than that in the in the content part of it uh i want to compliment you from be for being here uh tonight i know i just
saw uh read the warren's comment that teachers this is always busy time uh it's either march break or whatsoever
but i want to compliment you for all the the hard work and uh in the last couple years 2020 and
2021 are remarkable in many ways but i want to compliment you for the hard work that you do
and uh the fact that you're here tonight to to learn i i just want to send you my appreciation and uh
best regards and what component the other thing uh the presentation is all on a glass it's all in english uh
it gives me the opportunity to practice my bilingual skills but if uh you feel like asking questions in french
either in the chat or asking them in french
i'll be more than happy to answer that i always offer that possibility when i
present in french and uh feel free to to use whatever language you want except
uh if you're going to go in other languages then it might be really complex for me to uh to be a partner there i just want to
have a few comments a reflection about grammar before we get started i
come from a small town northern ontario as a frac ontarian then in school i can
tell you that we did way too much grammar when i was in school i could tell you the feeling amongst all my friends is that
we did way too many way too many verbs when we were in grade six verbs were sort of a punishment by the
teachers we basically did the best all along and i can tell you that when we went through high school
and i look at my friends today and we're all going to be my generation we're all going to be 60 this year in the 20 21.
um i think the the quantity of grammar that we did had very minimal impact you know on our ability to either speak
well or to write well i i see how my friends uh write that and these are francophone
writing on facebook and i'm thinking i think that all of that grammar had middle and more impact uh having
said that i always wanted to to refer i uh i may have made a lot of
presentations across uh ontario a lot of presentations across the country and what's interesting sometimes i speak
to uh the varied audience typically i speak to teachers but sometimes uh there are principles in the in the crowd
there are superintendents and even at times so there were directors of education that came to me and a lot of times
at the end of the presentations i have one or two person coming to me and they say denis
thanks for their presentation i appreciate what you're saying but to this they uh i can't do french
and uh the the general feeling or response to all of those individuals is
that for them they feel like they've never really learned french or were able to answer
that because they equate learning french with french grammar a lot of times the people said my
grammar is too weak so part of what i want to do tonight is that we really want to tackle this
issue about like what are we going to do with the grammar and how do we go at it very differently
uh we all i think if you're teaching in second language that really this presentation tonight is
is geared towards french to french teachers who are in second language setting immersion core french fsl if we are in
alberta or intense and french no matter what the program is like this is geared towards that but if you
happen to be teaching in other settings in in second language uh this
uh logically will apply also because if you're a teacher of a german your
teacher of spanish uh in in second language no matter the language the logic here will apply also so
basically i think all of us who are in a second language we understand
that grammar acquisition and grammar knowledge permits learners to to to improve
and permits learners to really have a sense of confidence because uh grammar helps communicate like
grammar knowledge uh and and knowledge of syntax whatsoever will permit you to communicate and
eventually what i'd like you to to uh maybe reflect tonight as i'm presenting
i i mentioned to you i'm a young frank ontarian from northern ontario but basically as i'm speaking english
probably if one was going to analyze the quality of my english tonight one would say
wow the knee uh basically we probably understood your message but if you were going to be picky on the
grammar i've probably already made 20 mistakes maybe and as i continue and
sometimes i will search my words or or you will spot issues we could look at the grammar and say
well okay the grammar was not perfect but if the grammar is not perfect are you still able to communicate and
understand my message and am i able to communicate to you and really information
in in a way that is sort of coherent and that we can get the message across and why i'm i'm uh getting you to
reflect on this is that i think we need to really have a serious reflection about how we go about grammar so what you'll
find in here is that that i think we need to find the the right place
of grammar in teaching learning and an assessment i think there's a lot of work to do that
way and then that's part of the messaging tonight and basically this is an invitation to do grammar very
differently okay so we're going to get this started and
as i move along i want to reflect on a few of the role
of the goals that we want to reach tonight okay so part of it is to really
transform the role of grammar i would like learners when they graduate and learners when they're going to be
