Episode 70 - Input in the Classroom

[music] Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, cats and dogs, and snails everywhere, boycotting French restaurants. It's Thursday at 3 o'clock, and you know what that means? My from Michigan State University Campus, it's G with BBP. I'm your host, Bill Van Patten, aka BBP, international superstar, and diva of SLA. And speaking of snails, here are two people who long ago shed their shells and launched themselves into the spotlight. My co-hosts, Angelica Kramer and Walter Hopkins. You know what to do? Say hello. I'm in Wunderschuhen and Gutenberg, and I'm in Sagnaw Mittag. Does that mean you're a good snail? Absolutely, yes it does. It means I'm the best snail. There you go. I heard a good and snoggin, and I thought that was a snail. Is that what it means? Say hi, Walter, and say hi to the audience. Good and snoggin. What's that mean? That's not even a word. Oh, well it's. [laughter] I just made it up. Hey everybody, it's great to be back with you today. Yes, and look, we're all three in the same room. Yeah, I think like we should be holding. Yeah, we should be holding. [music] Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, you do have cold hands on Galica? I know, I know, it's a curse. Hands on never cold, but she got baddy, Dave's eyes. All right, by the way, have you ever eaten snails actually? I have, yes. Have you, Walter, eaten snails? I have indeed, yes. And did you like them? Indeed. How did you have them? Why were they prepared? With a lot of garlic. Garlic butter ones? Yeah. Have you ever been to Northern Spain Walter and had the Northern. Like the way they prepare snails and cantabti and astudias? No, I guess not. They actually do the little tiny snails and you have to take a little pen and prick them out and they put them in a little red tomato sauce kind of thing. It's kind of like snails, almost like snails marinara. It's pretty good. And you can eat them with seed, that big ol' astudias. It's just right there. I'll eat snails in any old way except raw. They're good. What's the most. Is that the most. Well, you're from Germany, Angelica. What's the most non-American thing you've eaten? Snails are pretty non-American, but what's the. It's the granui, I guess. Oh, that's frog legs in the United States all of us. Who does? We used to go frog-gagging in California. We ate frog legs as a kid. Well, I sure hadn't. They named him in the South and in the Midwest. I think what else though? Brain soup. Brain soup. Mm-hmm. Ooh. When I was seven, I didn't know. It was delicious. Oh my gosh. I know. That's why you're so smart. She just sucked up. Ooh, I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm gonna smarter. Oh my god, look at that. Equals MC squared. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh, right. Where does it come up with this stuff? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Well, guess what our topic gets today, kids? Input. Input. It's on input. Why is it on input? Because we're on chapter four. Four of my book. The focus of chapter four, of course, is input. And particularly today we're gonna talk a little bit about making input comprehensible. So we'll get to that later. That's what everybody know what we're talking about. And other than that, I got no news. I just got. I always liked to be able to make an announcement or say something fun. I got nothing. I'm dried up, Walter. Wow. I'm just. I'm just. Shocking. Just call me the goby desert. I'm so dried up. I mean, I just. You have to dust me with water to get me all lubricated and dry. Because I'm just dried up. I'm so sorry to hear that. I know. I know I wouldn't. I got to drink more tea, man. I think it's because I didn't have lunch today. So if I get a little punchy. It's because my blood sugar is either spiking or dropping or going sideways who knows what. And I didn't have an afternoon coffee or tea. So I'll probably pass out halfway through the show. I'll call 911. Which one of you is older? Because you'll have to take over. Actually, I don't know. I don't know either. Oh, well, let's do a birthday guest here. No, we're not gonna do that. Well, I'm CPI certified, so we'll be good. I'll bring you back to life. It used to be, but that was when it was 15 compressions and two breasts. And now they've apparently changed it, right? Well, I carried a deep. I carried a deep rib. I carried a deep rib in my briefcase. My briefcase have a defibrillator if you're in there. So just let me know. What? Are you kidding me? The little portable ones just put this in. You kidding me? Seriously? I got it at some shop on the street in Chicago. Of course you do. You put these little things on you. Unbelievable. How about input? Oh, yeah, input. We're talking about input in a minute. All right. Well, I guess it nevermind. But we're gonna. No, we'll do input in the classroom. That's how I actually do input in the classroom. I shock my students with it. I put those. Input is shocking experience. They add to it, right? Yeah. Right? All right. So we'll get into. We'll get into input in just a minute, everybody. But I'll remind everybody how the show works if you're a first-time listener. And there were a few of you out there, always. That during the show, there is the. What we call the SLA Challenge Question. The second language acquisition challenge question. In a few minutes, I'm going to read a question to you. And the first person who gets a call in with the correct answer wins a prize. We got wonderful prizes. We're better than the Oprah show when she was on. We give away Buick's. We give. no, we don't. We give a fun prize. That's on the Oprah. So, yeah, that's the old Oprah. She's not even on anymore. So. We outlived Oprah. Look at that. Okay. So we started after Oprah was off the air, I think. But anyway. Walter, don't say that. Make people think we've been doing this forever. So keep your cell phones close by so you can call in and win that prize with the SLA Challenge question. And the same, we also have the Deva Challenge question. I'll read that question sometime later after we get the SLA Challenge question answered. And you'll have time to pick up, punch in our number, and you tell our call rustler, Dustin, I'm calling in with the answer to the Deva question. So please put me through. The number to reach us out is 517-884-4321. Again, I already touched a little bit slower because we're dealing with Comprehensible Input today. That is 517-884-4321. Again, Dustin is on the phone lines. We're waiting for your call. Hey, Dustin. Angelica will be looking on Mixed With A See, what issues come up. But please call in. And Angelica is going to chastise people on Mixed With A See. Call in with that. Oh, already did. Yeah, see, I'm not going to be that. I'm not going to be that common at a large tip to call it. So we're a call in talk and show the wise. It's just me and Walter and Angelica playing cards here in the studio. So please call in. And we don't want you to be shy. You're all teachers. You used to speak in front of people. So don't be afraid to call in. Our number again is Walter. Take it away. 517-884-4321. Is the number to call? Near a yellow. All right. That's