher down when it'sso easy to power through new
words and then add new word andthen new word and more new word.
It's helpful to have strategieslike that.
As a reminder, like, oh, this isa new word.
I'm going to park on it for awhile and kind of, like you
said, just flood with that word.
So then maybe in the future whenyou're trying to use that word
(33:36):
again as part of something elsewhere there also is new
language.
You don't have to flood that oneas hard, right?
I liken an acquisition to kindof like when you're painting
with a spongy paint roller thatyou get like that very thin
layer at first.
And then when you hit it againwith another layer, the layer
gets, more opaque and thateventually you get to the
desired, paint.
(33:56):
opacity that you wanted coveringwhatever you were covering.
But it takes a couple of goesover with the sponge roller and
the sponge roller doesn't get itperfectly, clear, all the first
time.
Bill (34:05):
sometimes you still need topcoat later
FishRod (34:07):
totally.
So I think the park and pauseslows us down and gives us, you
know, a better chance with thatnew stuff and prevents us from
flooding too much into theinput.
Because again, 90 to 100 percentrange for reading texts is where
students are comprehending itfrom just barely to fully And,
you know, even the articlementions that, like, even with
(34:27):
100 percent comprehension of allthe word, like, there's so many
things that go into readingcomprehension that, know, who
knows if that means they just,like, perfectly understand
something, right?
But we want to give them thebest chance possible, and so we
need to be sheltering ourvocabulary to give them that
best chance possible.
And so using these strategies, Ithink, slows us down helps us
get that good concentrated inputof stuff that is useful.
Bill (34:49):
note, but a question do you ever?
Get students that like they onyou establish the meaning once
they understand it And then theyjust start getting bored because
you have to use it over and overand over because just because
you understood it once Doesn'tmean that you're That you've
acquired it.
Like, I understand that it'seasy right now in the moment,
because I just told you what itmeant, but I really need to lay
(35:13):
on those layers of pain and Ineed you to play the game so
that you can actually use thelanguage later.
FishRod (35:22):
I think that kind of reminds me to myself something
that I haven't maybe this yearbeen doing as well is just kind
of like the preventativeeducation of the students of the
process and what it looks likethat like, yeah, sometimes it
will feel easy and like, that'sgreat.
You know, Grant Boulanger hasthat great poster of like, we
(35:43):
first we learned to, does he dolisten first?
Bill (35:46):
I think it's listen, then read, then write, then speak in.
FishRod (35:49):
we read and then speak what we, you know, wrote that
sort of like kind of sequencingthat puts like oral and written
input first.
I would like to open more honestconversations with my students
about like, Are you able to saythat?
to use that?
Kind of without my support allthe time, 100 percent of the
time.
Because I did it, it's funny, Ihad it with my level ones, I had
(36:10):
a couple weeks where we weredoing pretty samey sort of like,
Special person interviewsoverlapping with card talk and
stuff, And I had kids be like,It feels like we're just
kidding, it's like sorepetitious or whatever But then
we did like a week of storiesaround Halloween and they were
like, Oh my gosh, it was so muchtoo much new vocabulary, even
though I knew I was using all mytechniques and stuff like that.
And so I think.
(36:31):
like that's a conversation wherelike I could teach you a new
word every day and it would behard for you probably, you know
what I mean, or by a new word,obviously, you know, a bunch of
new words every day but we needthe repetition.
Like, that's just how we, that'show we get the acquisition
going.
That's how I'm, we get yourbrain so full of the language
that you're able to use it easypeasy.
Bill (36:50):
Yeah, I even just a student today asked, like, why
do, we ended up spending muchlonger on the Legend of La
Llorona in Spanish one than Iintended to this year.
But a student asked, like, whydo we spend like 3 weeks on the
same story?
It's like, well, you canunderstand it, but can you
yourself retell the story yet?
(37:13):
And like, oh, yeah, I guess.
It's like, and I want to make iteasy for you to be able to
retell it.
And so like, I'll do my best tomake sure that even if it is
something that you canunderstand really easy, that
we're doing things to processlanguage as well.
FishRod (37:32):
to your side that just brought up as well is that I've
had a couple of students in myupper level class.
