Assessment

The HDB chapter has a lot of interesting and practical things of assessment in second language teaching (it's also ironical that we are reading it the last week of the semester, I find).
It seems that everything is clear with standardized tests, except for how exactly to interpret the results, but still, if you are more or less familiar with the scale/system, the news that someone got a 575 on paper based TOEFL will actually make sense to you.

Something I have been struggling with this semester is assessing/grading larger and more open-ended items, like essays. Even with well-defined criteria there still is a lot of opportunities for the rater's personality to act out. I was having a somewhat hard time grading some of the essays that my students submitted at some point, mostly because the stories were overly personal.

Class reflection

It was very interesting to hear/see Dr. Lybeck's presentation one more time. Since this time I had a pretty good idea of what it was about, I was able to pay more attention to the fine details. It was especially useful, since I am now thinking about how to integrate CBI in my comp class (considering that I have already chosen the textbooks).

The peer review was helpful as usual and so was the presentation about making poster presentations.

11/24 Reading

I really liked the MCM chapter on styles and strategies. Although I agree with everything the authors say, I think that there is one more thing to take into account. The student's learning style and preferred strategies will largely depend on the dominant intelligence. According to different studies there are 7-9 types of intelligence (verbal, logical, musical, naturalistic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, kinesthetic, visual, existential) with different preferred strategies and pedagogical implications. I was reading a lot about it for my project on the use of multi-genre in comp classes. Here are some useful links.
Multiple intelligences diagram.
Tapping into multiple intelligences.
Learning styles and multiple intelligences tests.
I can soooo relate to what MCm is saying about biological differences. I am a morning person. I work better at 5 am on 4 hours of sleep, than at 8 pm on 10 hours of sleep, but since all of my grad classes are 6-9:30 I had to reorganize my whole schedule and make myself go to bed later, and, consequentially, get up later. The result is a decrease in productivity (by at least 20%) and the ability to function at night classes. And I am still trying to figure why we don't have morning/afternoon classes.

It's been quite some time that I've been wondering if it would make sense to test all students for learning styles/dominant intelligences/strategies and use this as an additional factor in forming groups/classes.

I also agree enjoyed Brown's perspective on group work, since it is a significant portion of my teaching style. However, this year I found that not all classes enjoy it. I have received a lot of feedback from my students complaining about the large amount of group work and not enough lectures. Who would have thought THAT was a drawback?

11/17 Class Reflection

My absolute favorite activity in this class was making a list of possible things to do with a story. That was awesome! And I think that as a class we had a total of a couple hundred activities.

Adib's presentation was also interesting, although I disagree with the choice of material. I think that very few fairy tales translate well in modern day realia, so it makes more sense to compare fairy tale in different fantasy settings, and short stories in different real world ones.

11-17 Reading

I really liked everything in the MCM about the content-based instruction and using literature as content. I mean, honestly, lit was one of my college majors, how can I not like the possibility? It was also interesting that the author referred to one of my favourite Saroyan's stories.

Unfortunately, I can't say that I agree with everything in the peanut butter book, although it's great that Brown states what I have been advocating for - teachers need to be trained on emergency behaviour/improvisation planning skills. When I was trained to work as a camp counselor we went through and enacted all possible scenarios - a kid hurting themselves, someone getting lost or drowning, a fire starting, Apocalypse been moved to the current day. Since we knew what to do in a number of weird situations they did not catch us off-guard (except for the Apocalypse one that never happened).

On page 244 Brown says "Let your body posture exhibit an air of confidence". It's a fine goal, of course, but it is so strategical, that it reminds me of an old joke about mice and a wise owl. The mice came to the owl for advice, since they were harassed by cats. The owl thought for a while and said: "Turn into hedgehogs, then the cats will leave you alone". The mice protested that they did not know how to do so, and the owl said "That's a matter of tactics and I am more into strategy". So, my question is HOW do you let your body posture exhibit an air of confidence? I have no idea what my posture exhibits.

As for midstream changes - I am all for these. If the students are interested in something and want to talk about that or if a new topic arises, it should be addressed. Teachable moment, right? besides, lesson plan to me is more of a guideline and tentative list of things I would like to do, rather than a fixed list of goals to be achieved no matter what.