good, Walter. Well, do you guys have such a great radio voice? Very cool. I listen to my. I never listen to myself. I never watch myself in videos. But I did listen to an episode recently because I was trying to find something. God, I sound like a chipmunk on steroids. Oh, I do. Wasn't the chipmunk episode, though. Maybe it was. That was a fun one. Yesterday, we were doing Yoda in my class. That was fun. Oh, nice. Yeah. We were talking about different word orders. And they go, "Doesn't Yoda speak an SOV language?" I go, "No, actually, he doesn't." He did not speak an. He speaks an X-S-V language. So if we object subject verb, or it could be adverb, search, or verb. So he says things like, "Judge me by my size, you will." That's how he speaks. So the conjugative verb always goes at the end, subject before, and then stuff in front. So it's not 100%. Because sometimes he uses a copy of a verb. It's subject verb object, or subject verb X. Wow. But most of the time, it's X subject verb. So there. There you go. So if you want to learn a language that doesn't have English or German or Spanish word order, listen to Yoda, get the rhythm down, and then you can learn that language. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and give the SLA challenge question now. Get it out of the way, and then we're going to launch into our topic. It does that sound Walter. Do you have. Do you have a. You're a TwaB, you're a Provil in that Walter. I don't think that you need my approval, but I think it sounds great. I don't know if I've walked it. Sometimes Walter gets in that look on Gallic alike. What the hell are you doing, Bill? You know, it's Saturday. Sometimes. Everyone's allowed to ask him. Okay. So here goes the SLA challenge question. You ready? Yes. Okay. This is easy, peasy, error-cermin. If you're listening, you better be the first to call in with this. Okay. Over the years, we have made the distinction between input that learners are exposed to, and that part of the input that actually makes its way into the learners head somehow. What is this subset of input called? Shall I repeat? Yes, please. Well, this was Halloween Week. I should do my Sanderson System, my bitmiddler, when she does the witch. Blackity, black, no. Okay. That's your SLA challenge question. Everybody in our listening audience should know the answer to this question. So call in, win a prize, and don't forget, we're still giving away books. My book called Walter Read That Title right there. Well, we're on the topic, BVP, on language, acquisition, and classroom practice. There you go, published by the American Council, teaching foreign languages. It's a best-sertified bestseller, by the way. I just got the news. Yeah, it's going like hotcakes. So we're happy with this. Nice. Anyway, so we're happy to be able to give copies away. So call in, win a prize for answering the SLA challenge question, and then your name automatically goes in the hat. Anybody who calls it? today their name goes in the hat to win a book. So that's great. All right everybody should I get into the topic? Yes please. Get into the topic I will. How's that? There you go. Done there you go. That was an X SV word order. There you go. While just while just linguistic background is is haunting him. Okay so let me get into the topic real quick and say a few things. I don't get a lot to say today because I know a lot of people out there have questions and comments about this but I have just enough to tease you all. So our topic is about input and particularly input and comprehensibility. So here are some questions we're asking ourselves. How do we make input comprehensible? Especially how do we know it's comprehensible? Because do we assume that it's comprehensible? Because we think we're making it comprehensible? And finally what does it mean to talk with and not at students? A very important thing we're doing with input. Okay so in language acquisition and language teaching we often talk about modifying input to learners to help make it comprehensible. Okay we all know what input is right Walter can you give a definition of input? I love it when you put me on the spot. That's why you do it because you love it. No I hate it actually. Angelica what's the definition of input? Why are you putting me in a spot? All right I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. Expose too. It's the language that a learner hears or reads that's couched in a communicative event. I knew that. So it's language that you're listening or reading that you attend to for its meaning right? I don't memorize the definitions but I would be able to come up with something and you would say well not exactly. I would say okay well I knew that but I just didn't put it in the definition. Well I could tell you all my 803 students that's the course I teach the semester on the foundation language teaching. They all have that definition in backwards and forwards right now. Okay so that definition again? It's language that we hear or see that is couched in a communicative context. Thank you. So it's language that you process for its meaning or message. Okay. Angelica is taking notes apparently. All right so in language acquisition and language teaching we often talk about modifying our input to learners to help make it comprehensible because if we talk too fast or talk to whether you know learners just go huh a lot of noise right? So there are lots of tips and strategies that many of us use visuals gestures gestures speaking more slowly all kinds of things and another Twitter feed will look at a little bit later there are some other ideas. Now to be honest with you there's not a lot of research on this that I know of about actually making comfort input comprehensible but my review suggests that the two biggest features for making input comprehensible are you ready for this? Posing and rephrasing. So a lot of people think slowing down is the most important thing so if you talk like this at learners that's useful. Not so clear it is that actually distort some things but what people have found in some of the research because there's not been a lot of research so I've done on this since the 80s and 90s actually but what people have found is that if you just pause at the right places so if you pause at the right places learners have time to process what you're saying instead of after every single word because I think that would get a little bit annoying. It is it is and it's just artificial so but pausing and then rephrasing so if you said something like to biggest facts making input comprehensible are pausing and rephrasing so again pausing and rephrasing putting pauses in and saying something differently pausing and rephrasing that's useful see see how I just did that welder so those are kinds of things that we're seeing in the research that are really and the recent pausing and rephrasing I mean really what are the reasons of rephrasing is is is beneficial is because you also wind up pausing when you rephrase it's a natural thing you do I can't overestimate or overstate the rule that I think pausing plays in comprehension now a lot of people also talk about keeping sentences shorter which is true right so instead of saying a big