So 3rd and 4th years who we werejust kind of reflecting writing,
you know, right?
Reflection in English about howthings were going and quite a
few of them had expressed kindof discontent with, like, how
ungrammatical they felt.
their language was and I waslike, Hey, y'all, this is
(37:53):
actually a good thing becauseyou have developed enough taste
to understand that the Germanthat comes flooding out your
mouth and sometimes out of yourpen is like wacky and you like
know that it's wrong, likeyou're aware that it's wrong,
but you would not have thatawareness unless you had soaked
up a lot of language.
And so we just have to keepgoing with that language soaking
up until stuff that you read andlisten to becomes in the same
(38:15):
style as what you're able tosay, right?
that those start matching alittle bit more.
Bill (38:20):
This is why we should be around for these little nuggets,
FishRod (38:23):
Yeah, like, it's the, you are developing, and German
has a lovely word, languagefeeling, which just means, you
know, sense of what is right andwhat is wrong, that kind of
intuitive, acquired sense thatwe have in our languages that we
speak proficiently, even yeah.
Like, I'm like, yes, you aredeveloping that, and it's a good
(38:44):
thing.
So you're in the frustratingintermediate valley, where you
do some U shaped learning, andthings get weird for a minute.
really mad, and yet, you have asense that things are wrong,
which means that you knowbetter, somehow, somewhere deep
in that, that brilliant littlenoggin of yours.
So,
Bill (39:00):
is the Intermediate,
FishRod (39:02):
it is frustrating.
Bill (39:03):
is the Intermediate Valley anything like the Uncanny
Valley?
Like, it's almost language.
FishRod (39:09):
creating something, yeah,
Bill (39:11):
Intermediate learners are just like messy, messy, messy
with the language.
And it's a beautiful mess.
So I don't mean to like, saythat it's not language.
It is language.
They are communicating.
That's the purpose.
Just trying to be funny.
FishRod (39:27):
but no, it totally isn't.
Bryan (39:28):
say something that is a little perhaps controversial,
FishRod (39:31):
Yes.
Bryan (39:33):
Well, I personally believe that we need to, well,
let me put it this way, Iexplicitly teach my students
about guessing meaning fromcontext because that is one of
the interpretive skills thatActful lays out for like, you
know, Rubik's four doing anintegrated performance
assessment because when they'reout there in the world, chances
(39:54):
are they're going to run intosome words that they don't know,
and they're going to have tokind of figure out.
global meaning based on thewords that they do know.
So I create a lot of exercisesif I am using an authentic text
where I take some word like asentence where I know they know
most of the words, but there'sgoing to be one word that they
absolutely don't know or mighttrip them up.
(40:15):
But I know they might see againdown the road and I teach them
strategies, you know, Iexplicitly teach them like what
prefixes are, suffixes are like,model like when I'm reading
things to them, like I would goabout guessing what a specific
word or phrase or whatever itmeans so that they can then do
(40:35):
it.
And we practice it a lot.
And I
Bill (40:38):
Transcription by CastingWords
Bryan (40:53):
like I think They need both like they need to be able
to acquire language that they'reexperiencing and also they need
to have that kind of likecognitive skill of guessing
meaning because it's justfrankly, like, they will have to
do that if they actually use thelanguage out in the world.
FishRod (41:13):
Who did I hear?
Someone was just talking about,like, and maybe it was, again
friends of the podcast,conversations about, like,
language teaching talking about,like, that.
What makes a very powerfullearner of another language and
the skills of interculturalityis being an observer.
Right?
Like using all of your clues,using your best observation
skills all the time to try tofigure things out.
(41:34):
Because yeah, it is easymentally to get into the place
of like reading fluently word.
I don't know time to stop, youknow, like that.
I see that.
And I understand that.
I think that if we, like yousaid, if we can model those
skills for being a very goodobserver, like, huh, I'm looking
at this article.
It has some headings.
