1. I became aware of the vulnerability of speaking a target language in front of your classmates. It is brave to express an idea that you do not know if you’re going to be able to say fully. Now when sharing our opinions, I find myself asking my students if they are satisfied with the idea that they’ve just expressed, and open the door for them to elaborate more when they feel ready or misunderstood (this is even more important when we discuss a hot topic).
2. Speaking entirely in a target language in the classroom is hard. I gained more respect for those students who only speak in Spanish in class, and I understand those who don’t: resorting to your native language as a means to communicate and feel safe is easier than I had thought. In the past, I’ve simply refocussed, and kept encouraging the student to paraphrase the word or idea they wanted to express in their native language. Now I also suggest that they keep a list of those words the students are missing from their oral vocabulary, and to re-visit the list occasionally or use them also in their journal writing.
3. Journal writing can be more productive. Besides integrating new vocabulary, I am more intentional now in suggesting students to also make a list of a few grammar topics that they want to practice on their entries, and cross them out as they write. That was my method in Quechua. It is easy to just write using basic grammar, but with a list to remind you, you can keep the basic and intermediate grammar active.
4. Support the student to step out of their comfort zone. In Quechua, the verb “munay” means to want or to like, and forming a sentence, and conjugating it is relatively easy. I felt very comfortable speaking using this verb to the point that I was not conjugating any other verb. I had to force myself and basically ban it from my vocabulary. One of my instructors helped me realize this when she said that Quechua is a very descriptive language and that we needed to use more vocabulary. Now I find myself telling my students more often: “Integrate the subjunctive mood in your conversation. Spanish has a lot of color and emotion when expressing one’s views.”
5. The way you speak your native or second language is just the way you speak a language. There are millions of other people who speak the language you are teaching/learning, and the way they speak is totally valid. In the classroom, we can have an illuminating conversation about this, or we can have a conversation that places your way of speaking as superior. I prefer the former conversation both as a language teacher and as a student.
6. I am still reflecting on a few aspects that I noticed and that I would love to alleviate in my classroom:
6a. In my experience, my Quechua instructors and the instructors in other levels did not have the “teacher talk” which is common in a language classroom.
6b. There are questions to make small talk (where you are from, your name, who you are traveling with, when you arrived in Cusco, and when you are leaving). We learn this in the classroom, but outside of it, the speakers will use other variations, and I frequently had to make sure to answer what I was asked. Perhaps we language teachers should introduce other variations. Just on the first week of class this semester, I ran into a student who travelled to Mexico on vacation. When I asked them if they had practice the language, he was honest and said that “the Spanish we use in the classroom is not the Spanish spoken outside of it.” I understood their perception, and I am still reflecting what I can do in class to bridge that gap.
7. I also confirmed practices and methods that have worked for me and my students, and that I’d like to share with other language instructors:
7a. Free-practice conversation in pairs. It helps to unpack the day before or a weekend.
7b. Think-Pair-Share Technique. It alleviates and recognizes the vulnerability I described earlier.
7c. Students need different times to form and say a sentence or idea. We need to be patient as there’s no need to finish the sentence/idea for them. The student should feel a sense of achievement.
7d. When a student speaks to you in the target language outside of the classroom, it is good to keep it in the target language until the student asks for help or asks to switch to their native language.
7e. Be aware of who is dominating the conversation, and make proper changes to the dynamic to make the class more inclusive.
7f. Typos are human, and they can be very frustrating too. Quechua is an agglutinating language. You need to organize a set of prefixes to form a word or conjugate a verb. Just one letter off can be dreadful when trying to understand one sentence. I am being more careful to catch these types of mistakes on the handouts I create for my class.