long sentence say a short sentence so on Galica's German while really from New York I didn't know that sorry I didn't know this was an interactive session long term oh well it was interpersonal communication so a short sentence would be on Galica is German along sounds would be on Galica's German but she's living in the United States for a long time I think excuse me who on Galica thank you you called me Angelica no I didn't you heard wrong oh too bad that this is a recorded right Daniel can you adjust can you adjust your earphones okay anyway so a lot of people think shorter sentences make language more comprehensible and they do but not just because they're shorters because guess what you put more pauses in when you have shorter sentences so you say a short sentence is a slight pause and you say another short sentence so every time you say a short sentence you're adding pauses believe or not that little split second or two of pausing gives more processing time for what you just said so shorter sentences themselves are tied into pausing so a lot of this stuff about comprehensive compatibility comes back to how pausing gives learners what we call processing time because you got to remember at particularly the beginning stages what learners get right away is the beginning of the sentence and if you keep going they're still trying to process the beginning of the sentence they miss the middle and they don't catch up till you're at the end so short sentences and pausing help them start to process more now but a major question I have and I think the field should have is is these are great strategies but how do we know whether input is comprehensive or not how do we know that only by what our students do so this is why I talk about level appropriate interaction with input in chapter for my book so my real thumb is this if you say anything more than three sentences in a row without engaging your students then you're not talking with them you're talking at them and you won't have appropriate measures to see if they're comprehending right so two three sentences and your students better be engaged with the content right away and and that doesn't mean you just say one thing and then go on to another two three sentences you work those two or three sentences right so Walter has a bottle of water of Angelica Angelica Angelica Walter has a bottle of water actually Walter has two bottles of water okay Angelica how many bottles of Walter is how many bottles of water does Walter have two is two okay right Walter give me one does Walter have two bottles of water no he only has one he has one bottle of water and now he has how many bottles of water two two bottles of water how many bottles of water do you have one one okay and I have one actually I have half a bottle of water okay so all right and so that's how we work that one little sentence or two sentences about the bottles of water for a couple of time before we go on another thing so the idea is to is to not just say two things ask a question then say two things that that's not what we're talking about but we are talking about talking with and not at your students so input doesn't mean throwing things at and monologuing at your students we talked a little about this last week in the show so it's but it's worth repeating so again my bottom line is this I was tell people talk with not at and if your students aren't engaged with you then you're talking at them and so this leads me to one final topic something that occurred to me in the office the other day a teacher came by and talked to me and said that he had an evaluation of his class and that it was that he was told his class was a little to teacher centric meaning that he talked too much and now I'm not saying whether the criticism was true or taught maybe he did I don't know what but his concern was that the person valued him said the students need to talk more and what was implicated here and in discussion came out was that they values expecting students to make sentences in this language and produce more language that the teacher's job was not to talk but to get them to produce sense produce language and we talked a bit and he was a little disconcerted and I said what he needed to be able to talk to people about this when he gets evaluated or down the road when he's teaching a school maybe as a parent who comes in and says something or administrator it's the following so this is a rule of thumb you all can use out there to talk to your administrators and parents and students as my classes aren't teacher centric if you're providing lots of input and talking with your students my classes aren't teacher centric they are student and acquisition centered but teacher led that's a pretty profound way to rethink these things okay so my classes aren't teacher centric they are student and acquisition centered but teacher led okay it's a really important distinction to make so the idea of the teacher center classroom is derived from educational ideas about learning in the first language right so we have all these kinds of things coming out schools of education about project learning and interaction and students teaching and so on that's well and good those are great ideas when you already have a language but a lot of these good educational ideas don't translate readily if at all into language classes because the students and our learners don't have language to do what they can do in an L. W.M. so my thought for you today is as you make your classes input rich and you try to make your input comprehensible is that you are not teacher centric don't let people tell you your classes teacher centric you are student and acquisition centered You are simply teacher led. And here's one final example if you wanna drive the point home to people. Angelica is my little year and a half old, right? So she's 1.5 years old. And I'm getting her ready to take her out to the park. And it's chilly. So I'm gonna put her coat on her, right? So I go, okay, come here Angelica. Here, give me your right arm. She was gonna ride on. I'm gonna put your right arm through the coat. Okay, give me your left arm. She gives me your left arm. Come on, put your arm through the coat. Come on there, okay. Do you want me to zip it up? No, no zipper. No, it's cold. No, zipper, no. No, I'm gonna put the zipper. Just a little bit, I'm gonna zip right. Okay, now I'm doing all the talking, right? The child someone said one thing so far. Zipper, no, no zipper, right? We would never call that parent centric talk and that can make it a vent. It's parent led because the parent is the one who has language. And the child is clearly interacting. The child is doing the arm here, doing the arm there. No zipper. And so think about that way. That's what your classes really are. They are like the parent talking to the child. They are parent led but not parent centric. The child is clearly at the center of that community vent. Right? Okay, enough of that. I thought that was an important thing to bring up because this friend of mine, this former student, was clearly a little concerned about what he had heard. So anyway, all right. We have a collar on the line already. My gosh, look at that. Okay, our collar on the line, I think is the name Paris. Paris, are you there? Hello? Paris. Yep, I think I heard her. Can you hear me? I can hear you. Okay, I just heard you. Okay, say something again, Paris, are you there? Hi. Oh, great. How you doing, Paris, what are you calling from? I'm out here in Seattle. In Seattle? Wow, well, it's raining here in East Lansing too. So, a great skies and rain, we all deal with it, right? Yeah, yeah. So, are you a teacher, Paris? I was a teacher at home on time. Now I support 81 language teachers in my district. Oh, well, good for you. Great, great, great. So what are you calling about today? It looks like, are you gonna answer the SLA challenge question? I think so because I've been reading your books. So, oh my gosh. I'm like, look at me. She's been binge-re, I'm like the, I'm the SLA equivalent of orange is the new black. She's been binge-re. You're so old, God. My word. Okay. Yeah. So here, I don't think you needed to boost this ego at all today. Well, you know. Oh. So, I think the wood you're looking for. