Back when I used to ask for translation at the end of every test, I’d comb through that chapter’s vocabulary list to come up with sentences that would test the maximum number of words and target features. Like this gem:
I saw a turtle with two heads in the park with my tall friend and my short friend on Wednesday.
No, seriously, you’ve done this too, haven’t you?
To linguists, one of the most astonishing miracles of language acquisition is that as children acquire language they suddenly begin to utter phrases and sentences they have never heard before. It’s one of the ways we know this process is not like memorization. And it reveals that the process of acquisition is nothing like translation. Instead of asking for translation (a high-level skill our students aren’t terribly capable of anyway), just ask for language:
– What did you do last Wednesday? Where did you go? What did you see? With whom did you go?
Another way we ask for unnatural language is to constantly demand full sentences. This happens across disciplines. I’m not sure why – maybe a carryover from elementary days when we were trying to be sure kids knew what a sentence was? But get this: I just read a popular nonfiction memoir in which half the “sentences” are actually fragments.
I’m pretty sure our high school kids know what a sentence is by now. Next time your students ask “Do we have to answer in complete sentences?” (I’m betting you’ve heard this a thousand times too), tell them to simply answer like they would answer naturally. If you’re asking for narrative, you’ll get sentences when they’re appropriate. If you’re asking what color a panda is, you’ll get black and white. I beg of you, don’t take off points for the lack of a verb. You got your answer, and it’s natural, and it’s correct. Students will develop real proficiency when we stop asking for unnatural language and let them simply respond.
Foto: Gema Campos Hernando
This is so beautifully obvious. Thanks for articulating it. Although their lack of formal grammar (’m pretty sure our high school kids know what a sentence is by now) always astounds me and I have several yearly who credit my class for increasing their ACT English scores. Go figure. Thanks for your wonderful blog. I’m a world language department of 1 and it gets lonely.
Yes, learning a new language certainly helps students with those vocabulary sections! There are a lot of us out here who are there to support you and all the others in WL departments of 1. Vent, bounce ideas, ask us anytime here or through #langchat.
Sara, thank yo so much for writing this. I REALLY needed to hear this today. Just the other day, my Span 3 Honors’ students were answering with natural language and I would make them repeat it in a full sentence. This, as you point out, is UN-NATURAL. I know it because I am the mother of 3 teenagers (2 of my own and an exchange student living with us this year). They don’t talk in full sentences half the time. My 14 yo son, particularly, will exchange information in the minimum amount of required language. So, THANK U for pointing out the obvious. Communication should be about natural language. IC language is different than Presentational language and as teachers we (I) need to start making a difference between the two.
Thanks for the comment, Axa! And the answer certainly isn’t one or the other, right? As you say, natural responses look different in IC then they do in presentational.