When I tell you that the topic of this episode of the Musicuentos Black Box videocast is an article entitled “Overcoming Resistance to 90% Target Language Use” you probably think what I thought, that it was about getting your students on board with everyone speaking more TL in the classroom. You’ll learn something about that here as well, but the main point isn’t helping the students feel better about TL use, it’s about helping us, the teachers, overcome the objections and obstacles we have to using more target language in the classroom.
Except fatigue. If you find an answer to that one, Albert, please let me know.
Click the video below to watch Albert Fernandez walk you through this article and help you figure out where use of the L1 creeps into our classrooms, and how to kick it back out when needed.
The Musicuentos Black Box is a collection of media resources intended to bridge the gap between Second Language Acquisition research and teacher practice in the classroom. For more information about the project, including information on how you can help keep this resource freely available to teachers everywhere, visit the Black Box page.
Thank you to all contributors to the Musicuentos Black Box videocasts. Great idea and great execution by all!
My question . . .this article provides great recommendations for teachers staying in the TL – What about students?What specific strategies or procedures have you all, or videocast viewers, come up with to help keep students in the TL 90%+?
Great question! We’ve discussed this before on #langchat and you can see the summary of the chat here. It’s been a while so maybe we need to poll that one again! Also, I blogged the topic here. Hope that helps!
Great stuff, Musicuentos. While it is a challenge to stay in the TL for most of my class, I find that the students enjoy class more when we do so. We may not hit as many grammar or vocab topics that a textbook would require but comprehension is greater and output improves when we use the TL as much as possible.
[…] watched the Musicuentos Black Box podcast on staying in the TL; and Senor Fernie mentions that we should have a bank of activities with simple directions that so […]