#16 - Novice High | What Level is My Student?

This one is for novice high - the level you'll spend the most time with in your career! Listen to get in-depth examples for exactly what novice highs can do with language, in teacher-friendly language of course! 

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What's up? Ken, OK, a salute 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, Devon Gunning the teacher, author conference, host, curriculum creator and consultant behind la liber 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 the community based target language rich classroom rooted in the power of community and comprehensible input. Let's go, Hey, practical world language teachers, we're back with our series that's investigating celebrating and exploring exactly what levels your students are at. Let's meet them where they're at and understand that whatever language that they're producing is more of an indicator of what level they are and what they need to reach the next level, rather than coming at it from any kind of deficit point of view, and instead focusing on what they can do with language. And let's make that very clear, language for teachers as well, today's episode is novice high. So we're gonna get to know the area of levels really that you're gonna spend the most time with students novice high covers for anything from the end of a level one class or your your introductory class, this could be your ninth grade core class for French, or anything In between, if it could also be perhaps the second year of your program, but many students will start to reach into novice high at the end of a first year program. Not all, but some will, and the way that you can tell is by the following markers that I'm about to give you. However, people hang out at novice high for a long time in the middle school, high school system, or for our international listeners, for the age range of if you've got anywhere from 10 year olds to 18 year olds, they're going to hang out in the novice high range for a little bit due to the limited amount of exposure that we have with them to give them more input, to bump them up that level. So without further ado, let's dive in. Let's talk about novice highs, the ones that you're going to hang out with the most, because you're probably going to have people at a novice high level. This is also, I would caution, the first area that people usually mess up with their programs is they rush people through levels. They rush their students through levels. That is because we often feel that our novice low, previous episode has to be, you know, the first part of level one, and they get and then we get to novice mid, and then in our second year program, or our level two class, then we automatically assume, like these guys should be at novice high. And instead of meeting students where they're at, we say they should be novice high, and we just continually give them novice high tasks, even if they're not quite there yet. And then when they get to level three, we're like, cool, they're intermediate. That is, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. That is not how this happens. And I think that when we discover and talk about in detail what novice, high learners can do, we'll realize that it's not that we've been pushing unfair expectations onto students in terms of how we grade them and what we expect them to do in class. We've been unfairly labeling them so then when we look to our standards for either actful or CEFR, because novice high will line up with the end of a, one, the beginning of b2, I would say, without, with, not having much familiarity myself with CEFR, I'm just starting my journey with CEFR, but, and that's for our international listeners, but For teachers in the US setting with act full specifically, we're working in novice high quite a bit, and we are and using those proficiency descriptors, performance indicators, all of that in order to guide our assessments and our programs. So we need to understand them. So. But in all fairness, they're not exactly in teacher friendly language. So that's where I come in. Let's do this. Novice high is my favorite I'm not gonna lie, novice high is my favorite spot for students to be at. This is where I certainly spent the most time in my career, and where I love to see students start to jump and make the leap into their next stage. This is also a very familiar area for you, because students at this stage are doing a lot of the things that you hope they would be able to do by the end of your program, especially if you only see them for two to three years, stuff like they can comfortably, albeit awkward, handle a straightforward social situation that is straight out of act full that with the new 2024 performance indicators and proficiency guidelines, we are seeing strict indicators of this is exactly what novice highs can do, And that is directly from from actual that your novice highs will be able to handle straightforward social situations. What is a straightforward social situation I'm talking about? They come up to you in your class and they need something, and they can ask you in the target language for what they need. It's not going to be pretty. You're going to need to rephrase, and you're going to need to see a few check for understanding and work for clarification and work for shared meaning, which is, of course, a linguistic competency in itself. So the more opportunities you give for students to fumble over their words, it's actually awesome. It's building their linguistic competency in more than just the word part, right? So when they come up to your desk and they ask for something that they need, they're having a hard time with it, you're filling in the gaps, and you're asking for clarification and working with them, and then you eventually reach a shared moment of communication, a shared understanding of, Oh, you want to go to the nurse, right? And then they say, Yes, exactly, I need the nurse. Because they probably won't remember the nurse, the word for nurse all the time, right? But that exchange, that interaction, they can