French the Natural Way

I think I am becoming a pro at multitasking! To be clear I am not fond of household chores, I find them so boring and I always end up thinking I am wasting my “brain time” and could do something much more productive! However my whole life is a constant dilemma: I cannot stand being in a messy and dirty house! How to keep home tidy and clean whilst having some sort of “brain activity”? Thank goodness the Internet has been invented so that I can now comply with my household duties whilst learning and teaching myself about language acquisition and TPRS techniques. In other words free professional development and full body workout at the same time!!! Why complaining???

Here is what I usually do: when I am ironing (or cleaning the bathroom!), I listen to Tea with BVP a weekly podcast that discusses topics related to second language learning, teaching, and acquisition. It is hosted by Bill VanPatten, Professor of Spanish & Second Language Studies at Michigan State University who questions important points about language teaching. For instance the role of grammar in second language instruction and the difference between focus on form and grammar instruction. To me grammar has always played an important part in my teaching simply because I love grammar (I know I am nut but apparently most language teachers are grammarian!), hence this obsession in teaching verb conjugations and so on. However looking at my recent learners’ impressive results, I have come to realize that grammar is not compulsory and that in fact it should come later when learners have acquired enough language and are already fluent. When I discovered the power of comprehensible input, I drastically switched my way of thinking!

Coming back to multitasking, I have also tuned in TPRS Hangout which is a Youtube channel where Tina Hargaden videos herself teaching in her classroom. So that you know (just in case you are interested!) I usually watch Tina when I am cooking, trying not to splash my phone with cooking oil or any other food! As a matter of fact watching Tina has taught me so much about how to apply TPRS techniques. I have not yet been able to attend a TPRS workshop so having access to a TPRS classroom live is a big bonus for me: thank you so much Tina!

One activity that I have yet to try is when Tina writes down the story the class has created. She writes it in front of the class and the students are expected to watch her write. Of course, they don’t seat silently watching her write the entire story! They do re-tell her the story so that she can write it down. What I very much like about this activity is that students have the chance to see someone writes (without mistakes) in the other language. They have a role model so that they can then write on their own later when they are ready. Writing is like speaking, it is output so learners should produce output when they have had enough input to be able to do so. What Tina does is giving them another form of “reading and listening” input. The other thing I very much like is that she takes time to spell the difficult words as she is writing them down and she also tells the students the punctuation she is using.

Have a look at one of her demos in French. Tina first explains why it is important to listen before writing:

What about you? Are you a king/queen of multitasking? What are your best professional development sources online? Have you tried Tina’s writing activity?

Although I had already waved goodbye to summer a few weeks ago, it has been unusually hot here in Germany and I have been trying not to use the oven too much. Salads in all shapes and forms were on the menu these last few weeks and as for baking, I would either bake in bulk in the morning when it was still cool or I would try to prepare “cold” desserts. Indeed, I forgot to mention that French people and families need to have a dessert at the end of a meal!

Last Christmas, my dear mum offered me a beautiful cookbook which has turned out to be very useful for planning meals. It is entitled The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adrià. It is written by one of the world’s greatest chef, Ferran Adrià but do not be afraid! The recipes are not three stars complicated ones! They are meant for a family dining at home! The book features meals that anyone can prepare, inspired by the dishes eaten every day by the staff at his legendary restaurant El Bulli. What I like about this cookbook is that it is organized into three-course menus, with appetizers, mains and desserts and each recipe is shown with numerous step-by-step full-color photographs, and conversions on how you can prepare a meal for a small or large group, from 2 to 75 people!!! I have not cooked a whole menu yet as in my humble opinion they are not well-balanced enough. For example one menu starts with carbonara pasta and then as a main a fish sandwich with mayo! To me, it is way too heavy and too high on carbohydrates! However, I have cooked a few dishes successfully, in particular this creamy coconut flan!

I had always been scared to prepare a caramel sauce because of my fear of the sticky spoon glued to the pan as I would let the sugar melt for too long in the pan! But this time I decided to go for it (at the risk of loosing a spoon and a pan!) and as I followed the step-by-step instructions from the master chef, I discovered to my delight that it was not that difficult! The flan itself was super easy to prepare and did not require many eggs which is unusual for a flan and is a relief if like me you never have enough eggs! One thing my boys didn’t enjoy so much was the grated coconut so I will do without next time I make one.

For the caramel sauce: in a pan, heat one tablespoon of water and 50g sugar. Mix together until the sugar dissolves in the water, then continue to heat the mixture until it starts to come to the boil and it looks dark. Pour the caramel sauce into an ovenproof dish.