Using English only in class can and will be a problem. I taught in classrooms with approximately 10 different first languages, none of which I speak. The first day of class I would do a very animated presentation of how impolite it is to speak a language someone does not know in their presence and on how upset I will be if I can't follow what's happening in the class. On average I had to repeat this a couple of times/semester, but in one group it did not work. So, when I was tired of hearing constant Spanish chatter I gave my English Only speech again and followed it by the directions to the next activity, given in Russian. It worked.

I honestly hate disciplining students and try to avoid it at all costs (teaching adults is a strategy to go by here), but if I have to my main instruments are The Look and Humor. If students are talking in class I usually offer to stop the class for a couple of minutes so that they can solve their urgent problems (I mean, no one would ever dare to disrupt my class for anything other than urgent, right?), because I am fine, I know the stuff.

Cheating is always a problem, but my position is that by cheating a student harms him/herself first and foremost. I gave this example in my CASAS presentation - if they cheat on the test, they end up in a higher level class, and then come complaining that they can't cope. Well, I feel for them, but whose fault is that? I totally agree with what Brown says about lowering the pressure on students. If my salary depends on their scores, it's my problem.

Teaching style is something you develop and work on. My style depends a lot on the group I am working with and how comfortable I am in their presence. I like to make a lot of jokes and use myself as a joke constantly (not hard to do, truth be told), because I believe that laughter (as all emotions) helps you remember something better.

11-10 Reflection

Obviously, one of the highlights for me was the opportunity to do a presentation. I enjoyed it incredibly even though I had a blinding headache and concentrating on something required a physical effort. The presentation reminded me once again of how much I enjoy teaching ESL (something I have to remind myself of with my comp class adventures).

It was also nice to have the next genres reviewed. And it is extremely nice to know that our last 2 genres will be getting the same attention, i.e. peer review. It was hard for me to even remember that I have one more genre to produce, because the peer review was not scheduled. Now I really need to start working on the portfolio.

First of all, this week's reading is the one I am presenting on. About 6 weeks ago I happened to have a free evening and decided to get a head-start on the presentation. So I looked up the topic, Classroom Dynamics, very nice and decided to start with some online research rather than reading the book. The key here is that the book was not within my reach, and I was to comfortable to get up and walk across the room to retrieve it. Anyway, I researched the subject and found some really interesting articles, and practically had the presentation ready. Imagine my surprise when I was actually reading the L&S chapters this weekend and realized that the topic is not so much classroom dynamics as class types and observing different classrooms. Surprise!

As far as the types of classes go, I am for a combination of structure/communicative/task-based approach. There has to be a certain type of structure (especially in adult education), filled with communicative and task-based activities. The teacher also has to make sure that the students are getting enough exposure to the language, both written (books, published materials) and spoken (movies, TV and radio programs, guest speakers, podcasts).

The chapter also talked about types of feedback we give our students. I think that it is wrong to correct them every time they make a mistake, so I usually keep a mental list of things to be addressed or surreptitiously mark them somewhere. Once everyone is done talking we can go back and look at the mistakes together.

Reflection

The main surprise of the last week's class was the new information on portfolio. I had a totally different idea on what and how is to be done to meet this requirement.

I really enjoyed the textbook evaluation activity, although up till this time my experience was more of a "Here is the book, you figure how to use that". having the actual input in the textbook choice was a new and fascinating feeling.

There are two points in this week's reading that caught me.
1) Using realia. This works miracles. If you can show something or tell about it - SHOW. It will always work a lot better than a definition. And showing can have a pretty wide range of variations here - show an actual object, a visual aid, a sketch on the board, anything will do.

2) Teacher-talking-time. My goal as a teacher is to talk as little as possible. I already know the language, that's why I am teaching it. I am not the one, who needs practice. That's why I try to lesson plan so, that all the talking is done by students. A fellow TA told about a class he taught, that went without a single word. I admire that.

