LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE
WITH A HIGHER PURPOSE
By Alfredo Arango
With the implementation of an educational strategy we can call “News and Technology For Second Language Acquisition” (NT4SLA), the term “total immersion” gains a more comprehensive and deeper meaning.
The idea here is not to immerse students just in a foreign language and culture for no real purpose or for individual goals, but rather to take the opportunity of teaching/learning a second language to immerse students into current topics that make communication necessary. This methodology provides communication tools that can result in improvements for students, their families and their communities. It is Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS), but with an urgent sense of global relevance.
To illustrate this point; let's realize that spending too many valuable hours teaching students how to order in a fancy restaurant in Madrid or Paris would never be as relevant as teaching them the same words and grammatical constructions while introducing them to topics that are more directly related to their lives, or to topics that can open their minds to start thinking about possible careers.
Students in both low-income as well as affluent schools equally benefit from this approach which can contribute towards making classes more fun and meaninful, while at the same time contributing towards helping students become true global citizens.
In other words, learning should not be presented as a goal in and of itself, but rather as a means to accomlish the goal of making this world a better place.
Teaching simple “survival skills” has made us miss the real purpose of education. Nowadays, when Google Maps can guide you to any place on Earth, and voice recognition electronic translators can translate any language and any sentence in seconds, second language educators need to change gears and embark students upon a richer, more challenging and beneficial type of learning.
Students are totally ready for this approach. It is we the teachers who are sometimes behind. The computers and projectors/smart boards we are given should not be used just to replace chalk boards and white boards. We urgently need to use this wonderful technology to compete with video-games and other entertainment alternatives young people now have in their hands. Schools cannot become isolated “monasteries” in an age that is bringing a new technological and ideological “Reform”.
The million-dollar question is: Where to find the content to accomplish this? Most books are outdated and making photocopies is so time consuming and expensive. School districts are paying a fortune in tax-payers money in buying and maintaining copy machines, paper, and ink cartridges.
The answer to that question is simple. There is no fresher content than the daily news. Every minute, reporters, editors, photographers, videographers, graphic artists and web masters around the world make great efforts to select the best stories and present them in the most clear, direct, and impacting way possible.
Bob Greenman, a veteran English teacher and author from Brooklyn NY, is correct when he says that learning new words in context through the news is "like the difference between seeing an animal in a glass case in a museum and seeing it in the wild. It brings the word to life, it gives it a sense of place, and it makes you see that the word has a use." (Vocabulary.com: Words in Context)
Current news –used the right way, through proper adaptation in terms of length and complexity to fit the students’ age and academic level, and presented to them in attractive PowerPoint Presentations with big fonts together with photos, audio and video– is the best content to teach and learn a new language, while developing awareness about what is happening locally and globally.
Length and complexity adaptations render the news short and easy to understand. For instance, when presenting a group of seventh grade students in a Spanish class the news about a Panda bear who gave birth to two cubs at the National Zoo in DC, details about the mother bear breaking her water for the delivery were left out, because the right conditions for the teacher to explain this were not there. Such details could probably be better explained and understood in a Science class, not the Spanish one.
Adaptation also refers to complementing the news with the necessary photos and videos, as well as translations, audio recordings for students to repeat and improve pronunciation, and exercises to do in the classroom and at home, including multiple-choice questions, fill in the blanks, matching words, rearranging sentences and paragraphs, conversations/dialogues, closed and open questions, cross word puzzles, word search puzzles, etc.
To give an example, breaking news dealing with a natural disaster not only provides students with language and context, but also the fact that learning a second language helps rescue personnel (doctors, firefighters, security forces and translators) to better help in international missions.
Current news related to the environment, politics, sports, entertainment or any other subject become the rich content to facilitate the teaching-learning process.
With the appropriate adaptions, it is never too early to immerse students in relevant content and start making them familiar with the issues that matter in their present and future. From Kindergarten to 12th grade and college, interesting and urgent topics better prepare students to face their challenging lives.
In this digital era of internet and video-games, the new generations are ready and eager for more fun and complex learning adventures.
December 6, 2019
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Alfredo Arango is an educator, writer/editor, and translator, who has been teaching languages (Spanish and English) to children and adults, and developing curriculum, in the U.S. for 20 years.
Photo/Marvin Meyer
@marvelous