handle, that they can do that your novice lows and your novice mids will not be able to handle that. Your novice mids are going to come up to your desk and be like, I need and they're gonna gesture and they'll say, you know, leave, leave. And you're gonna have to work a lot harder to come to any kind of shared understanding. But with your novice highs, it'll be a little awkward. They might have to use some skills from their first language in order to get there, but you'll be able to come to some shared communicative understanding of, oh, you need the nurse. And they'll say, Yes, I need nurse. So it'll be a little clumsy, a little awkward. Another example of this is they could buy something. So they're gonna go to the store and say, pretend this is a coffee that they just bought. They're gonna go to a coffee shop in Japan, and they're gonna say, I want the Kyoto iced coffee special. And they're literally, they're just reading off the menu board, right? Because it's gonna be a repurposed, already pre packaged phrase. So they're gonna look at the menu board. And then they're gonna just say it, I want the Kyoto iced coffees or drip coffee special. And then they'll say price, or how much? The person will say, you know, it costs this much. And they'll say, Okay, thank you. The person will ask them, you know, do you need anything else? And they're gonna be like, what? Anything else, and it's gonna be a little awkward. And they'll say coffee, and the person who's talking to them will get it like, oh, okay, you you need a little bit help with your language. You ordered cool. Okay, here's how much it costs. And then they'll, you know, they'll do some gestures to exchange the currency. And then they'll be on their way. But they'll be good. They'll be able to do it. It'll be clumsy, cute and awkward, though. That's how you know their novice high. Another way that you know their novice high, because you can't always judge that type of circumstance or scenario, because there's not a lot of exchange happening in your in your classroom, there's plenty of social situations, but they they must be straightforward. Okay, it can't be something like, you're going to go meet with a neighbor and ask them for something like. It needs to be straightforward. People that they're familiar with, interacting with words that they're familiar and words that are familiar to them, and things that they've used before, things where they can draw on their memorized phrases, their pre packaged phrases, as I like to call them, you know, like it's that breakfast burrito ready to go. You just rip off the label and put it in the microwave. Their brain cooks it and it's ready to go. Those are the types of phrases that your novice highs will be comfortable with, but they'll. Getting real fancy with it at novice high because they'll start to recombine. So let's say that you have these magical novice High students in your in your level two or in the beginning of your level three course. There's a lot of people in level three courses that are novice highs. Okay, they're not intermediate yet. They might be reaching with a lot of these skills. But here's why we think they're intermediate when they're actually not. Here's what's happening. So intermediate, low, they're cooking their own meal, okay, like they're scrambling their eggs. They're scrambling the burritos, all of these, all these are language components. They're, they're, you know, they're mixing up the beans, they're making good stuff. They're chopping up the peppers and onions, and they know how to mix it, and they're adding spices, because, you know, why would you do anything without spices? And then they are making a meal that's intermediate, low and, you know, it's not perfect, like they probably put in too much salt, like I usually do, but it's still a nice, home cooked meal, delicious, wonderful. Can't wait to dive in on that conversation, eat that breakfast burrito. Your novice highs cannot cook yet with language. Okay? They are not cooking with fire. They are not cooking with language. Here's what they're doing. They are looking inside their brain freezer, and they are pulling out. I like this breakfast burrito, and I like this pre packaged bacon, and I also like, you know, this lovely soy meat, tofu, scrambly, Eggy thing. I'm gonna put all that together and a piece of fruit. So they are literally making one of the, what, I don't know, whatever you call it, but it's not cooking, right? Like they're putting stuff in a microwave and they're pressing a button, but it looks like a nice meal when you take it out of the packaging. Like, oh, there's burrito. Oh, look, there's some tofu, scrambled eggs right there. Oh, look at that. You have some fruit. But the student didn't do any cooking. They are just rearranging and recombining phrases. If we're going with this microwave analogy, why not? Let's dive way down that road. Novice lows don't know where the microwave is, or what to put in it. And frankly, they really need to go grocery shopping, and you're doing that for them because you're their language parent. So you're filling up everything in their freezer being like, here's a bunch of burritos. Here's some things that you can eat for breakfast. Here's some good stuff that you can have for dinner. Okay, one day you'll be able to feed yourself, and you'll be really excited. Novice mids are starting to look inside that freezer and pull things out linguistically and put it in the microwave to make their meal their sentence. They're starting to learn how to use the microwave. Novice highs are getting to the point where they can, they can make a meal on their own using a microwave, but everything is pre packaged. Okay? They're not cooking anything. There's no There's no heat, there's no knives involved. They're not ready for that. So what does this look like? It means that when it comes time for you to have a final exam, something like that, maybe you're due, maybe you're awesome, and you do some sort of final portfolio, like I'm doing with a curriculum client, however you want to do this, but around the time of this recording is