For the flan: whisk 4 eggs together. In another bowl, mix together 500ml coconut milk, 30g grated coconut and 50g sugar. Add the eggs to the mixture and whisk until it is well blended. Pour the mixture into the ovenproof dish on top of the caramel sauce.

Cover the ovenproof dish with aluminium foil and put it in a larger roasting dish. Add cold water halfway through the roasting dish and put the dish in the preheated oven for about 30 minutes. Watch over it from time to time because the water should not be boiling. When the flan is cooked (it is firm when you touch it), let it cool down in the oven, then take it out and put it in the fridge. Before serving it, remove the flan from the mold. Sliding a knife around the flan can be useful!

What about you? What is your never fail flan recipe?

 

I am reading TPRS with Chinese characteristics: making students fluent and literate through comprehensible input by Terry Waltz and I am learning a great deal! I definitely recommend this book if, like me, you want your learners to truly develop fluency and proficiency in another language and on the other hand you do not consider yourself advanced in TPRS and comprehensible input, as I do!

For example, I noticed that YES, I was getting kind of good at telling a story and circling the target structures I wanted my learners to acquire. However I was not asking a story, which is quite different from telling a story! In the past I always planned my story scripts and my learners didn’t have much ownership of what was going on in the story. As a negative consequence, my classes would soon get bored because they didn’t contribute enough, they were listening to comprehensible input which was good but they were not part of the story. Therefore, they were passive listeners when the point of this approach is to become active listeners, in other words to listen to input with the intent of understanding. This year, I started to move towards story asking with my individual French learners and as I was having them contribute to the ideas and details of the story, I was sensing much more interest from them. Terry Waltz wrote a whole chapter about story-asking and what I have taken from it is that: “the teacher contributes the correct target language sentences and paragraphs; the students contribute the content and ideas.” Therefore there is no need to think about a whole story and to write down a script before the lesson. All you need to think about is the target structure you want your learners to acquire. It is best to stick to one or two structures so that you don’t fall into the trap of planning a story like I used to do!

My other big new discovery is that instead of starting with an actual story which demands creativity from your learners (which is something they are not accustomed to at first, especially in a language classroom!), you can start off with a one word image. This wonderful trick comes from Ben Slavic (a massive TPRS and Comprehensible Input expert) and it is about picking a word from a word list and ask the learners a specific set of questions about it, such as its color, where it lives, if it has a super power…
Starting with a word image means that learners can imagine anything about a single noun. They see that as well as listening with the intent of understanding, they can also be creative and have fun. For not advanced teachers like me, the one word image is also not so complex as asking a whole story but I am still able to ask many questions and get many repetitions.

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I have already used this technique twice and instead of having a list of words, I showed my finger puppets (which I found hidden in a drawer the other day!) and I asked my learners to choose one puppet and then invent a little story around it. One was the rabbit called ” Neige-Carotte ” who loves eating carrots but hates chocolate and frogs. The target structures were: ” Elle aime/ déteste manger …” with tons of repetitions. The other one was the mouse called ” Mouse “! Mouse has a super power because it can run very fast on its legs and tail! Needless to say that we were all having fun!

Watch out this demo with Ben Slavic where it all starts with a picture of a snail. The story gets funnier and watching it gave me the confidence to try it out.

What about you? Are you story-telling or story-asking or both?

 

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Today as we enter the month of September and we slowly start to wave goodbye to summer, let the sun shine and let me share a success story using TPRS and comprehensible input online!

Back in April an ex Spanish student of mine contacted me because he wanted to learn French. I for sure accepted and offered him to meet him online via Skype twice a week for 30 minutes sessions. In the past, when I was teaching Spanish in middle and upper school, I started to impart a lot of comprehensible input using Martina Bex’ wonderful resources but although I had read the green bible: Fluency Through TPR storytelling by Blaine Ray and Contee Seely, I had not dared doing it fully step by step in a whole lesson. I think that the thought of having to manage classroom behavior and at the same time being in front of the class trying to ask an interesting and engaging story which would also be comprehensible to all was kind of scary to me. So when I got the opportunity to try it on a single learner, I decided to take the plunge and do it the “real TPRS way”: doing personalized questions and answers, asking a story (not telling a story which I was used to doing) and circling, circling, circling… I just didn’t realize that I was not in a “real” TPRS setting with a full class of students and that I was going to be face to face with one single learner (which would have its advantages and its disadvantages too!).

We started the 30 minutes sessions with lots of TPR (Total Physical Response) because I had read it was best for the learner to acquire more words faster so that he could then create stories with my help. I also made a point of always starting each session with personalized questions about how the learner’s day went or if the session was at the start of the week, I would ask about his weekend. Therefore the learner was not only receiving input in the present tense but also in the past tense.

