Coping Strategies

For target-language teaching to be successful, it depends on at least two things: that the teacher knows how to do it and that the teacher trains the pupils in how to cope in a lesson where their native language is not used.  If either of these ingredients is missing or botched, it just won’t work!

Many of the posts on this blog are concerned with the nuts and bolts of how it can be done, or at least, how I’ve gone about it with my own classes for the last 16 years or so.  In this one, let’s have a look at a first lesson with a class and how they can be set up for what follows over the next weeks.

Before I get going on some detail, a few thoughts to bear in mind first:

• This first lesson is done in the native language and takes place after expectations, equipment and name-learning, etc., have been done
• This post describes an introduction to coping strategies so that the class is not too surprised by the lessons which follow.  Much of it will be learned through what happens in those lessons much more than from this explanation.  Nevertheless, this explanation helps and it shows the class that I have already thought of what the lesson will be like from their perspective.  Some pupils will need this in order to reduce any anxiety a target-language lesson may produce in them, and we all know that if a pupil is anxious they won’t learn anything.
• I don’t teach “I don’t understand” for a long time, and I never teach “Can I speak in English, please?”  In my experience (and observation), this is too easy a way out for pupils when the words they need don’t come to them immediately.  Part of what I want to happen in the classroom is that pupils realise that getting tongue-tied or not understanding immediately or completely is perfectly normal, it still happens to me and that they will be given the space (thinking time, paralinguistic clues, etc.) they need to get through.  This may mean expressing what they mean in other words or more approximately, negotiating with me or another pupil what they mean, asking for clarification and so on.  I think of this as the MFL equivalent of thinking hard to work through equations in maths or weighing up arguments and evidence in history to test whether an opinion or conclusion is justified.  Obviously at an early stage of language learning pupils may not have all the language they need to do this, so our explanations and instructions have to be as carefully planned as our content language, we have to think through the steps in our activities and the demonstrations we give and anticipate where pupils are likely not to understand and then do what we can to prevent that from occurring.
• I do teach “Comment dit-on …. en français/anglais ?” and “¿Cómo se dice … en castellano/inglés?” and “How do you say in English/Spanish…?”, but only at the first moment when they need the sentence and not in isolation in this lesson.  At that point the lesson is virtually dropped for a minute or two and the expression is drilled around the class with a Mexican wave (as you do) and a visual which is stuck to the wall and then removed.  Every time it is needed, up it goes again and after the third or fourth time I leave it there.  However, it is important within a few weeks to wean pupils off using this.  By that stage their language and their communicative skills will have grown considerably and they can begin to cope in other ways than translating back and forth.

So here goes.  The easiest way to describe this is as a script:

If I was sitting where you are, I’d be wondering what my language lessons will be like.  Would I have to use a text book all the time?  Would I be doing written exercises in every lesson?  Would I be sitting still for the whole lesson and saying nothing?  Would I be doing translation exercises?  The answer to all of those questions is No!  Let me describe something which happened in a normal lesson one day last year…

Here I describe a scenario which brings together much of the classroom language and routines I use with classes, some of them involving quite long and complex sentences.  The scenario is real.  Pupils hear the sentences first in the foreign language and then immediately in their native language.  It’s the only time they ever hear me do this!  The scenario includes:

• Teacher and pupils greeting each other
• Pupils asking permission to come in to the classroom and being given that permission
• Pupils telling other pupils to stand up because the register hasn’t been taken yet
• Pupils asking other pupils if they will be allowed to sit down after the register has been taken
• Greeting the class / teacher
• Pupils speculating on how long it will take to do the register and whether it will be faster or slower than yesterday.
• Pupils asking permission to time the register and saying why they in particular should be allowed
• The register is taken and timed, (French: boys and girls using présent / présente  as appropriate) and excuses made for absentees (he’s on his way / he’s off today) and silly reasons why absentees are not there (he’s having a fag behind the science block).
• The pupil who guessed the most accurately how long it would take to do the register is identified and congratulated.
• The class asks to sit down because the register has been finished.
• A pupil arrives late and is questioned by the class.  An excuse is given by the late-comer and comment is made by the class on the acceptability of the excuse.
• Somebody sneezes and the class responds with ‘Bless you’.
• A pupil asks to play ‘Simon Says’.  The class plays, with pupils being eliminated as the game progresses and their elimination is explained.  They become police officers who spot others to be eliminated.  They are told to sit down, distinguishing between singular and plural as appropriate.
• Pupils speculate on who will win.  A pupil wins, celebrates and is congratulated.  The pupil asks for a point for his team and explains why.
• A pupil comments that this is all very silly (in the native language).  The class pounces, telling the pupil that they are not allowed to speak in the native language and that they now have to pay a forfeit.  The class chooses between a limited range (vetted by me), the forfeit is paid and the lesson continues.

