Re:Homework: Examples of varying the text A tool to help vary the talker

[kellogg]

★ Homework 1: How I solved the problem of varying the text

  I approached some students and asked "What did you do on the weekend?". When they gave me short answers, I uptook their words and made them full sentences.

We can PREDICT that there will be problems with tense. Surprisingly, though, the children do pretty well with tense, partly because the teacher uses lots of irregular verbs ("to be", "to go", etc.).

Also, I followed up and asked more questions and, therefore, varied the text.

This means that our teacher will concentrate on varying the "HOW" dimension. She says that her MAIN technique is uptake, and it's true that she uses uptake a lot. But uptake only works to vary the "how" dimension if the children ALSO uptake the uptake. That doesn't seem to happen much.

What DOES happen is that the teacher varies the THEME of her questions: from yes/no to wh-questions.

Interestingly, she doesn't spread the topic around very much or develop it. Instead, she ends the conversation with a "single answer" topic. Look!

★ My data: 6th Grade English Class Transcript            

 ① Date: Monday, March 24th, 2008

 ② Situation: This lesson was on Monday morning. The students looked quite tired, so I tried to warm them up by starting a chat about the weekend.

Of course, chat is hard work! But it can be very interesting.

 ③ Characters: The students are from one of my 6th grade classes. There are 27 students - 15 boys and 12 girls.

 ④ The problem: How can teachers vary the TEXT? (in chatspace)

T: 자, 인사합시다.

S: Attention. Bow to the teacher.

Ss: Good morning, teacher. (Students and I bow to each other at the same time.)

T: Good morning. How are you today?

Ss: I'm fine. Thanks. And you? (Some students vary in answers - Some say "Fine. Thank you.", and some say "So-so.")

T: I'm pretty good.

 Okay, if you are happy (making a smiley face), raise your hand.

(Some students raise their hands.)

T: Now if you are so-so (doing so-so motions), raise your hand.

(Some students raise their hands.)

T: If you are sad or not very good, raise your hand.

(A couple of students raise their hands.)

Notice how there are TWO T-Ss-T greetings. First it's teacher to everybody and everybody to teacher. Then it is Teacher to everybody-nonverbal response. Why?

T: Why are you sad? Please tell me. (walking toward the student)

S1: Umm... 그냥.. tired.

"Why" is an OPEN question (many degrees of freedom in the response). Interestingly, S1 answers, but she doesn't answer using a subject or a finite or even a predicator: her answer is NOTHING but the rheme, the piece of information. In this is it is very much like "inner speech", but of course inner speech often has the grammar of inter-mental speech as well.

T: Oh, too many 학원’s?

S1: No.

In order to develop the topic, the teacher takes the ENTIRE burden of grammar on herself using a yes/no question. This produces a direct but not very satisfying response.

T: Just tired? (S1 nodding) Yeah? Maybe Monday blues.

The teacher offers THREE answers:

a) Just tired.

b) Yeah

c) Maybe Monday blues.

Any one of these could have been uptaken by the child. But the child does not take up ANY of them. Suppose we do something like this:

T: You don't LOOK tired. You look SLEEPY. What do you think, everybody? Tired or sleepy? Sleepy or LAZY?????????

(Everybody then looks at S1 and tries to decide if S1 is tired or sleepy or just lazy.)

Remember that we argued that HORIZONTAL complexity happens as a RESULT of vertical complexity. For example:

T: How are you?

S1 Tired.

T: Why?

S1:...

T: Too many hakwons?

S1: no.

T: Just tired? Yeah? Maybe Monday blues.

We can see that there IS horizontal complexity but it's in the TEACHER utterance rather than the student utterance. But suppose we can continue this exchange, like this:

T: Does anybody ELSE have the Monday blues?

It's possible that the children will learn that the next question is always "Why?"  If that happens, they will learn to pre-empt the question, like this:

S: I'm tired because I have the Monday blues.

One reason why we want to vary text AND talker is that complexity does NOT simply develop between teacher and student; it also develops between students.

T: (walking toward another student) How about you, 옥수? Why are you not good?

S2: Umm... Cold.

Does she HAVE a cold or IS she cold? Let's find out:

T: Do you HAVE a cold or do you FEEL cold?

T: Ah, you have a cold? (S2 nodding) I'm sorry to hear that. (walking back to the front)

It rained a lot yesterday. Right? (With raining motions) It rained yesterday.

Here's the beginning of the past tense.

Ss: Yeah.

T: I wanted to go out for a walk with my puppy. My puppy's name is Nari. (Some students whisper 'Nari') But we couldn't go out because it rained so much. So I stayed home. What did you do on the weekend? (walking around and looking at one student) What did you do?

S3: Umm... Went to 속초.

Beautiful!

T: Ah, you went to 속초 with your family, right?

S3: Yes.

Notice that "right?" sets this up for a yes/no answer. We are going DOWN the tree instead of up. That is unusual because "went to Sokcho" is a VERY promising opening.

T: Was it fun?

S3: Yes.

Up or down?

T: What did you do on the weekend? (looking at some other student)

S4: Umm... 그냥... 집에..

T: Ah, you stayed home. What did you do at home? Did you watch TV?

S4: Yeah, TV.

