#6 - Element 4: 2-Way Communication | 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 how to finally get interaction with your students through 2-way communication: rejoinders, hand signals, the works!

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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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Hey World language teachers. Welcome to another episode of the practical proficiency podcast. I'm so excited to share this one with you. We are continuing with our series on the ten elements of world language proficiency instruction. What this looks like in a classroom environment, today's element is number four and we we are talking about today two way communication. Another way to think about this is how to get your students speaking in the target language, which is a huge problem for world language teachers, or how to get your students to interact with you. This is the ultimate answer to the crickets problem. It can be a lonely business being a world language teacher. Often you are the only one talking in the room, especially at the lower levels. I love lower levels. That's my favorite area to hang out. But it does get a little bit lonely when you are doing all of the talking in class. So two way communication is important for two reasons for you today as a teacher. One, it is the easiest of all the ten elements for you to start doing tomorrow. You could literally listen to this podcast and implement this. If you're listening to this on your way to work, you could literally implement this today. It is that quick, that easy, and the one element adding to a communication is so quick and easy, but creates huge waves of impact throughout your classroom for the whole year. Because what you're doing is empowering your students to be a part of the whole target language experience. Even though in an input driven classroom that's for acquisition. Even though you as the teacher are doing most of the input, most of the talking, most of the signing, your students are not passive in that experience. So two way communication enables them to be a part of that. So in this, we are helping them to interact with you as well as they are going to be your guides to become a better teacher by making sure that you are always being understandable and comprehensible with the input that you provide. So without further ado, let's jump into exactly what this looks like, what this means, and three quick ways that you can make this happen. Okay. Two way communication means that there is a two way system of communication in your classroom. Students use this to ask for clarification, indicate their understanding of you and whatever's going on, if it's video, etc. They also expect you to be understandable. You expect them to participate and to take risks. So if you are having trouble with participation in your class, if you have the crickets problem, this is it. This is the way to get them to jump in. Something we need to remember as world language teachers is that we are asking a lot from our students. We're asking them to really put themselves out there. So we need to do this in small, slow, incremental ways. This is one of the easier ways to do that. With two way communication, there are easy things that you can do to enable your students to participate in the target language happening in your classroom. That means that if you're doing a lesson in Russian, you've demonstrated many times with students what to do if they do not understand the Russian that's happening in the room. They have a hand signal for you that other students don't need to see, like they can quickly do this and nobody else needs to know. That's actually even a little too obvious, the little thumbs up or thumbs down. Like they could do something simple like two fingers for I get it and three for not so much. Whatever you want it to be. But come up with a system and make sure that students use it and practice it frequently. If you don't want to do a hand signal, you could come up with something else. But a hand signal is popular for a couple of reasons. It can be done in front of the student so that other students don't need to see it. It's also nonverbal, so they don't need to say anything to you or draw any attention to themselves. If the thing that they need to say is, I have no idea what you're saying, this is also really important feedback for you. So the more that you can get students to participate in this, the better. I use this with my high school students, and I will say that after a while, they forget to do it. It's something that you need to keep on top of. I know. I used to forget to do it, too. It's one of those habits that you need to continually reinforce or it will get lost in your classroom. So this is your friendly reminder to if you have tried hand signals in the past, rekindle that love, bring it back in. Okay. Another thing that you can easily do that most teachers already do, but we do it for, like, the first two weeks of class, and then we forget about it. We drop it like an old hat, is make sure that students have access to and are using all of those key target language help phrases that they need to interact with the conversation, especially when they don't know what you're saying. Help. I don't understand. Repeat that. Say it slower. Make sure that that's an integral part of your classroom fabric. That you hear that at least once a day is a good sign. That means that your students are giving you feedback that they are fully engaged in what's going on, and you are getting feedback from them all the time because them not understanding is not the problem. Them giving you the silent treatment is the problem because you can work on them not understanding things. That's a two way problem, right? That could be like for most teachers, like it was for me. The language is probably too varied. When you say advanced, that doesn't really say enough. Like when we're teachers and speaking to beginners in a language, everything's advanced for them. So that's not really