This happened one day last year in this room.  How old do you think those pupils were?  Put your hand up if you think they were in year 7? Year 8? Year 9? Year 10? Year 11? Year 12? Year 13?  They were in Year 7.  When do you think it happened?  Put your hand up if you think it happened in September? October? November? etc.  It was in October, just before half-term.  (Pause for effect!) And I expect you to do the same.  (Pause for effect and the odd fainting pupil).  And after today, we won’t be speaking in English, but only in French/Spanish, etc.  Put your hand up, you can be honest, if that makes you feel a bit nervous, if you’re wondering whether you’ll manage! (Virtually every hand goes up, teacher takes on very understanding, comforting manner!)  Well, you don’t need to worry because it’s my job to help you not only to understand, but also to make lots and lots of progress.  So, if you’re doing everything you should be doing, and you’re watching, listening and taking part, if at the end of all that you still don’t understand, whose fault is it?  (Pause) It’s mine.  So, how are we going to go about it?  What does it mean for you to be “doing everything you should be doing”?

 First, you have to listen, because sometimes you will hear some words in French/Spanish/German which sound a little bit like English words, and that will help you to guess what they mean.  So if I tell you all to get your books out of your “sac”, what do you think I mean?  Of course, your bag.  You can guess it, you don’t need to know that word in advance.  And the way to check if you’re right is not to ask me in English if I mean “bag” but just to do it.  And if you get it wrong, it doesn’t matter, and it’s much more likely that you’ll get it right.

Secondly, you have to hear me out, you have to listen to the whole sentence.  And if you don’t understand every single word I say, that’s wonderful!  Even now, when I am speaking French or Spanish, I don’t always understand every single word I hear, but that’s fine.  I can use the words I do understand to help me understand the words I don’t.  And you can do the same, and as you get better, so you will understand more and more, and guess a little bit less.  So if I am going round the class and I give you an envelope and I say to you “Mets l’enveloppe sur la table”, what do you think I mean?  Of course, to put it on the table.  It doesn’t matter that you haven’t heard the word for “put” or “on” before.  You can guess it, and the way to find out if you’ve guessed right is not to translate it back to me, but just to do it.  And you’ll almost certainly get it right, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t. 

Thirdly, you need to look.  There will always be something to see, always.  Sometimes it will be something on the screen, a picture, a word, or more likely, part of a picture or part of a word, and I want you to guess what that might be.  It might be something that I’m holding, or the expression on my face, or an action I’m doing which will help you to follow what’s going on.  And very, very often, it will be something that’s going on, that’s actually happening in the room, so if you see the rest of the class standing up with a foot in the air and their hands on their head, it’s very likely that you’re supposed to be doing the same thing. 

And after all that, if you still haven’t caught on, don’t worry about it at all, because the next thing you hear you will probably understand perfectly.

Some of you learn very well through what you see, you remember the way a page or a poster or a screen looked, the colours, the pictures.  Others of you remember extremely well what you hear, a song, the sound of a word or a whole expression, the rhythm of something someone says, or how we whispered, said, shouted or sang something.  And still others of you remember well if you move around a bit, by moving cards around on the table, by standing up and sitting down and by doing actions which go with the words.  And because we are all learning together, we are all going to do all of those things together.  This means that if we are doing actions, we ALL do actions, so that those who learn best that way don’t feel on their own.  That means that if we sing or shout or whisper or speak, we ALL join in together.

And if you are doing all of these things, I guarantee that you will be able to do at least as much as the class I described to you a moment ago.  And to prove it, on the last day before half-term, we will look back at how far we have come and you will see for yourselves.

Any questions?

That’s my introduction to coping strategies.  It’s quite long and it’s about as much as they can cope with before we get as far as the activities, but I wouldn’t do without it.  I keep my promise to them to review at half-term.  I get them to think back to their first day, which feels like a long time ago for them, and ask them how they felt.  They usually say “nerveux”.  Of course.  Then we go through all of the classroom situations which have come up, and as we go, we draw up a mind-map on the visualiser which they also put into their books.  By that point they have had around 21 hours of teaching and so they have learned a lot – this activity takes almost a whole lesson.  Once we’ve got everything down I go back again to that first lesson when I explained the scenario, and I remind them how old they thought the class was and when they thought it happened in the year.  I also remind them that I said I wanted them to be able to do the same by October half-term….and now they see that they can.  One tip: don’t overpromise when you describe the scenario, or it will back-fire!  Every year as I’ve added a bit more or changed things in my teaching, this is reflected in the scenario I describe.  It doesn’t have to be long, the purpose is more that they see how the whole lesson and everything we do can be expressed through the medium of the target language, and that they can do it if they co-operate in the ways described.

This is a tremendous confidence booster for them, and I encourage them to think that if that is what they can accomplish in one half-term, how much would they be able to do by Christmas if they carry on working in the same way?  By July?  By the end of Year 8? Year 9?  Year 11?

Back to September for a moment:  My route from here is to run an activity which involves me giving the class instructions (stand up / sit down / turn round / jump / dance / run / stop / go / it’s your go / it’s my go) which turns into their first pairwork activity where they order each other about.  This is followed by a game of Simon Says.  Both activities exemplify really well how I expect them to interact and the role of classroom language in how the lessons will proceed.  Not everything, by any means, is all singing, all dancing, but the first few weeks are the most intense lessons I teach because so much is so new to them.  However, once everything is established, especially in terms of how to keep going in the target language, then I can begin to take a step back and lessons can take on a calmer pace.