How can we get some past tense out of THIS?

T: What did you do on the weekend?

S5: I played..

MORE past tense!

T: Oh, you played in your house?

S5: Yes.

T: Good.

Yes, VERY good. Notice, however, that prolepsis here (the teacher's use of yes/no questions to ask if a full sentence is what the child really means) results in exchanges that are paradoxically MORE complex at the beginning than at the end. How could we change that?

(walking back to the front) Okay, now please look at the board. (pointing at the date cards) What's the date today?

Ss: It's Monday, March 24th, 2008. (Some students didn't say because they were writing the date in their notebooks.)

T: Right. Let's say it one more time. (pointing each card) It's Monday.

Ss: It's Monday.

T: March.

Ss: March.

T: 24th.

Ss: 24th.

T: 2008.

Ss: 2008.

T: Now, how's the weather? (pointing outside)

Ss: It's cloudy.

T: Okay. (pointing at the word wall) Can you come and pick up the weather card? Who can do this? (raising my hand)

(Some students raised their hands. One student stood up and brought the 'cloudy' card to me.)

T: Thank you. Yeah, it's cloudy. Now, in your notebook, please write down the date and weather. When you finish, (doing the motion) hands on your head.

Ss: (after a while) Teacher, finished!

T: Oh, good. Team 2 gets two points. (moving the counter on the board)

Ss: Finish!

T: Team 3? (pointing) Team 3 gets one point. (moving the counter on the board)

Ss: Finish!

T: Team 6. One point. (moving the counter on the board) Okay, put your hands down. (pause) Look at the board now.

And we end the exchange not only with a one-answer topic but with a form of "listen and do"! This is interesting because it is a kind of fractal structure. We saw that most of the exchanges (with S1, S2, S3, etc.) are MORE controlled at the end than at the beginning. But so is the sequence as a whole!

★ Homework 2: Creating a tool that will help the children vary the talker

- Tool: Relay Q&A's

- Target students: 5th and 6th grade students

- Materials: 6 mini white boards and markers

- There are 6 teams of four or five students in one class. Each team is given a board and marker at the beginning of a lesson. The student numbers go counter-clockwise at a table. Student no. 1 in each team asks student no. 2

"What did you do yesterday?". When student no. 2 answers, student no. 1 writes the answer on the board and passes it on to student no. 2. Then student no.2 does the same with student no. 3. When all of the team members complete their Q&A's, they bring their board to the teacher. With the answer boards, the teacher can talk about some special events with the whole group.

It's a GREAT idea--and it will allow us to ADD complexity instead of pre-empting it. In particular, it would allow the teacher to make COMPOUND sentences like this:

a) S1 watched TV but S2 didn't.

b) S1 is tired and S2 is too.

c) S1 didn't go to a hakwon but S2 did.

d) S1 didn't exercise and S2 didn't either.

Now, ONCE we have a set of patterns like this (and we show the WHOLE class) can EVERY group produce four similar sentences?

+- a)

++ b)

-+ c)

-- d)

THAT'S the problem. Can we get S-S complexity? Why should this be so important? Like many Russians in the early years of the Russian revolution, Vygotsky had strong communitarian as well as modernist views: he looked to the future with a strong faith in society, but also in modern technology. An analogy he liked to use when HE was teaching novice teachers was a “rickshaw puller” (that is, a person pulling another person in a cart) and a tram-driver (that is, a trolley-bus or a little above ground subway, which was very modern in Moscow in the 1920s). He pointed out that the rickshaw puller has to provide the engine as well as the direction of his vehicle, while the tram-driver can devote all his skill to managing the tram.

"The teacher's labor, although it is not subject to the technical perfection which moves and pushes it from the rickshaw to the tram-driver, has nevertheless the same two aspects (...) (W)ith some exaggeration it may be said that the whole reform of contemporary pedagogics revolves around this theme: how to reduce the role of teacher when he, just like the rickshaw-puller, plays the role of the engine and part of his own pedagogical machine as closely to possible to zero, and how to base everything on his other role--the role of organizer of the social environment? (1997: 160)"

This is not simply a key theme because our teachers are terribly overworked (after all, private education solves this problem by providing rickshaw pullers for the rich!) It’s a key theme because the true content of the zone of proximal development, throughout most of human history, has not been individualized tutoring or “scaffolding”. Instead, it’s been the social environment of learning that children create on the playground, a social environment which naturally develops alongside the children as they grow older.

New teachers are not always very good at organizing this social environment of learning, and many of them behave like rickshaw pullers intstead. Maybe that’s why we often find our undergraduates heading off for teaching practice with big bags of puppets and rolled up posters and other stuff to present. But as Bereiter and Scaradamalia point out, being a novice is really a problem that takes care of itself; after a few years, teachers get tired of always doing fancy presentations and they learn that doing a short presentation followed by a longer controlled practice and an even longer period for learner production is not only more effective for the learners, it’s more labor efficient for the teacher.

[이민경]

I understand your point of view that my data has a kind of fractal structure. I should pay more attention to my uptake and go up the tree rather than down. The date and weather part in the end is not quite a chat but more of a routine we do every time. I guess I could've done it in the very beginning before we did the "How are you?" routine/chat. It would make the beginning more controlled than the end.