#5 - Element 3: Target Language Delivery System | 10 Elements of Proficiency-Oriented World Language Instruction

This is the essential world language teacher framework for each piece of your target language rich classroom based on proficiency practices. If you're into proficiency-oriented instruction, here's where to start.

Today's element deep dive is on the one we use the most in class: a target language delivery system. Learn one of the key elements of making proficiency WORK FOR YOU instead of you working so hard for proficiency.

Go to Blog Post of the 10 Elements of Proficiency Oriented World Language Instruction (contains image printout)

Take action - pick 1 element from today's episode and see where you can make some tiny tweaks to add more target language into your world language class today!
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Transcript

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What's up Kloke a saloo World language teachers welcome to the practical proficiency podcast, where we make the transition to proficiency oriented instruction in your world language class in a way that works for you, your unique context and teaching style, and doesn't sacrifice your well being along the way. I'm your host, Devin Gun, the teacher author, conference host, curriculum creator, and consultant behind La Liba language learning. This podcast is for the creative world language teacher like you, who's ready to ditch the overwhelming pressure of switching to acquisition driven instruction and CI overnight, you're ready to discover how using more target language in class can actually bring you and your students more joy. Instead of adding to your plate with practical, authentic, and down to earth strategies that don't require reinventing the wheel or more training, we'll work together towards the magic of a community based, target language rich classroom rooted in the power of community and comprehensible input. Let's go. Oh, hey, world language family. Welcome back to another episode of the practical proficiency podcast. I'm your host, Devin, and we are into element number three of the special framework, the ten elements of world language proficiency instruction. This framework is going to clarify for you what teaching for proficiency in your world language classroom actually looks like. So if you are new to this, check out the intro episode where we go over what all of the ten elements are, how it will help to clarify your journey to teach for proficiency. But if you're all caught up, then let's jump in and get started. Welcome to element three, where we're going to dive deeper into target language delivery system. So grab your favorite bevy and let's gozies. Target language delivery system is a big one. What we do in class is all about easier ways to make the target language accessible to our students in a sentence. That's what we do. That's what being a world language teacher is all about. So proficiency is simply the most efficient approach that we found so far to make that happen. With target language, there's a lot of hoops to jump through. There's a lot of issues that can come around with this. It is one of the most difficult aspects of teaching a world language. Although here's the rub. It's the most important part. It's what actually gets results. It's what actually moves your students on the communicative scale, whatever you want to call it. This is what actually moves our students forward in their ability to communicate. So we need to be doing this as much as possible. So in comes this element, target language delivery system. This means that in your classroom, in a high functioning, proficiency oriented classroom, you have a system in place to deliver target language in a way that does two things, minimizes the use of l one, as well as making the target language accessible to students. So if you're teaching Japanese, doesn't matter what stage, it's going to depend on your stage. It doesn't matter exactly what percentage you're at right now, but as long as you have a system in place, you will eventually get to 90%. As long as you're doing this systematically on a consistent basis, it will eventually happen. Know that getting to 90% target language is incredibly difficult. Takes a great deal of practice, intentional focus and all of those things. So something that will help to get you there faster is having a system in place. So what does this look like? It means that you are choosing one approach and you're sticking with it until mastery. It means that you are making sure that your students have routines that they can count on from you in order to receive a lot of target language in class, and that you in turn are interacting with them in the target language using specific questioning strategies. What does that mean? It means that anytime that an opportunity pops up and there will be plenty of them, you will be questioning your students to create conversation, to make your class a conduit for conversation, but in a way that your students can access. So that looks like instead of asking your students about how their day is going in English, you ask about it in Japanese. And since you aren't able to get full, lengthy answers out of them like you would be able to in English, you provide all the language for them in Japanese while giving them some choice. It looks like this. You are doing something like giving them some choices, like did you have a good day or did you have a bad day? Or did you maybe have an okay day? And then they give you a response and you can say, cool. Tell me more. Was your math class difficult? Was your math class fun today? Did you have a test? It means that you have to be really creative on your toes and come up with a lot of language, but it's simple language. You're using a lot of repetitive