principals and superintendents and they can listen to say they would perceive that french grammar
or learning a grammar in second language is not the goal of the learning it's
a paul objective that passage we're not learning a second language to become grammar experts
okay the primary role of of uh learning of grammar acquisition
basically is to be able to communicate better so i think a big part of of our role in
in incorporating grammar or or guiding our learners towards some some
syntax and some some grammar rules is basically to get them to communicate better and to build
confidence i would say that right now most of our practice around grammar actually does the reverse it basically
does not open up doors for mistakes it sort of really narrows the ability and students
are really more uh in in a pressure cooker right now and their big fear is to make mistakes
so the the risk taking is sort of taken out of the equation and basically we're not really building
a lot of confidence if anything as they are evolving in the process of acquiring more language
they actually feel it's getting more complex and more complex so a lot of learners eventually drop out of our programs because they
feel this is too hard for me i will not achieve and in reality when you look at building
skills the more you are exposed to a language or the more you're exposed to a skill
you should get a feeling of a zone of fluency and basically your confidence
should grow at the same time so what i'm proposing that we start to do in there is that when we are in assessment and when we
are in grammar acquisition our platform should be much more formative
like we really want to get them to gain it we want to provide them feedback
but we want to make sure that in their brain the the the notion of missing marks or or or being penalized
for making mistakes is not part of the equation okay the other part that we're trying to
do also is to be really respectful of the learners in terms of their process and in their progress about
where they are at and this brings me right back to an element that i'm going to refer in the presentation
to cfr the common european framework of reference is critical to this process when we are
aware of where our learners are when they are aware where they're at and the parents sort of understand the
development well therefore when we're talking about grammar acquisition and grammar correction
if this has to take in account their development okay and then we're going to make some some some parallels in a few minutes to
talk about that the other element that is very different from when i was in school and then maybe when some of you is to
introduce the concept of purely linguistment or plural lingualism okay now uh
angelica gallanta who works at mcgill university she's a one of the main researchers in canada
right now people like henrique picardo were also like master experts about the cfr
introduced this concept was basically because we live in some societies now that are multicultural
that are plurilingual where many languages are or are co is existing is to introduce
this concept when we're teaching grammar if we feel that a grammar element is key to their growth and process
then we have to take in consideration all the languages that exist in our school in our learners and the
language that they are aware of and that when they make graph when they they are acquiring new grammar concepts
they should be able to compare with all the languages that that exist in there so we want to really establish
that so basically what we're trying to to uh to establish here is a good is what i would consider
to be metacognition about grammar what's my awareness level where am i at
and how how do i what do i need to do to to evolve and to uh to progress in there okay uh
basically also i really want to change how we look at grammar and that we want grammar to
become sort of a guide or an accompanying guy with with the learner is to say
i'll be there all along with you but i'm going to stop being the enemy and that's a little bit of the the
perception we've had for many years is that grammar is sort of this complex uh outsider that is uh
really making my life complex and we want to make make grammar we want grammar to become much more
friendly and we wanted to establish a bond so the grammar and and the learner sort of established
like a grammar becomes from my loyal friend this is the one or like the friend that's going to help me
do things better instead of being my enemy and the one that's putting roadblocks all the time
i hope it makes sense to you and it's sort of uh going at it in all sorts okay let's talk
about context and grammar contextualization i'm going to have a few french words around in there
and i'm going to talk about a resource that we've uh we've created that at pearson called sometimes we refer
it in a friendly way as jab so just go and we'll talk about a context in a minute so
i think at times teachers we need to teach specific concepts for example
learners need to understand that that when you're learning french versus learning english whatever
there are going to be elements as pronouns verbs there's this concept or the difficult
concept called masculine and feminine rules that are really making my life difficult but what is important is that
i think we need we need to determine like how much explicit teaching do we need to do
in order for the learners to be able to do the tasks they are accomplished so it's a little bit like uh i'll call