10/27 Reflection

The best part of the class for me was the chance to talk through and practice the lesson plans. It was really interesting and helpful to see how JoAnn's and Brian's plans were constructed. It's a pity we only taught for 10 minutes and for such a small group.

Lesson Plans

This week's reading is all about lesson planning and curriculum design. I am not entirely comfortable with the idea of designing a curriculum all by myself, although technically, I've done it for my comp class, but I guess I would manage it if need be.

I think no one would argue about the necessity to have a lesson plan and be prepared for hard day's work. At least, I wouldn't. I would like to note on a couple of things that our books modestly keep from mentioning.

First of all, it's the need to have a back-up plan. Yes, sometimes that would mean a full-lesson back up. Second of all, I think that teachers should be trained to improvise. Just today I had to produce an hour-long tutoring session, like a rabbit out of a hat. And I don't wear hats, so that was quite a feat in itself. And all events leading to this unfortunate circumstance happened well outside my sphere of control. I know that different people deal with stress (and an impromptu lesson/activity facilitation is a stress) in different ways. Some work well under pressure, others don't. Given the likelihood of having to improvise an activity somewhere in the career, I think that improvisational planning skills should be another standard we have to meet.

Reflection

The highlight of the class was the multi-genre paper workshop. I am still not fully confident with it, so it was very helpful to see the work of the other group.

We also had a great discussion about what a teachable moment is. To me, a teachable moment is when a student brings up something I did not plan to talk about, but feel that it would be beneficial if we did. It can be a cultural issue, a job-related tip, personal experience etc. Although, teachable moments tend to have a reverse side as well. Last year one of the students asked me practically mid-class: You know, my colleague is always telling me something, and I don't understand the meaning. Could you help me? Since we were in a job-interview unit, I felt it was a perfectly teachable moment and encouraged the question. Turned out that the co-worker hated her and the utterance was totally obscene. I had to explain the meaning to the giggling of those, who already knew it, and curious stares of those, who didn't. After that, all such questions (and you can't imagine how many people are irritated by ELL at the workplace) were discussed on breaks, and one-on-one. Conclusion - be careful of seemingly perfect teachable moments.

Readings

Most of this week's reading focused on the actual application of theories and methods, i.e. the teaching. The apple book talked about lesson planning, designing curriculum, and choosing textbooks.

I am not very diligent in writing lesson plans, although I know how to do it and have done it quite a lot. Most of the time, I just have a list of things I want to do in my head, and then I try to follow it as much as time/situation/students would allow.

Choosing textbooks is a painful subject for me at the moment. Last year we were given the textbooks, but we also had several shelves full of class copies, so following a specific textbook was not really obligatory. This semester we were given a textbook, too. It is my first time teaching composition, so I first decided to go with the book we had and follow it as closely as I can. I held through the entire first assignment. Now I use some of the readings, but do everything else on my own. The big problem on my mind now is choosing the textbook/handbook/reader for the next semester. There are so many options!!!

CASAS-continued

Thea's post made me realize that I have probably concentrated too much on the positive sides of CASAS. Partly, it was my intention, as I did not want to transfer my own judgment to the innocent people. The truth is, that in the year I worked in CASAS-served program, I was its most ardent opposer. There are several things about CASAS that seem weird and/or unfair to me, so now I will try to present a more balanced account.
- As all standardized tests CASAS fails to capture a lot of things (writing and speaking, to start with). And, of course, there are people, who just don't do well on the tests, no matter what kind of songs and dances you do as a teacher to relieve their anxiety. On the other hand, CASAS is mostly used in state-funded programs and the state wants to know if the money was put to a good use. The teacher's "Oh, now they make less mistakes and actually understand instructions" is no less subjective than the bland score on the test sheet and I am not even entering the field of statistical implications of comparing "They are doing so well" with "They are making adequate progress", and "Gosh, they finally learned something". Finally, if the rest of US education is dominated by SATs, ACTs, GREs, TOEFLs, GMATs and other devilish contraptions, why should ESL be different? Standardized tests are evil, but they are the best we've come up with so far.