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me read the question again for everybody. So, because a lot of people will forget the question. So, let me read the question and you give the answer. Okay, here we go. All right, so the question is this. Over the years, we have made the distinction between input that learners are exposed to. And that part of the input that learners that actually makes it way into the learners head somehow. What is the subset of input called? Paris? Integ. Integ. Integ. Ding, ding, ding. So Paris wins a prize and her name also, just because she called in, goes into the hat to win a copy of my book while I'm a topic. And I put this question as SLA challenge today, simply because, again, if the topic is about how we make our stuff comprehensible, even adding all these pauses, all this thing we're talking about, topping with rather than at and so on, ultimately it's the learner that's in control or who is in control of what makes it in. So something in the head, even as comprehensible, we try to be only pieces in parts get penciled in and in a given time. And that's what intake is. And so we just have to remind ourselves that that's why one of the reasons why acquisition is slow in piecemeal. So thank you, Paris, for that answer. That's great. Before I let you go, did you have a-- Thank you. I just want to thank you for the comment of you really should be saying, or the three sentences without the learner interacting with you, because I feel like when we call it comprehensive, it's a little in a quote, we're forgetting the interacting piece, interacting with it. And that's a piece that I know my teacher's needs a lot to think about. And again, it doesn't have to be student speaking in sentences. They can be shouting out a word. They can be nodding. They can be long-- Engagement doesn't necessarily mean talking in sentences or talking in big phrases. So-- Yeah, that's really helpful. I appreciate it. So well, great, Paris. Thanks for calling in. And hope for the rain will clear up soon. Yeah. All right. Be it active. Bye-bye. See you at Actful. Bye, Paris. Thanks for calling, Paris. That was great. That was good. You know that song I like tell me something good. She just did. She did a good job on that question. OK, I'm going to go to Twitter press in a minute. But before I do that, I'm going to go ahead. Look at-- can I read the diva challenge question? Just get it out there right now. And then I think Lucas saying yes, I can. So I'm going to go ahead and do that. And then I'll get to some of the things that came up in the Twitter press for today. So here's our diva challenge question today. We had a request last week from who was it that called in and wanted more international stuff. And I said, we'd just then eat a P off question. So I have another international diva question. So here we go. Walter will know this one. What-- I got it. I got it. What Cuban-born singer who died in 2003 was known as the Queen of Salza. Again, what Cuban-born singer who died in 2003 was known as the Queen of Salza. Good diva challenge question. So all you people from Miami better be calling in. Or from New York, for that matter, because she was lived in both places after she lived Cuba. OK. All right. So that's our diva challenge question. And oops. Before I-- I'm trying to pull the Twitter press on my computer, but it's not coming up. So in the meantime, what I'm going to do is tell callers and listeners that they should give us some ideas. We want to do some new swag for the spring semester. So starting in January 2018, we currently give out coasters, notepads, tote bags. We try to do things that are easy to mail when you call in and when a prize. And that we can take to conferences for people too. But we need some new ideas. So if you have any ideas for easily portable prizes that we can give away that are easy to put in the mail for people, send those ideas our way. You can tell us if you call in today, you can mixlarize something if you're listening. Or you can just send Walter an email. He reads all the T with BVP emails. So Walter, what's our email address again? It is T with BVP at gmail.com. There you go. Oh, this is open to Android. It's a really hard one. It's box, I think. Oh, yeah. OK. So Luca, our publications person and our Twitter handler, follower and guru, sent out the question this week. About what are some strategies we can use to make input more comprehensible in the classroom? And we got some really pretty good interesting things here. So we had something for-- this is from Spanish Bananish, which I love-- use real yet succinct texts, use tweets, infographics, ads, PSA headlines, meme to setter, and let students explore and analyze at their own pace. So in other words, rather than giving a lot of language at once, give them shorter things. Which kind of goes in line with what we were saying earlier. Instead of talking at talk with. And so the shorter the pieces you get in terms of text is more like talking with. And then there was some back and forth about real or authentic. And that's OK. We won't deal with that. That's another show. Wait a minute, I'll show an authentic text, I think. All right. Let's see here. Maggie Stair says, use fewer words in shorter messages. So shorter sentences again. And the fewer words you use at a given point in time, that's good. Because remember that whole idea of rephrasing, and restating, using your words over and over again, that helps learners start to pick up on things in the messages that they missed the first or second time you said it. Oh, look what Ginny said. She must have been reading my mind when she wrote this tweet earlier. Speaking slower with pauses. There you go, speaking with pauses. So that's good. Richard Green says, use synonyms, antonyms to help with vocabulary. And he's right. It depends on the language. And sometimes synonyms are great, but sometimes students don't always get that it's an anonymity or using or something. So that can work if you do it right. Oh, here's longiness gave us a nice site to go to. He says, here are lots of ideas for making input comprensible that come from Ola