being released, like we're doing a lot of, you know, end of year stuff, a lot of end of year exams. So let's say that your novice high student is sitting down with you to show you, to demonstrate to you how much they've learned so far this year, how much language they've acquired in a speaking assessment, you ask them a question like, What do you like to do on the weekends? They know the question, they understand your question, and they're able to answer your question with things that they've already learned in class and things that they can recombine. They're pulling out the burritos from the freezer, the bacon from the other side of the freezer and the scrambled egg tofu thing, okay? And they can put it together to make a meal. When you ask it, they can say things like, I like basketball on the weekends. And if they're really, you know, on it, I like to play basketball on the weekends. And they may also say, I also like going to the movies. And so when you start to ask for more details, like, wow, tell me more. Who do you go to the movies with? They'll start giving you some answers. They might say, I go with my mom. And you might say, like, cool. What did you see? And then that might be where the conversation stops. They might be like, uh, that because that's the you're starting to get into creative language. Like, what did you see? They're gonna have to, they're gonna have to go with, I saw. And then, you know, remember the title, all that good stuff. And creative language won't be there for them yet, especially if they've never heard the word I see before, or that phrase, like the in Spanish, or like je Vu in French. So if you're asking them in the they also novice highs. A huge marker of this is that in interpersonal interactions, they're going to hang on for dear life and borrow. Everything that you use in the question, everything that you use in the conversation to create their language. So a very or not create, recombine. So a very common trait of novice highs is they will take the question that you've already given them, such as, What movie did you see, and in order to try and answer your question, they'll say, you see, Aladdin, they'll use the phrases that you just gave them in an effort to try and put them into their freezer and cook them really quickly. But they won't be able to make creative language. So I hope that those examples help to clarify. Like, okay, that's, yeah, I understand where we're at. Like, that's some of my students. Some of my students over here can start to do creative language, but not they can't consistently hold it over time. That's how, you know. Let's look at some more indicators on here. I'm going to check my notes and make sure that we covered everything. We definitely looked at some, some nice examples. But something else to keep in mind with your novice highs, I want to make sure that we really understand this, because, again, this is where most of you are going to spend. This is where you're going to spend the majority of your careers. Working with novice highs. They can understand and react to most of the questions. As long as they're about straightforward everyday things, they can also confidently respond, especially if you give them requests that they're used to hearing a lot, they can respond to those. And they will start to combine phrases. They'll start to connect memorize phrases. They'll start to use conjunctions. And their their thoughts will start to have logical sequence to them. So what you'll start seeing is that with novice highs, whenever you ask them to write something that is on the lengthier side, for a language learner, such as, you know, five sentences, or, you know, speaking about themselves or something else for more than, like, 10 seconds at a clip, then they will be able to organize those ideas. There will be a beginning, middle and end, and that's also something that you can help coach them on. They will also have a presence of transition words, and they'll have conjunctions, and they will have some nice organization of thought. The best part, though, is that you'll see with novice highs that they have strong ability to converse with peers for short bursts, so it doesn't last long. They might be able to banter like back and forth once or twice. So keep that in mind with your interpersonal activities, that once you get to question two, that might be all you can do, but as long as they're about simple, extremely familiar topics, the same things that you're talking about in novice low and novice mid those everyday routine I see this object, this person, this place, or this thing multiple times a day. They'll be good. They'll be able to handle that. They also can spontaneously produce a rejoinder or some sort of reaction or emote in the language. It won't be consistent, but they can do it, and that's how you know that they're novice high is that it's starting to happen more and more frequently when it comes to conversation, when it comes to interpretive listening and interpretive reading, they'll be able to read interpretively at a pretty high level. So those who are at in presentational terms or in speaking terms at novice high their reading comprehension is much higher. So you can give them materials for an intermediate low or for even an intermediate, mid student, and they'll be pretty comfortable with it. They want they'll be able to tell you less and less the higher it goes, but they'll be comfortable with it. They'll be fine. You don't need to always give them things at the novice high level, because what students can read is vast compared to what they can say. And of course, all that reading and input is going to just explode all of the things available to them in their lexical dictionary. Or as the fun analogy that we've been using, their freezer full of little language burritos. You will also see a novice side that some students will start to move into a two paragraph range. However, they're probably just using recycled, recycled, recycled language. This used to happen all the time. In my Spanish two class, where we would be we would have some sort of writing prompt