- I have not really discussed it in class, but the way things work between CASAS, programs, and states is that the state usually gives money to the programs based on the number of gains shown on tests. In Kansas, the program is required to have 65% of gains on participants to receive the same funding it did the year before. First of all, let's talk about the term "participant". If the person has 12 hours with the program - they are it. What are 12 hours? 2 days of testing/orientation and 2 class days. If the person went to the orientation, visited your class for a week, and then disappeared (a VERY frequent situation) you are screwed. Or, to put it in different words, you now need to have a 70% gains rate to cover for that idiot, who could not decide that they didn't need ESL before they were on your balance sheet.
So, we need 65% of gains on participants. Great! What is a gain? CASAS has a system of levels, based on the person's test scores. So levels are, for example, 160-185, 185-200, 200-210, 210-225, 225-250 etc (I don't remember the exact numbers, so :)). A gain is jumping from one level to another, and here several problems come up.
1. Students need gains in their lower score, so if someone has 180 in reading and 187 in listening they need a gain in reading. Even if their next listening test is 211, they still need the gain in reading, no matter what.
2. A gain is only jumping from one level to another. So, if student A had a score of 186 and now has a score of 199 it is not a gain, although t is an amazing progress. If student B had a score of 184 and got a score of 185 - GAIN. Although, there is probably zero progress involved.
3. Theoretically, all test scores are commensurable. Meaning that a 210 on an A-level test is equal to a 210 on a D-level test. It is not so. Yes, you need to answer 90% of A-level test questions to get the 210 score, and about 10% of D-level questions, but they require totally different levels of vocabulary, reading and analytical skills. So, moving from 220 on a B-level test to 220 on a C-level test IS a big deal.

The issues with teaching to the test, irrelevant vocabulary (aerogram) are also a big part of the problem.

Natives vs. Non-natives

I think we already had this debate in both classes I am taking. Who is a better teacher -a native speaker or a non-native speaker? Interests and opinions clash. My answer is - a professional. If a person is a proficient English speaker, studied to be a teacher, and has a degree in TESL or a certificate such as CELTA or DELTA it does not matter what their first language is. Personally, I think that THE best teacher is a non-native with native-like fluency, experience of living in an English-speaking country and desired credentials. The only real advantage I see for the native speakers is the knowledge of slang/idioms, but that is easily corrected.

I found that students like it, when the teacher is a non-native speaker, because then you get the hardly refutable argument of "hey, I was able to learn that, so you should be too". It is also nice to share stories of your first mistakes, because then they feel that a) their mistakes aren't unique, b) making mistakes does not mean you won't be able to master the language. Finally, students feel sort of companionship with the teacher and know that the teacher is able to relate to their problems. An average native speaker hardly has an idea of what a mess English prepositions are :)

Class reflection

I really enjoyed the presentation, especially the database research part and the introduction of the notetaker site.

Rachel's presentation was also well thought-out, although it's a pity we didn't have time to go through the whole set of questions.

Re-writing someone else's lesson plan felt weird to me, maybe because of the fetus stage the plan we had was in. It is like reading a draft of someone's personal letter and making suggestions on how to improve the clarity or structure. I do enjoy writing lesson plans, as well as writing in general, but re-writing someone else's stuff is not fun. Being given a different topic and then having to invent our own plan (which we practically did) seems a lot more interesting.

What makes a good learner and how to assess levels?

This week's reading is so stuffed with information that I literally don't know what to reflect on first of all.

1) The L&S chapter focused on the characteristics of a good language learner, covering it in a very similar way to last week's peanut butter chapter. I have a hard time relating my own experience to the chapter, because I learned English as a kid, so I don't remember most part of it. It is my personal, yet anti-scientific opinion that there is such thing as talent or inclination to a particular kind of cognition. I am a pretty good humanities learner. Languages, literature, history - I get it. It makes sense to me. Math/physics/chemistry - not so much. I can understand the simplest concepts, but it requires incommensurable amounts of effort on everyone's behalf. And by this I don't mean to undermine the importance of other factors. Even the most talented person in the world will never succeed without motivation, willingness to communicate and make mistakes etc, it's just that sometimes people with similar learning profiles have different progress patterns.