and your Howard. And that's seniorhoward.com. Senior Howard is actually a young man who completed his undergraduate degree. At the same time, I didn't. We took our teaching methods class together. So there you have it. So why isn't there a seniorwalter.com? Seniorwalter, I don't know. Doesn't happen. It would be senior Hopkins probably, but because it's his last name. Oh, Howard is last. Those people that have a first-name and a first-name is a first-name, like William Thomas. Who's that really good-looking guy in MSNBC? He's the newscaster. What's his name? Thomas Robert. His name is Thomas Roberts. It's like, OK, you got two first names, boy. OK. All right. Courtney said, I love visuals and students like them as well. Of course, we all use visuals. Visuals always help a lot. Makes things concrete. Let's see. There's a lot more ideas here. A lot of things about visual.com. of El Rocher talks about visuals, gestures, and so on. And let's see. And then Luca did a follow-up question. We were just talking about, in our presentation, how do you know your input is comprehensible? And we're going to says direct feedback from students. So there you go. This is why you have to talk with and not app, because they're the ones that are going to tell you if they're understanding, so if you ask them something. So, and again, it doesn't have to be actual target language stuff. They just have to show you their comprehending in somewhere and other. And Chris says, when students answer the question, what does X mean? That's very controversial. I know a lot of people do that. So they'll stop after a couple of senses. In English, they'll say, what does what they mean? And Angalika goes, "bottle." And some people like doing that, some people don't. That's the kind of thing I would suggest using judiciously, because only because it just, the more you do that, the time it takes away from them hearing more of the L2. So, and that's probably something that might be a little bit better at the very, very beginning, and then you taper it off and start not to use it so much anymore. But that's my suggestion that there's no research on that, or anything like that. Let's see here. Richard says, and the answer to, how do you know your input is comprehensible? He goes, "When I can spontaneously riff on the story, and they all react by laughing, smiling, shocked, facing, so on." So, yeah. Clearly, we're talking about students demonstrating comprehension because they are doing something with the input that they are hearing or reading. Okay, we'll come back to some of those in a minute. We don't want to do all those at once. Oh, we got another person in the line. Here we go. Is it Maris? Oh, my God. Is it really? Maris on you in the line? Yeah. We have, first we had Paris. Now we have Maris. And Maris, you are calling from? Potomac Maryland. Potomac Maryland, great. Now, Maris, I think you're calling about the diva question, right, Maris? Okay, but before you do that, I'm going to give you a double prize if you can answer this pop culture question. Are you ready? So, if you can answer this incorrectly, and then you have to diva question correctly, you get two prizes today. So, on what long-running TV show was Maris a character who never appeared in any episode? On Frazier. Ding, ding, ding, there you go. It was, right? Nice. Maris was the wife of Niles, but you never saw her, you really? You were very cold. Yeah, she was very cold and thin. And I remember that description when she was missing, and they gave the phone they were telling the cops, then very thin, and then the guy goes Caucasian, and then there's a pause, and the guy goes very Caucasian. I thought that was pretty funny. But anyway, so Maris, you have the same name as a famous TV character. There you go. Yeah. Okay, Maris. So, let me read that again for our audience, and then you can give your answer, and we'll see if you win a second prize. All right, the question is, what Cuban-born singer who died in 2003 was known as, and probably still is known as, the Queen of Salsa. Maris, the answer is? Celia Cruz. Celia Cruz, ding, ding, there you go. That's great. A lot of people don't know this, but she was probably the most popular Latin artist of the 20th century. Even though we think of people like Ricky Martin exploding in the 90s, and Gloria Stefan in the 80s and 90s, now we think in terms of platinum records, right? But back in her heyday, Celia Cruz had 23 gold records. Did you know that, Walter? I did not know that. Which today, by just saying, stand as a little bit more to be platinum. And then, you know, you can see the way up on my culture. And she's been awarded and fetid. She actually got Barack Obama. Not Barack Obama, but one of the bushes I think it was, gave her a medal of freedom or something, the American medal of freedom, something like that. So she was quite the thing. So Maris, you win a prize for being Maris, and you win a prize for knowing Celia Cruz. How's that? Thank you so much. You're welcome. Anything you want to say or ask before we let you go? No, we, in Potomac, Maryland, we tune in every week, and we talk about it in our department meeting so a lot. So thank you all for everything that you're doing. Oh, well, thank you in your department. Tell your department we said hi. We will. Okay, and your name goes in the hat for a copy of the book, and a good look on that. Okay, talk to you soon, Maris. Bye-bye. Are you going to act for, by the way? Are you going to act for-- No, we went last year. I wish we were going this year. We were going last year or so. Okay, all right. Well, I don't know where it's going to be next. It's going to be closer to you, but maybe we'll see each other at the next act, Paul. Are you a Spanish teacher? Yes, I am. Well, then you have to go to A2's, P meeting sometime in the summer, and I'll see you there. Okay, sounds good. All right, okay. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye, Maris. Thanks for coming. Bye-bye. I, you know, not many people would know that answer that question about Maris on Frazier. Did anybody ever watch that show? Yeah. It was a riff on--because remember, on Cheers, Cheers was a long-running show, and it was-- whose wife was it? It was George's wife. That he always talked about Vera, remember Vera? And you never saw Vera. Her name came up in every episode. Then there was that one Thanksgiving episode of Cheers where she's finally thinking you're going to see Vera. The door opens, and I think it was-- what's your name? What's your name? I worked in the bar. I was mad at George, so she went to throw a pionist face and he ducked in a pionist and Vera's face. So you never got to see Vera was. So it was very clever. And so when Frazier, which was a spin-off of Cheers, they took that idea of the wife you never see, which was Maris and that carried through. What was a home improvement, the neighbor, the only show that topic? The name Wilson. The name Wilson. His--the only size eyes. Yep. That's like recurring. That's the thing that happens in a lot of shows. Okay, I just looked it up before you bill. The next act full, so 2018 is in Narlins. Narlins. And then in 2019 it's in Washington, which would be pretty