it the swimming analogy if you worry about your your swimmer and
you want your swimmer to be perfect before they are able to jump in the water
well basically you're never going to permit people to go in water because the the the possibility of drowning will happen
all the time so people who are in uh or swimming instructors for example will tell you okay i can teach you some
concepts so eventually you've got to get in the water to be able to learn to swim well the same thing in language
i think so one of the things sometimes we we put a lot of pressure on ourselves as the teachers to say they need to know
all of those words they need to know all those whatever they knew through all their words those rules before they are able to uh
to interact before they're able to speak so i would argue that basically we do not need to know understand the
whole concept we need to have a few words we need to understand how the mechanism works and we need to to maybe teach
less explicit so so maybe we need to be less explicit but but provide more opportunities for things to happen so
the the concept of teaching uh to me is a little more of like a backward design like what are the needs
and how do we adjust and and and really change from our structure that we've had
the other element here i'll refer to traditional socratic teaching of grammar basically what the research is finding
is that you can and i refer to that when in my opening statements and there is to say the quantity of grammar
that you can do in worksheets that you can do in memorizing worlds a rule sorry
will have minimal impact on real context in real context in real life when you're
applying the skills okay most research will indicate that why i want to bring this up because i
think for a lot of teachers it is hard to get rid of those habits teachers feel that they have they have
their own sense of security if they have uh verb sheets if they have all those quiz whatsoever
i am really proposing that we move away from that and that sometimes we might be able to
revise whatsoever but then i would recommend that these things are more done much more in a
collaborative way or they are done in what i would say the mania ludzig so in a fun way either
in a game whatsoever but where the those grammar uh drills that we would do
have zero consequence on the marks and the the performance assessment okay
um i would like to refer to roy lister who's taught a great um part of it because in the in
immersion there's this concept about uh francisacion deserve so errors that get fossilized that are
never corrected so so lester uh in his research put a lot of of uh
of discussions around that to say really we need to make sure that we eventually
get to the learners and we get them to speak better that we do correct but what he is proposing is uh
is a model around uh that is scaffolded okay and we'll talk about four steps now
in the four steps that roy lister is proposing is that the first part is we got to make sure that
this grammar acquisition is happening in context that the learners understand like why
the rule applies and where we're at and why it matters at certain moment okay
a big part of this uh reflection in communication is to make sure that uh in proper grammar or grammar
that is faulty might cause confusion in the message okay so verb tense for example might not
might be an issue if you cannot relate that the action happened yesterday okay so you want you
sometimes you need to have precision that's going to be in there the other element to me which is really important in his second
step is what we call awareness are you aware and can you compare with
your own grammar like how does do you notice this a lot of times i think when when the students think that
they have to know everything and they have to memorize that's where the issue happens because
they do not make connections so this awareness level if you want is the second step the next
element is that if you want students to be able to use that grammar concept that you have in
there you have to be able to generate tasks that will permit them to be able to use properly those grammar
structures but in real context real authentic situations so instead of focusing on on
what i would say really abnormal or weird situation and tell students well you're going to speak and you're going to use the posse
compose on three occasions which people never do in in real life
what you're going to do is they say okay well i want to know what you did last week okay where were you last week what
happened give me a little bit of a storyline like three events that happen the logic would be that if you have to
talk about last week you're going to have to use lempafe you're going to have to use the posse composer
and this is where we do the fine-tuning with the students exactly like roy is saying like to make sure kay
do you understand the context do you have an awareness now and let's see what it feels like when we
are in conversation the other part also is to make sure that in conversation we let conversations
happen but then we have moments of consolidation at the end to say okay i heard a few comments in there and then
when you were in interaction we need to correct these elements but having said that
those corrections of elements are not about generating marks these are about observations okay making
the learner more aware because ideally what we want to do by the end of the process if you want the last step of