I also strongly support the theory about correlation of IQ to language learner success. It may not be such an important factor with children, but with adults, and the focus on abstract notions we have to make, it is certainly playing its role. I also found that the there was direct link between amount of formal instruction students had in their native language and their success in our project. It was a joy, if not a class holiday, to have people who actually know the difference between verbs and nouns, or *gasp* subjects and predicates. Students from Korea and Japan were a bliss in that respect.

2) The peanut butter book chapters focused on teaching strategies pertaining to certain ages and standards for determining levels. The project I worked for last year used CASAS system. CASAS stands for Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System. It was developed in California, and the first "C" originally referred to the state. Anyway, California was one of the first states to get a big influx of non-English speaking population, so they had to design an assessment and instruction system to address the needs of these people. Hence, they developed a system of competencies that describe the functional command of English and tests to measure success of competence mastering. So far CASAS has tests for reading(30-s and 80-s series) and listening (50-s series). Last year we were piloting a new listening test series, with modernized content; the original tests required knowledge or words like "aerogram", which nobody uses now. CASAS is a really good system to rely on if you're teaching adults, who need functional language, and if you have a textbook to go with it (my personal favorite is All Stars).

09/29 Reflection

I really liked the opportunity to brainstorm a lesson plan for high school kids, as this is something I have absolutely no experience with. I have only taught adults, and can manage a lesson plan for an adult class pretty easily, but figuring out things that would work for 10th grade classroom was interesting and exciting. I think we came up with a pretty good plan overall!

It was also interesting to do a learning style test, I knew that I am visual learner, with audio not far behind, but I was surprised to score quite high on kinesthetic as well. I know that I memorize poems best if I do something at the same time. There was one long monologue we were supposed to recite in 8 grade. I started learning it walking in circles around the room, then I got 2 balls and started juggling. Then one of the balls landed under the couch and that was where I memorized the final part. I guess I drifted from kinesthetic approach a bit through my high school and college years, but I still like to lesson plan so that my students will have to do something TPR based.

Motivation

This week's readings focused on teaching principles in general and motivation in particular. It was really interesting to read about the correlation between the different types of motivation and possible ways of creating it.

I think that creating motivation is more of teacher's responsibility when working in a school setting, or working with children, anyway. One of the reasons why I decided to work with adults was/is that I don't know how to create motivations. Part of the problem here is that I come from a background, where knowledge was valued for knowledge's sake. About half the things I know, I learned because it was cool to know them. I mean, knowing what an epicycloid is and carefully inserting the word in a conversation with a math major (who is sure that you cannot add) is a lot of fun. And generally, acquiring new info is interesting, so I have a hard time understanding people, who are indifferent to learning. I stopped caring about grades back in high school, the main reason I got Honor's Diploma (Gold Medal) was that it was a family tradition, and I value that. The other reason was that even without caring I got good grades. Same happened in college. I wanted the information, and the paper stating that I can go on to grad school and, ultimately, do what I want to do career wise. It so happens that my career goals involve a Ph.D.

So, my assumption is, that when you work with adults, they are already motivated - why would they be in your class otherwise, right? My last year teaching experiences proved me to be right. That is most of my students (the number increased with the level) knew, why they were taking English classes and what potential rewards that held. By rewards I mean being able to communicate outside of the immigrant community, first and foremost, talking to their children's teachers, getting better and more legal jobs etc. Generally, I think that teachers can help with motivation, but students need to figure it out, especially adult students.

I loved the fact that we watched a Monty Python clip in class, I mean, how often do you get to see a part of your favorite movie as your classwork? I find, however, that there is a scene in another Monty Python movie that has more to do with languages.

For those of you, who have not seen The Life of Brian, here is the background to the scene. Brian was born in the stable next to the one, where Jesus was born, and the wise men originally came to him, but then realized their mistake, got the presents back and went to the next barn. Brian grew up to be a passionate anti-Roman protester and almost got accepted to an underground organization of Judea People's Front. Or People's Front of Judea. Or Judea Popular People's Front. Being anti-Roman was a popular thing at the time. Anyway, to become a full-time member of the group he has to write "Romans, go home" on the wall, surrounding Pilate's palace.