a fair statement to help you actually get to the heart of what's not accessible to students with your language. Usually the words are too varied. That means that right now there's too many different words or too many different ways that I'm saying things. For somebody who's a non native speaker of English at a novice level, you want to say things simply, you want to repeat things. You want to use the same structures in new contexts. You want to make sure your students understand what you are saying. That includes pauses, that includes repeating your structures, and that includes using the same phrases in different contexts for different things. But you're not using varied language. When you get those kind of feedback things like help, I don't understand repeat. That is a great sign of a healthy classroom. It means that they're participating in all of that and you can work on and tweak exactly what it is about your speech that's not quite getting the message across. Or maybe your students just need more scaffolding. A lot of the times they just need a visual, or they need you to repeat it, or they just need some help. Many times it's just one word that's holding them back. The other thing that you can do, and this one is one of my favorites, is your students are equipped and they know some rejoinders. They have a way to participate in everyday classroom conversation just by a simple memorized reaction phrase. Reaction phrases are simple things like baya or eso in Spanish. There's tons of cheeky cultural rejoinders that you can do. Also really useful are things like conversation responses that students can have to whatever's going on in class like, oh, that's cool, or I don't like that, or this is boring, or I'm tired, or ooh, this looks fun, or I got you those types of phrases. Or even the things that they might want to say a lot like, what's the homework? When is the homework due? What's the homework? The things that they say all the time. Those are great rejoinders. The purpose of rejoinders is to elicit more input from you and from native speakers. This is a widely practiced language learning strategy and we're going to tweak it a little bit for acquisition in that what you're trying to do is keep the conversation going. This is a very important strategy so that the native speaker or the target language user at a high level is able to continue the conversation, keep doing what they're doing, what they're doing, what they're doing. And they might be working with a learner who is at a lower level. But since the learner is able to indicate, oh, yeah, I understand what you're saying. Awesome. No way. What happened next? Then the conversation continues. It doesn't just end in dead silence because the student or the lower level language user doesn't know how to formulate their words even though they understood what that person was saying. So it keeps the conversation going longer. They're able to still participate. All of that. And that's exactly what you want to happen in your class. You want to be able to come in and say, okay, class, welcome. How was your last class? How were things going? How's the wife? How's the kids? How's the fam? How are your puppies? How are your kitties? Who's got cool shoes today? Who's got a good story? Excellent. Glad to hear it. Let's get started with our day today. This is what we're doing. Who's got questions? Who needs something? And those are going to be times when you're going to have students say me. So you need to make sure that they know words like me or say things like not me or I don't need anything or I'm good. They want to be able to participate in ways like that because otherwise they're just going to revert to English or they're just going to look at you like, well, you said I couldn't speak English, so here I am. The best way to make sure that your students participate is give them ways to participate. Teach them simple things like me or not me or yeah, I like that, or I don't like that. Those types of words. You could also teach them fun phrases. There's a lot of teachers that keep lists of rejoinders and do fun phrases like that's incredible or no way. That's a really fun way to keep your class going. So rejoinders, in a simple sentence are ways to participate in everyday classroom conversation in a variety of ways. They could be cultural, isms from your target language, and they can also come from just classroom speak and teenage speak or younger kids speak anything that they would want to actually use in your room. So let's wrap this up by revisiting the three different ways that you can add student participation and get them speaking and interacting with you more in the target language through the lens of this element for two way communication. Number one is you have some sort of signal, most likely a hand signal, where they can demonstrate to you whether they understand or not. Two, students actively use and are demonstrating your healthy classroom ecosystem of those necessary help phrases. Don't just leave them in the beginning of the year. Help, I don't understand. Repeat. Say that again. What are the directions? Can I do this? Can I do that? They're using those constantly. And then number three, try rejoinders. There's plenty of lists online, and you can also just use some of the simple ones that we listed out here. They also sometimes come in the form of language ladders. So look up the word language ladders as well to find some more lists. That's two way communication for today. Again, this is the simplest way to add more target language interaction opportunities into your classroom. You can start doing this right away. I can't wait to see what you do with it. Thank you so much for sharing a slice of your teacher day with me, and I'll see you in the next episode where we dive into element five. See you then. Be sure to rate this podcast if it helped you share it with a colleague who needs to know about two way communication. And thank you so much for being a part of the La libre community. Bye for now. Adioke Devayavian Salib.