I see some pictures like, youknow, thinking more, you know,
giving those a little bit ofmetacognitive strategies for
(41:55):
eventually when they are out inthe French wild or out in the
German wild, out in the Spanishwild, like I think making them
those observers they'reHopefully we'll also kind of
like, you know, it's an elementof their skills of
interculturality, which arebeing an observer able to kind
of outside of themselves to seekind of the bigger, bigger
pictures, in contexts andinteractions and sort of stuff.
Bill (42:20):
And one more, like actionable suggestion that I do
when I'm working with someconsistency is when a student
does ask for clarification of aword thanking them publicly.
And what I do less consistentlyis get everyone in the class to
(42:44):
thank them for making sure thatwe all understand.
So that's something that I needto work on.
And then, oh yeah, I had an ideaearlier and thanks Brian for the
reminder Because who was ittalking about clothes and like
all those specific pieces ofclothing.
Yeah, then something that I'vebeen working on, I use a
frequency dictionary from, Ithink it's from Mark Davies.
(43:08):
it's almost invaluable, likebeing able to if I'm writing
something for students, I try tocheck the frequency dictionary
because if it's a more frequentword, they're more likely to
encounter it elsewhere, whichwill give them.
More repetitions of the word indifferent contexts.
(43:28):
But a handy dandy thing thatthey have in that dictionary are
different thematic lists.
so like a list of most frequentanimals or most frequent pieces
of clothing, most frequent foodsmost frequent transportation
nouns.
I'll take like maybe 25 to 50,which sounds like a lot, and I
(43:52):
get that.
And I will make a one sheetPictionary for students.
So, today I gave my Spanish 4students one that had a bunch of
different foods, because we'reabout to talk about food
deserts, and, like, usingleftovers.
to make sure that we don't wastefood.
(44:13):
So I wanted to make sure that weall had similar vocabulary
related to food.
So I gave them this, it's got 50different food words.
I don't expect them to learn andacquire every single one of
them, but I give it to them, letthem put a whole punch in it so
they can keep it in theirbinders.
And then they've got thatreference for at least.
(44:35):
Until they throw with theirbinder away at the end of the
school year but we do otherthings with us.
Like, we'll play fly swatter orlike modified fly swatter with
it.
So, like partners will put it inbetween them and I'll call out a
word.
Maybe I'll call out a word inEnglish and they have to, like,
be the first to touch thepicture with their finger or
(44:57):
something like that.
Or today we did the, like thePictionary game on GimKit with
it.
So they had like the supportbecause on that game, you have
to type in your answers.
So I want to make sure that theyhave the spelling, right.
So they can actually participateand have fun.
Because if they have to guessthe spelling of it over and over
and over, then.
(45:19):
That's not fun and it getsreally cumbersome.
So yeah, those are a couple oflike actionable things that I
do.
I don't know if I've shared mythematic lists anywhere, but I
also don't know if I'm ready toshare them yet.
So just be on the lookout forthose.
FishRod (45:37):
You can't do this to us, Bill.
Bill (45:39):
I know
FishRod (45:40):
No, I think,
Bill (45:40):
I'll share the food one in the show notes.
FishRod (45:43):
Yeah.
and I would say recommend to ourlisteners as well, if you can
find a frequency dictionary thatis so illuminating of like, what
am I spending time on?
Am I teaching my kids the mostcommon collocations of various,
you know, verbs and nouns andall sorts of things together.
That has been very interestingfor me.
My one final tip in terms of howto girlboss sheltering vocab is
(46:04):
to use the technique of rightand discuss is that instead of
sometimes I used to let myconversations get so carried
away and we would just talkabout whatever came up
Bill (46:13):
Okay.
You
FishRod (46:43):
as language instead of just as an isolated term.
And then you have a text that islevel appropriate and was
comprehensible to your studentsthat you can reuse later for
various purposes.
And, you know, assign it ashomework, read it as the warm up
the following day, get morerepetitions on those terms again
so that you're getting bettertext coverage in the future by,
you know, not just lettingthose, new terms to slip by.
(47:06):
So I'm
Bill (47:07):
And
Bryan (47:28):
students comprehend enough of the text or, you know,
whatever language they'rereceiving, but also ways that
they can be taught to handleunfamiliar vocabulary.
And yeah, see you next time.
Bill (47:41):
keep on slayin bye!
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