Some second language theorists have argued that second language learners, like children learning their first language, can learn a great deal of vocabulary with little intentional effort. Stephen Krashen (1985, 1989) has asserted that the best source of vocabulary growth is reading for pleasure.
L&S p. 100

The chapter discusses how it is almost impossible to guess the meaning of the words from the context without prior knowledge of at least 90% of the vocabulary. I agree, I have read somewhere that you need to see the word 50 times before being comfortable using it. What I find strange, however, is that the chapter does not make a very important distinction between active and passive vocabulary. If you see a word in the text, look it up in the dictionary, write it down and learn it, or even just see it and guess the meaning, it is most likely (I'd give my personal 99%, but I don't have scientific proof for that) that the word will enter your passive vocabulary. You will be able to recognize it, from now on, but you will hardly use it in your own sentences, especially in oral speech. It is, no doubt, great to have a large passive vocabulary, but it makes you a magnificent reader and not-so-magnificent speaker. I believe in learning vocabulary from meaningful contexts and reinforcing it with games, guided practice, matching exercises; then words become actively used.

Reading for pleasure in your L2 is a wonderful thing, but it's primary advantage is not enriching your active vocabulary.

I had an epiphany! Now I know exactly what bothers me with the innatist perspective on language acquisition. So, children perceive the "grammaticalness" of sentences due to the in-built knowledge. But different languages have different grammar systems, and a grammatical structure of one language will be ungrammatical in another. And this is where I come to a contradiction. Either our brains have a grammar encyclopedia installed, or genes carry the information about particular language, or somtehing does not work here.

I am not exactly sure yet on how I will apply the theories of language acquisition to my teaching, but so far it seems to me that everyone agrees that we need to work with our students, provide them as much practice, guidance and examples as possible, and then it will work out. It's magic. It is also important to not focus on a specific skill, but rather try and develop all of them in a more or less equal manner. I understand that you cannot be absolutely equally comfortable speaking/writing/reading/hearing a language, but there is nothing wrong with a little idealism.

I really liked the concept activity we did during class, although our group probably was over creative with making our triangle-oriented, smiley-faced, quotation-filled poster. I still enjoyed making it :)

After reading the chapter I have been thinking a lot about bilingualism. I always thought that a bilingual person is someone, who acquired both languages simultaneously and is equally fluent in both. L&S write about sequential and additive bilinguals (and subtractive, but that's too sad). In the book, it talks about types of bilingualism, but it never gives the actual criteria for differentiating a bilingual from a fluent L2 speaker. Or does fluency in L2 automatically make one a bilingual? I am fluent in Russian, English, and Ukrainian (in order of acquisition), and can sort of maybe manage German. Of course, there are all kinds of odd bits and ends, but nevertheless. I have come to consider myself almost bilingual, although I am fluent in English, and most of the time don't care which language to talk. So you could say that now I have an identity crisis.

Subtractive bilingualism, I feel, is a really sad, but very natural thing. I would assume that it mostly happens in immigrant families. Even if a child was brought to L2 country (let's say the US, for argument's sake), when he/she was already fluent in their native language, chances are (about 95% on my unrepresentative selection) that they will not retain this fluency till adulthood. I know a lot of immigrant families where parents struggle to preserve L1 in their children. They pay for the tutors and extra language schools, read only L1 books to the children, speak only their native language at home, penalize the use of L2 outside of school and whatnot. Still, the kids lose the language or speak it with horrible mistakes and very obstructed meaning. I know only few families where children, young adults by now, are able to hold a conversation in their L1. It is an extremely hard thing to achieve.

I realize, that, most likely, my children will not speak my native language as fluently as I do. And I am not sure that I'll have enough perseverance, stubbornness, and persistence in me to make them learn it. But I know that for the first 2-3 years I will talk to them in their hopeful L2/my L1. Even if they don't end up speaking it, hearing it will help their brain develop better, their associative thinking will be improved, they will have less trouble with learning languages in general. I am surprised that our textbook did not talk about purely developmental advantages of bilingualism or at least early exposure of children to a second language.