darn close to Maris in Maryland. By the way, speaking of Narlins, which is a hop-skeeping away from Houston, what about those astros, huh? So a big shout out to all the people in Houston who have been through a lot this year, congrats on the astros. I was very pleased to see that, and I thought. And I got to see Justin Verland. Right, exactly. Yep. Oh my God, Justin Verlander. Okay, good times. Good. So congratulations, Houston. Congratulations, Astros. Okay, how about some email questions or some mixler comments or something? All right. We've got a few questions here. First of all, we have a little note from someone named Melissa, and she just wants to say she's a teacher here in Michigan, but she was your student, the University of Illinois, class of 1988. Wow, are you feeling old now, Bill? [laughter] Now that's old as you. She's just begun her 28th years of Spanish teacher, and she just wants to say thank you for your service to our profession. So that is Melissa, who teaches here in Michigan. Thank you, Melissa. And she wants to say thank you for your service to our faculty. Oh, Melissa, you're sweet. Thank you, Melissa. Do you know Melissa? Yeah. Do you remember Melissa from the class of 1988? I know several Melissa's, and I'd have to have a last name that she had a time. Well, I'll forward it along to you later. Okay. All right. All right. Here we go. We have an email from Reed, and Reed is writing to us from Minnesota. So it's not the Reed from Hawaii. Nope, not the Reed from Hawaii. Just a lot of our listeners know the Reed from Hawaii. Okay. And he says he's currently working on his master's. His research topic is what motivates students to learn a foreign language. And he is interested in hearing from you. What resources could you direct for his writing, for writing his paper? He's in the middle of our podcast on motivate motivation that we did a couple years ago now. Love it. I discovered two with BVP from following Actful on Facebook. Mucha, escaracias por su ayuda. And so there's your question. Any ideas on what motivates students to learn a foreign language? Yeah. Good question, Reed. We should probably be being motivational again in another show that talk about it in different ways. But there's not a lot of work on motivation with what we technically call foreign language learners, like learners of Spanish, French, and German in the United States. A little bit, but not a lot. But more generally there's motivation because the research originally, most of it, originated in Canada. For the motivation for learning English, if you're a French speaker and learning French, if you're an English speaker and so on. And so I'm going to suggest that you look at your, if you're doing your research, you probably have come across this name already. But the last name is Dornier. And it's D-O-R-N-E. Wait a minute, am I saying this right? Dornier. No, D-O-R-N-Y-E-I. And I think there's a little umla over that, oh. And so he is a really well-known person who's done a lot of work on motivation and other individual differences. And has written books on these topics. So do a little good. search on him and find out what some of his publications are because he did a 2005 book on individual differences which motivation was a significant chapter. And I think that book's been updated and not sure. So there might be a more recent version like a 2013 or '15 version something like that. So just look him up, do a little search on him and I would start there because you'll get a good bibliography from him and you'll get a good synthesis from him. A really, really good guy on this topic. So try there and see if that leads you somewhere because if he don't talk about it, probably didn't, probably didn't happen, right? Is that, is that kind of guy? So good luck on that read, have fun doing your research. What else? What are the questions we have? There you go. Well, let me pull up another one. I'm always on Gellica has something she liked that. Yeah, going back to your definition for input earlier. So one question way earlier in Mixler was what would be some examples of language that we hear, read, view that isn't communicative and that we don't attend to for meaning. Okay. For example, if I'm explicating a topic about how something works like a grammar point, I could put a sentence up and say, this is where the direct object is and you're looking at that sentence, but you're not processing what it's meaning. You're pressing it for this thing called a direct object, trying to figure out what a direct object is. And you may or may not pay attention to meaning because you don't have to when you read that sentence. You just have to know what the object goes. So that's called display language. And so display language often is try to illustrate something about language and I don't have to pay attention to meaning. There are certain kinds of language, traditional language practices where let's say you're doing a repeat after me. So I could tell Walter to Gangala water. Walter Gangala water. Repeat after me. Gangala water. Gangala water. Okay. Now, Trigala water. Trigala water. Okay. Good Walter. Gangala water. Gangala water. Trigala water. Okay. Now they are hearing something and they have to repeat after me, but they don't have to pay attention to meaning because what does Trigala water mean and what does Gangala water mean? I mean, I just made those words up, right? And so, but they can do the activity without really processing for meaning, right? So they're hearing something or seeing something, but they're not focused on what it means. They're focused on repetition of what they heard or they're focused on doing something else depending on what the activity is or the exercise I have them doing. So display language, language practices like that are examples of what you hear and see language in context that is not communicative in nature and doesn't have to be processed for its meaning. Excellent. Thank you. Now just what that said, it doesn't mean learners don't incidentally process for meaning. They might, but they don't have to. Whereas in a communicative event, you have to process for meaning. It's always about have to, not whether you do, but have to. Okay. So what else? What else? What else we got going on here? All right. I've got one from Deborah. Deborah. Is that spelled Deborah? D-E-B-O-R-A-A. Okay. I'd like to know these things. Deborah in Ohio and she says that she recently heard you speak at Hope College. Oh. Reimagining world languages for the 25th century. I was sick. I was sick at that talk. That was that, remember that was when I was here and I had that attack of diverticulitis? Oh, I was, I was in horrible shape. Go ahead. So she is excited to be introduced to your research and she's been reading some of your books and she looked at our website here for MSU Language program and saw that our stated proficiency goal is getting half of students in the program to intermediate mid by the end of the fourth semester, which is a more ambitious goal than they have at her institution. She's wondering how long we've had that goal, what form of assessment we're using and what are our results? Okay. We've had that goal now for what, four