about daily routines. You know, tell me about your daily routine. Tell me a couple things, and they'd be able to list, list, list, list, list, list, like a like a mofo, like they would be set they'd be able to tell me a lot of different things about what they do every day. But guess what? All of those sentences had the exact same structure. If all of your sentences that you're receiving from a student, even if the paragraph is rather lengthy, or even if the speech has a good duration to it and a good fluency to it, if all of it has the same structure, that is a big indicator to you that the student is at novice high what they're doing is they are using that familiar structure, the only one that they know, the only. One that they feel comfortable using, and they can, you know, they can explore and work with it and use different vocabulary terms to express different ideas, but they're never going to express them in different ways. That's how you know they're novice. High length does not determine a student's ability to jump between levels. Let's think of a better way to say that, a better way to say that is that the length of discourse doesn't necessarily indicate a difference in proficiency levels. So if you have a student who's doing very repetitive work, it's not a bad thing. It's actually wonderful, because they are producing for you, but because there's no variation in the structures, then that's indicating to you that they're at a novice hat. They can also sometimes be a novice mid who are just, you know, using the same plug in starter sentence and then just changing the thing that they're talking about. That happens a lot. How you know that their intermediate low is that not only do they have organization of idea, not only do they have sequence, but they're starting to become creative with their language. And we're going to talk more about that when it gets to intermediate, low. When it comes to the magic word in the in the language teaching community, I say magic word sarcastically because I'm not a huge fan of it. But when it comes to errors, errors, let's all be reminded as well that errors is defined in second language acquisition as a non native utterance, which means that right off the bat, if native speakers are using it, guess what? It's grammatical. Doesn't really matter if it ruffles your feathers. It will indicate, you know, different sociolinguistic undertones, but anything that a native speaker would use is grammatical under the definition of research based second language acquisition, that's how we define it in the language sphere. So it doesn't always necessarily mean that the language is neat or tidy. All of the language that I'm using is very much so native speaker English, but there's a lot of times where I'll use slang, or things where, you know, letters are dropped off and things like that, so important to note that your novice highs will have a couple minor spelling, word order, morphology, all of that sentence structure. They'll have a couple of those minor errors. It will be something that might make you go, Oh, okay, and then you move on. If it really is make it is making the sentence twist it up, that's when you need to pay attention to it. But if it's just oh, okay, I'm ready to move I think I understand what they're saying, then you're good. Most importantly things to remember about novice highs is that they have a lot more vocabulary to work with, because if we're thinking about the cone, the cone of excellence, from actful they are, they're getting a lot higher in the cone. So the reason that you will be working with novice highs for the majority of your career. Lucky you. Novice highs are amazing is because it takes quite a while to fill up that cup. You're going to just keep adding new words, new structures, new things to their toolkit, new things for them to use. And that's a good thing. We want to give them that time to grow and develop and master all the new things that are being added to their Chalice of excellence according to act fall. So don't rush it. It's okay for students to hang out in novice high for a while. They might even hang out in novice high until level four in your program or year four of your program. That's fine. They also may be reaching into intermediate low, but they might not be able to consistently produce the work required of an intermediate low and that is a whole nother thing. We'll talk more about that in the intermediate low episode. But for now, I hope you have a much deeper understanding of the students that will be in your room for the majority of your program. You know, like the end of level one up through four, even if you are working in a traditional high school system, and if you're not there, you could have novice highs in your program for up to four years. You might have some that are ready in level two, and you might have some that are ready in level three, and you might have some that are ready in level four. It has so much to do with the quality of the input that you're giving them the amount of seat time that they have with you and the amount of input driven seat time, the types of activities that they're working with, the balance between explicit grammar instruction versus the amount of input driven instruction that they're being given. And most importantly, they're. Motivation. Their motivation is a huge part of this puzzle. So let the novice highs be novice highs for as long as their novice highs, and when it is time to acknowledge that intermediate low, that's when we'll address it. Thanks so much for being here. Give this podcast a rating so that other people can find it and earn some awesome karma points for it. You can also now text the podcast. So check out the information below, because I'd love to hear questions and comments from you about what should our next series of episodes be? I've already got a nice collection of some teacher questions from that text feature and from Instagram, DMS, things like that, so I'm really excited to bring those to you, but for now, I'll see you in the next episode where we start talking about intermediate lows. Ciao.