structures and you're using them over and over again in different contexts so that your students hear it quite a bit and you're allowing students to participate in the process by giving them ways to interact with you, by making it really easy, such as using the either or format of a question, such like the ones that we just talked about. Did you have a test in math class or did you learn something new in math class. And that would even be a higher up question. You could even say something as simple as, did you have a math test or a math lesson? Or it can be just even as simple as, do you like your math teacher, or do you not like your math teacher? It's going to depend on the level of class that you are in. But that's the point that we're trying to get across here is that with your target language delivery system, level one, level two, level three, level four, level five, all of that in a middle school and high school setting, you're using just as much target language in each of those classes. The type of language that you use is different. That's what's really hard about target language, because what usually happens is we have, okay, in level one, we try not to use a lot of target language to make it. It's just really hard to do. Level two, we start to use a little bit more level three, then all of a sudden, we expect them to use target language all the time. And then all kinds of problems resolve from that. But what if instead you and tried this approach, level one, really simple language. Do you like your math teacher? Do you not like your math teacher? Level two, did you have a test today or did you have a lesson today in math class? Level three, how was your math class? Tell me why? What was it like? A little bit more open ended questions, and maybe even it might be something like, did you have a test? Was it hard? Tell me something that happened on the test. And so they're not giving you full sentences, but they're telling you a little bit about what's going on in there. That's natural progression of what's going on in your target language delivery system. How do you get there? Because that's a really tall order to ask. It's very difficult to get to that point, and I will tell you that the easiest way to start doing that is start to interact with your students more in the target language. Anytime that you would want to ask a question in English, ask it in the target language in a way that gives your students options to easily respond. That means you're using an either or format or a yes no format for your students so that they can indicate to you whether they understand it or not. You can also make sure that you're delivering a lot more target language in your class by starting with something as simple as do you have a five minute habit of talking to your students every day? In that five minutes, you may be doing most of the talking, and your students are indicating whether they understand or not, and they may be giving you some input just a little bit. Such as, you might have a five minute discussion about puppies and ice cream. Who wouldn't want to talk about that? And you're just asking your class, hey, who here likes chocolate? And they're raising their hands. Who here likes vanilla? And they're raising their hands. Who thinks vanilla is mega boring? And then they're raising their hands. That's it. And then you go on about ice cream flavors and favorite places where you like to get ice cream. Where do your students like to get ice cream? It doesn't matter what you talk about, as long as it's accessible to your students. Five minutes. You see how many times that you can get that done and make that happen in your class. You'll be amazed at how quickly that becomes an easy routine to adapt in your classroom. Then, with this in mind, as I just gave you an example, I would say that the biggest thing that you can do for your target language delivery system is start each class with a simple target language routine, whatever that might be. If you don't have some sort of target language focused routine in your room already, add one. There's a myriad of options for you, and one of the best things that you can choose is the one that we just spoke about earlier of. Talk to your class every day for five minutes. Time it, see how far you can get, ask them to interact with you, and we'll be doing more of a deep dive episode on what that habit really looks like and how you can make it more interactive and more enjoyable. But for now, just start chewing on this idea of what does your target language delivery system look like? How are you intentionally incorporating more target language in your classroom every day? 90% is really daunting for most teachers that I work with. Maybe if you've been in the classroom for longer or if you've got more training under your belt, maybe this is something that you already do. That's awesome. Teach us your ways, please. But for most people, 90% is really hard to get to. It's a difficult goal to achieve. So try these on for size and see if this helps to move you further along that spectrum of getting closer to your 90% goals. Because even just adding five minutes more a day, one more percent each day, that's going to add up a lot. All right, let me know how this episode is helping you with your target language in class. And it always helps the show to give me a rating and tell me how this podcast is helping you and your world language teaching goals. But for now, we are signing off and you have an exciting episode waiting for you just around the bend. Get excited for element number four. But until then, thank you so much for spending a slice of your time with me in your commute or while you're hanging out at recess or what have you. And thank you so much for being a part of this community. We'll see you in the next episode.