years Walter? Something like that. Five years I think. Maybe five years because I think it was right after you got here we established that and started working on it. So it's been a goal ours for about five years. And we've recently researched it MSU through Sue Gas and Paula Winky and some other folks in Celta and some other personnel. Got a national grant where we test a Spanish French, Russian and Chinese. Those are the four languages looked at at different proficiency, not a different proficiency level, but different seat time levels. So at the end of the first year, after the second year, into the third year, into the fourth year when they were graduating, so on, to see what the proficiency levels were in oral writing, I mean an oral communication or the oral proficiency test, I should say, because it's using Ackful standards. Or a proficiency test, the reading proficiency test and the listening proficiency test. And so we, Walter and I focused in Matt and French focused on the 200 level proficiency test because they tested people in the fourth semester. And so what we found, so we were lucky we got that grant because that saved us a lot of the legwork because so many students that gave us a big data set to work with. And what we found was the following, I had always set the bar really high, 50 percent, becoming intermediate mid at the end of two or two. That's really a high goal. But I set it high on purpose because I wanted to give us a target. Knowing that at some point, I might have to readjust it. What we found was that we were getting about 20 percent there. And so it made me realize, maybe go back and say, yeah, my 50 percent is really ambitious. So I'm going to drop it down to 33 percent this next year. And so within two years, I want us to get to 33 percent. And if we can get there in two years, then I think we can start looking at the 50 percent again in another way. But first we got to get there. We got to get to 33 percent. And there's all kinds of reasons why we're not there, which we don't need to get into the show. That's more of a private conversation. But anyway, so we started five years ago with that goal. We had a grant to test it. We got the data. And we were falling short of our goal, which we knew was too high. So we're adjusting the goal. But we still have a goal greater than what we're getting because we want a goal. We don't want to just say we've achieved our goal and drop our goal down to 12 percent. We want to want something else. And so check back with us in two years and we'll see if we're there. There you go. All right, Deborah, there you have it. All right. We got another column in line. We have Kim on the line. Kim, are you there? Yes, I am. Hey, Kim, how you doing? I'm doing well. Good. Where are you calling from? Washington. State or DC? Great. So what are you doing in Washington DC, Kim? Are you a teacher or a teacher? I miss Spanish. Oh, you. Well, good for you. Great. So what are you calling about? What's up? Okay. This is a question. In my school, they're moving towards the idea of basically if you're in a certain grade that you should be in a certain Spanish class versus whatever level of ability you have in the language. So for example, you put together a novice and if somebody came in and intermediate, high, you'd still put them in the same level. I'm not talking about heritage speakers. Right. I'm talking about you're in such and such a grade. We're just going to be able to do it because we're using scottling, etc. Do you know where that idea is coming from? Is there a research or something that's coming from or are you commenting at? First of all, let me ask you a clarification question. I'm not quite sure what, when you say they're in a certain grade, they'd be placed in a particular class or a particular level. So a certain level, like say, you'd be in Spanish or you'd be in Spanish or you'd be in Spanish and ninth grade. So therefore you could have novice low with intermediate, but you scaffolding to somehow make it all work. I just want to know if that's where that idea might be coming from as far as research or is it realistic? I don't know. And again, I'm not talking about heritage speakers. I don't know of any research on that. And I think, and I don't, Angelica, you haven't heard of any research on that either. That sounds, I think that, unless someone calls it and corrects me, I think that someone's speculation saying, let's try this and see what happens. That's what I'm, for example, the same way Walter and I came up with 50%. We know it was a high goal for what we wanted to get out of our four semesters. Nobody had done it before, so we're going to try it and see. And now we've experimented on it. We know it doesn't work. We know it's going to work. And Dan and I have in the past tried to work on some placement tests that weren't discrete point or they're very difficult to do. But anyway, so long story short, that placement is still antiquated and traditional. To do appropriate proficiency testing would be so time consuming expensive, I don't know how we would do it. Well Deb, we actually have a follow up question if you're ready to hear it because it's actually about placement test and she thinks how crucial she asks, how crucial do you think a reliable placement test is for incoming students to meet proficiency goals? Um, excuse me, I'm going to about sneeze. I think that it's very important, an appropriate placement test if you're trying to meet, excuse me. Oh my gosh, that's all the dust coming off Walter's hair. Well, I'll dress and dress it as Aaron three days, can you tell? Wow. Well, I'll just guess that because that can't have pledged out there. Look at that, look at that hair, look at that hair full of dust. Moving right along anyway. So, so, so, so placement tests are absolutely critical to be, to be good placement tests. If your goal is proficiency, let's say you have an outcome because let's say instead of saying, well, here's an example, let's say I moved my program and instead of having, after first the message, you'll be at, in a minute, mid, if I just say, if you're at an intermediate mid, you don't have to take any Spanish, right? And so, take the test. If you're in an admit mid, no classes, you need to take. If you're not in an admit mid and let's say you place novice high, you need to go in an appropriate class so you can be where it's supposed to be so you can start working toward into a mid, I can't just put you in seat time, third semester, for example, that might not be appropriate. So, if your goal actually is proficiency, then placement tests become critical to get to the point. So, you're either not too ahead of your level or too behind in wasting your time. So, placement does become critical, I think, for proficiency testing, it's just, it's a hornet's nest. It's a mess, as I say. It's a mess to do placement testing, right? So, any of them. It's a mess. Yeah, it's a mess. But, there's a lot of good theoretical work on placement testing, but it's not the logistics of it, the practical part of it is not what's there. All right. Any other questions, comments? What's going on? Mixlers awfully quiet today on Gallic. What is wrong with