There are a lot of theories about first language acquisition: behavioural, innate, socio-cultural, cross-cultural, connectionism etcetc. Many of them corresponded to a certain method being particularly popular at a given time. Or a method appeared as a response to the theory. Apparently, the most controversial one is the innatism theory of Naom Chomsky, who managed to leave his mark on pretty much every aspect of English language study. Basically, what he is saying, is that a child has a built-in knowledge of language, in particular, grammar, so that this lucky child can magically distinguish grammatical sentences from not so grammatical. I don't agree with this theory at large, but once you read his theory attentively, you notice that he is just paraphrasing another theory.

So, Chomsky says, that children will learn the language, using this Universal Grammar thing, provided that adults offer communication to them. Isn't that exactly what behavioural theory is saying? talk to the child long enough, and they will talk back. I would totally support Chomsky's theory (I feel bad for not doing it, I loved his grammar/lexicology/structure works) if children would magically, out of the blue, acquire structures they never heard. If parents never say anything more complicated than present Simple, and the child is answering using present perfect Continuous, then - yes, innate grammar is the only explanation. Another thing that would persuade me would be if children, who were brought up outside of human interaction, still acquired languages. However, there is no research showing that the Mauglis ever achieve any level of language proficiency.

Another "loophole" of this theory is the critical age point. It is proven that if a child does not reach a certain stage of linguistic proficiency by certain age, they are never going to catch up. It does not make sense in lieu of the innate module. After all, nobody proved that grammar and the logic of language are unconditional reflexes.

It is always great to observe someone's lesson. A) It gives new ideas. B) You get an impression of what would work and what wouldn't. C) You just see a different teaching style, a different student group. However, when we observe a lesson and critique it, it's very important to remember about the difference between analyzing the decisions and making them on 1-2-3 count before a roomful of puzzled students. I had students stumble on things I considered to be most simple, and then I had to invent a new activity right there, right then. On hindsight, some of my emergency back-up tasks were far from ideal, but they worked for the time being. So did this teacher's lesson.

In the lesson we read about, I see no major mistakes the teacher made, although I would introduce this material differently. I don't think that providing verbal definitions without at least writing them down on the board could hardly be productive. The fact that students were nodding is hardly informative. I had a whole group of students, who confidently answered "Yes" to "Do you understand?", but could not say what exactly they understood. I would probably make this a sort of double-match activity. Like giving the students sets of movie categories, category definitions and movie names with possible plot outlines.

Evidently, the grammar-translation method was the most widely used one up till the 1920-s. Gouin's Series method was developed in the 1880-s, but did not acquire significant popularity. Speaking about grammar-translation method, I thought it was interesting that people actually managed to acquire speaking skills (there were diplomatic relations and trade negotiations after all), while implementing it. Then I remembered how many upper class families had private tutors for their children, who were usually native speakers. Also, it was considered good-tone for young people from wealthy families to spend a year traveling Europe, thus putting finishing touches to their education. So, maybe, we can talk about the combination of immersion method with the grammar-translation one. Probably, classical schooling provided enough grammar instruction and linguistic analysis for listening comprehension and speaking skills to nest comfortably.

In 1900 Jerome K. Jerome published a sequel to the Three Men In A Boat, which was called Three Men On A Bummel. In it the three friends (without Monmorancy, sadly) went cycling through Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. Beside the actual narrative the book has a lot of digressions on language learning and various linguistic adventures the characters get in. In particular, Jerome compares the language teaching methods used in Europe and in Great Britain, not to the latter's favour. Jerome wrote that an average German school graduate could freely converse in English, he also notes some things about the difference in school system and organization, but nevertheless. I am wondering how they could speak English freely, if the main method at that time was the grammar-translation one? I don't believe that you can learn to speak by reading and translating. This method was very popular in the USSR, and speaking was traditionally a weakness.

I also was also interested in some of the 1970-s methods, which I think have no relation to the word effectiveness. Community Learning method, for instance, is hardly different from a conference or banquet employing a consecutive interpreter. How this method could have possibly been successful remains a great mystery to me.