#11 - Element 8: 60% Input | 10 Elements of Proficiency-Oriented World Language Instruction

Today's element - input! This is a proficiency teacher favorite. We always talk about how important it is, but that doesn't always mean that YOU need to be the source. 

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Transcript

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What's up, kelo k e. Salut, 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 Gunning, the teacher author, conference host, curriculum creator, and consultant behind La Libre 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 target language rich classroom rooted in the power of community and comprehensible input. Let's go. Welcome back, y'all. We are on to element eight. Is it crazy? We're already at element eight, and this one is such an important one that some of the elements that we've already talked about should be, you know, kind of on your radar, but this one, well on your radar in the sense that there are probably things that you've talked about before or heard about in trainings before this one, however, element eight is 60% input. We're going to talk about what you should be spending the majority of your class time doing. Input is such an important word in the world language classroom, but it also has a lot of ambiguity around it. So, element eight for the element of a world language proficiency instruction oriented classroom and for acquisition in a classroom environment, it's all about the input, baby. So let's talk about this 60% of your class time, which, and this is a number coming from me, la Libre. 60% of your class time is ideally spent on providing input to your students. That means that the other 40% is allocated to anything you need to say in English, anything that needs to be just straight logistics, anything that needs to be assessment time, and also anything that needs to be a straight up teaching moment. Like we, you know, hey, we need to quickly do like a pop up grammar on this. Or let's talk about, guys, you didn't put your chromebooks back. Let's talk about how you need to be putting your chromebooks away and talking about procedures and things like that. However, you could do that in the target language, and that would be even more input. And also, I'm including in that 40% anytime that you're giving them for interaction because they're receiving input whenever they do interaction activities. This doesn't mean that 60% of the class is you always being the source of input, but it means that if you look at your full year, that you interact with your students, any seat time that they have with you, if you tallied all of that up and put it into a pie chart and divided out how much of that time was spent in the target language, how much of that time was spent doing other activities, how much of that time was spent being. Being assessed on their target language proficiency areas, all of that. 60% of their total seat time for the year. So not necessarily every class period or any of that, but 60% of that time should be straight input. That will give you an ideal ratio of not only room for you to play, room for you to do whatever you need to do logistically wise to keep your classroom running and looking fresh, being great and functioning at a high level, talking about anything that you want to talk about in English, but still providing enough language for them. In the very limited seat time that you get, most of your time is spent on input. Those contact hours are dedicated to providing interesting input. Know here that it says providing. Providing doesn't mean that you're always doing the talking. One of my favorite ways to teach a more practical approach to proficiency is that you being the source of input all the time is so exhausting. Even though you are the ideal source of input. Yeah, you. It doesn't necessarily mean that you should always be the source of input, because if you are, it's a huge time. Suck energy, suck all of that. Which is why I recommend that you build up a library of authentic texts that you absolutely love using. You will most likely always teach a level one class or a level two, level three, level four, that kind of deal. So, as you're getting into this field, or if you're an expert already and you've been doing this for a long time, instead of sporadically looking for authentic text like I used to do in my third year, I got smarter about it and I started to make up an actual library of Okay, this event is coming up, or this unit is coming up. These are the videos I like to use for my authentic text. And that day, I'm not the source of input. I am instead the input client clarifier. I'm making sure that everything's clear for my students as they are working through this new and exciting input, as well as making sure that they're exposed to lots of different types of native speakers in an authentic cultural context, which is great. So what does this actually look like? How do we do this? Let's zoom in. At any moment, an observer could walk into your classroom and identify what kind of input is occurring in your class. Whether it be y'all are doing a game, you're doing a listing activity, or you are the source of input, doing something like story listening. Because it happens that often, input is the focus of your classroom. You also understand the power of reading. Hello. And how that plays into second language acquisition. Again, you don't always have to be the source of input. And for a sustainable and practical journey to proficiency, it's not a good idea for you to always be the source of input. It's so exhausting. Your batteries will be done by six period every day. So schedule in times where students can be reading. And even if you start to slowly build up a class library over time. And many teachers, of course I even asked this question a couple days ago in the practical proficiency PD Facebook group and many teachers, the question being, what kind of books do you like using with your students? What are those ci novels that you love to rely on? And many teachers said, well, I don't have a full library yet. I have just like one copy of this or that. Great, that works perfectly because then you can let students pick and choose what books they want to read. It's all about having scheduled and consistent times and breaks for them to read. 60% of your time is input heavy in class with conversations, input routines and activities where students main job in class, their main job is to understand the input and to interact with it. Sounds like a great way for your world language class to be organized, right? Thanks so much for being here, for everything that we've done so far with the ten elements series. This is element number eight and element number nine is coming next. We'll see you then.