this? Are they sleep at the wheel? No, they're not, but they're discussing amongst themselves. Really? I mean, one question. I feel left. Tell me, I feel left out. Well, I mean, one question going back to this whole grade levels and students, how do you meet students' needs with CIs? Is it even possible, if you? Right? Because it's so difficult to teach all the different children in an eighth grade. So, they're discussing right now if it is even possible to meet the needs. But what do they mean by needs? Because they're so diverse, right? Yeah. Because they come with different backgrounds and are at different levels because placement in K-12 doesn't really exist. If needs are, it means different levels and so on, then yeah, I would agree with that. And yeah, so you wind up doing, you know, there is some interesting research. It depends on how disparate their levels are. There was some research done in the '80s. They started pairing students up that were at disparate levels. So like, students who were like intermediate paired with students who were advanced and had them working together, and they found that the advanced students were solidifying their skills and getting a lot of emotional enjoyment out of what they were doing in this pair work. There was just like tasks. It wasn't just pair works. It was like tasks. And the intermediate students felt comfortable like they were learning something because they had somebody who was a pub, though, and understood them as language learners. And they felt that they were getting something out of it. I don't remember what measurements they used, but long story short, the research was very positive about pairing students up at different levels to do different kinds of tasks as opposed to pairing students at the same level. So that's an interesting concept. So, and again, that was only one study I remember from the '80s. I don't know much has been done since then, but somebody else who works in that field can let me know. All right. Do I have to do the book drawing now? Yeah, it is time. Oh my God. Look at that. At the time, flies when you're on Prozac. Okay. Here we go. Guess what? I'm here. So I get to do the job. Yeah. Absolutely. You want me to hold the cup for you? No, I can just, I can leave it here on the table. No cheating. I'm not even looking at it. I'm just, and I'm spinning them all around and they're real good. And if I draw a Lucas name, I'm going to stab him with my pen. I saw that in basic instinct, you know. Let's see who is it. The winner of the book is, oh my God, she's a triple champion today. Maris from Maryland. Yay. Congrats. She got her Maris prize. She got her, what was it? The intake prize? No, the Sell Your Cruise Prize. And then now she's getting the book prize for being a caller today. So good for you, Maris. We will get that in the mail chain the next couple of days. Thank you for calling in. See people at pace to call in, you win a book. Are you going to chance to win a book? So Maris, I hope you enjoyed that. If you haven't read it already, enjoy it when you get it. How many more weeks have you given away books, Bill? Till Actful. Then you know why? Because what's going to happen to Actful? You're going to sign them. Well, you're signing them already. Saturday, those of you listening, if you're going to Actful, Saturday at 3 o'clock in the exhibit hall is the book signing. I will be there in the flesh with Pete with the Actful crowd. And we'll be there signing, I'll be there signing books. And it'll be fun. Maybe I'll tell some jokes. Remember that when you're going to have a microphone for you, I'm doubting it. Do you think I need a microphone, Walter? I'll use my teacher voice. It's like Walter. Have you ever heard, you're down in the cell phone on the first floor? Have you ever heard Walter when he's on the third or fourth floor? He comes down the stairwell. He's got that teacher voice in that echo. You can hear him. You can hear him, I tell you. Okay, any last minute questions? We have a request for a future show on examples of tasks. Concrete ideas for us to build off of. That's what people are calling for. Okay, I just did that on my class yesterday because I came up with a new task about running onto the topic is, I just did two new tasks for this newsletter I'm working on. Because I love writing tasks. They're so much fun. One is on, do you know what the top 100 jobs are according to US News and World Report? I have a whole task that students get to try to guess which jobs are in the first and the top 20 in which ones are. You give them all the jobs and they have to categorize them. They find out which ones are in which ones are in the top 20. Then in the next step, they get the actual rankings for the jobs that they were looking at in step one and try to figure out which rankings go with which job. Three of the jobs aren't even in the top 100. So that's to figure all these things out. Then there's a discussion afterwards about what factors do you think go into determining what US News and World Report are. It's a really fun task. Then I just developed another one that deals with whether you're a cat or dog person because the research is showing us that there are minimally three personality traits that line up with whether you are a strongly cat person or strongly dog person. Isn't the next chapter in your book on tasks anyway? Yeah, that's what I just did in my class yesterday. All right. Well, guess what, kids? I'm so glad we had this time together. And I've got to do my acknowledgements now. Okay, here we go. So time's taken by and give our thanks to all the wonderful people we work with. First, who we always thank first on Gallic. Daniel Triego. Daniel Triego, the magic man on the board, our technical producer who we could not do without. We couldn't do out of anybody, but we always put him first. Our media producer and PR guy, Luke Gajaponi, makes great pasta. The talented and trusted call handler, Dustin D. Feliz. We also like to call our muscle man. We also thank our able body duo Chad Bosley and Ryan Stuck. Ryan is off today because why? Baby. He just had a baby. So congratulations to Ryan and our new babies. He's staying home this week. The College of Arts and Letters, we thank them here at MSU, especially our Dean Christopher Long. As a reminder, the ideas and opinions expressed in this program do not reflect those of the College of Arts and Letters, any of our sponsors or any of their official entity at Michigan State University. And of course, we want to thank all of you listeners out there as well. So guess what next week is? We continue our countdown to Actful, Chapter 5, and what's the focus of Chapter 5? Wasn't the tasks. I thought it was tasks. Yes, yes. So what's right there? So that request came in at the right time. Perfect. And we'll put them up on the website or something. So again, calling for your chance to win a book next week. Until then, have a great weekend and happy second language acquisition. Oh, Vito and. Oh, Vito and. Very good. Good bye, everybody. Bye-bye. It was great to be with you today. Oh, God, Mary Poppins is back. Yep. She is in full glory. [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]