When I was then confident that my learner had acquired sufficient high frequency words, I started asking stories using the vocabulary he knew and introducing target structures. As I mentioned above, being face to face with one single learner has its disadvantages… Well, some days the inspiration and creativity would be hard to find and when you only have one source to create a story, the story can fall flat! However, most times we managed to co-create stories which had a twist and were fun to ask. I also got inspired by Putting it together – TPRS for English Language Learners, Teacher’s guide by Elizabeth Skelton and Denise Milligan to have structures which would help my learner to become fluent and proficient in French. As well as face to face sessions with me, I would ask my learner to read parallel stories similar to the ones we had built up together and to answer comprehension questions on Edmodo.

Then one day, my learner’s dad asked me if his son would be able to go to France at the end of July to join a French immersion program for three weeks. Typically his son would stay in a French family and he would attend French lessons in the morning and go sightseeing in the afternoon. The only bump in the road was that students joining this program were required to have had two years of French instruction prior to coming. The dad was asking me if his son would be able to join although he only had started French a few months ago. I must admit that at this point I didn’t think too much about this (silly) requirement and replied a prompt “yes” to the dad thinking it was an amazing opportunity for my learner to travel to France! We continued our sessions the “real TPRS way” until he departed to France and as the days went, I was confident that my learner would be able to deal with any situations in French in France! I was truly amazed at how he was understanding everything I was telling and asking him and also at the range of vocabulary he had acquired!

When he departed for his first trip abroad on his own, my learner had 14 hours of TPRS French under his belt. I was intrigued to find out how he would cope compared to his fellows who had many more hours of French… When he returned from France, I received two ecstatic emails. One came from my learner stating: “I wanted to thank you for the excellent classes you gave me to learn and improve my French. The time I had in France was one of the best in my life and I am very happy that I had the chance to experience such an adventure and this could not have been possible without you.” and the other one was from his dad: “Thank you very much for all you did for max! He had an amazing time in Antibes in all ranges (“I love France and the French”). He was surprised, because the school put (only) him into the advanced course…”

The advanced course??? What??? I could not believe it!!! I asked my learner to explain to me how he was put into the advanced course and he told me that they had a test at the start of the course where they had to write about a book or a film they had read or seen, or a political situation. They also had to translate sentences from French to German (his mother tongue). The fact is that he merely did any writing with me. He only did two free writing tasks and the rest was listening, speaking and reading! When I asked him how he felt about having to write in French, he told me he chose to write about Harry Potter and was OK doing it! He also told me that at the end of the three weeks course, he told his French teacher the truth: no he had not done two years of French before coming over, he only had started with French a few months ago! Needless to say her French teacher could not believe him!

I am still in shock by how successful the TPRS approach has proven to be with an online French learner! I was already astonished at the way my Spanish learners improved in just one year but this is beyond belief!!!

What about you? Do you have a TPRS success story share?

When it comes to making a tart nothing beats homemade sweet pastry dough! Jamie Oliver’s head chef pastry articulates it perfectly in his post on tips for perfect homemade pastry: “Making your own pastry may seem like a slow and intensive process, but that’s the joy of it. Comfort food isn’t just about the way something feels or tastes when you eat it, it’s also about how you make it and what goes into it.” When you are a full time mummy trying to multitask looking after four boys, cooking, cleaning and teaching languages online, the thought of having both hands tied into a sticky dough is not something you are longing for, especially when you have a baby crawling on the floor and touching things he shouldn’t! However homemade sweet pastry tastes so much better than the shop-bought stuff and it doesn’t take so much time to knead the dough, plus it actually freezes well. When I feel stressed out I usually go to the kitchen, put some music on and get my hands sticky. It is so relaxing and therapeutic!

The other day, I sent out my boys to pick a few plums from the trees nearby our house and they came back with more than expected. Everything is a competition with boys, so they counted the number of plums they got trying to get the most and I think they got near to one hundred!

I froze bags of them (for the harsh German winter to come!) and kept some to make a tart from scratch. Once the sweet pastry is made, the filling takes minutes to prepare:

For the dough: mix 250g flour with 50g sugar, 125g butter, one egg and a bit of cold water if the texture is too crumbly. When you mix all the ingredient, don’t over work it, just leave it to rest at least for half an hour as soon as you manage to form a ball.

For the filling: Beat 2 or 3 eggs with 100g sugar and 200g crème fraîche (or single or double cream). Lay out the plums on the pastry and pour the creamy filling on top of the plums. Bake in the preheated oven at 180 degrees for about 30 minutes. Because my mold is made of silicon, I don’t bake the pastry first but you might have to do it if you have another type of mold.

Enjoy warm or cold!

What about you? Do you enjoy making a tart from scratch? What are your tips for the pastry?