of the the scaffolding is to create a learner that is autonomous and has not just awareness of grammar
but has an understanding and eventually when we get to the b2 level an ability to self-correct to understand
that when i'm using a structure to say that felt off i think i'm not quite where i
want to be and i have abilities to correct myself or to do that so
sometimes you'll see with the masculine feminine even our b2s are going to use
the the improv the the inappropriate form and they're going to say uh
my and then as they are saying the b2 who's at the
autonomy level will say okay so they'll quickly correct
because they will know oh i was off so it's not a concept of of saying that as you're acquiring the language you're
going to eliminate all of the mistakes for example i used improper and i wanted to go inappropriate just a few seconds
ago but it's that that awareness of of language ability where you're trying to build uh learners
that are autonomous and whatever and that's why when we work with pearson and and we we thought as uh as authors and
then with the with the publishers to say if we're gonna help learners and we're going to help
teachers in here we want to make sure that grammar is always in context grammar is about situations out there so
let's use an example that you can find in just kobu and here's the situation okay here's the
situation
so you need to find an apartment montreal and you need to be able to accomplish that task but clearly you're going to need
vocabulary you're going to need some language structures to be able to accomplish that but the but the goal at the end is not
to say that you need to develop proper grammar the goal at the end is to make sure that you can go to montreal
and you can actually get your apartment and even if your grammar is not quite where it
needs to be but you're able to accomplish your task that is success in itself that's why we
use second language not to become grammar experts but to to be able to communicate and
achieve those tasks okay so just go boo and let's continue now because the next line is totally
aligned with here so for me to be able to accomplish this i'm going to have some some some elements of language
linguistic competencies that i need to develop so for example the ability to use verbs
and verb tense is going to be important so if i'm going to make a phone call and barbara owns a building apartment in
montreal i need to be able to do a bonsoir madame gem red
so i need to know uh what the constituent for example is going to jump in there because i need to to to
politely ask for information and i i need to know how to get this information so manipulate manipulating
verbs and verb tense will be critical in that ability i also going to need uh what we call
lexical competencies or if we talk vocabulary in more simple terms in there
what are the words i'm going to need to be able to accomplish this task okay so that means that there are going to be
words there could be numbers adjective uh adverbs that are going to be important so i'm going to need to ask
your apartment so in which neighborhood is it um how many rooms there are so i need to
know learn to understand the terminology of apartments so typically when you read the paper or
what used to be the paper and people say well it's saying do with me saying what me what do what
do those numbers mean okay and then basically talk about the size of the apartment
location is it noisy are there neighbors um are is smoking allowed so so a lot of
questions that that you might think that i need to know and what i'd be able to do i also need to know to know
numbers what's the price uh what's included in the in the price of the apartment
uh uh what are the details uh what what are elements that that need to happen
and clearly because i'm going to be talking to a stranger i'm going to be talking to maybe a
future uh landlord learning social language sick the ability to speak comes into it
so i need to make sure that i salute adequately i need to show politeness throughout the
whole conversation in there especially if i want that apartment or if i wish to ever interact with that
person again i need to maintain that that that level of proficiency
in terms of uh being appropriate so these are all elements that happen so when we're talking about grammar and
context everything that i mentioned in the left box is part of that so the ability to say is much more
important than the ability to master the subjunctive okay because basically
that's that's where like we we really get into the social skills languages
all of those are key elements and they really matter because of some and the ability to to interact
understand what what is the person telling me and to to be able also to communicate that you
didn't understand perfectly and so all of those are element twists are important
in conversations that happen out there okay before i go too far i want to just clarify a little bit
about where my information is coming for the presentation tonight and i want to thank people at the
ministry level uh in the branch of fsl uh especially a few of my colleagues
ezebet horat who was at the ministry and is all uh eventually i think we'll
will probably end up they've created a space that i think all teachers across the country need to know
this uh this resource is free it's called a guide grammar in action so i just want to
illustrate uh some key elements in the guide uh that i think
you need to either share with your colleagues or that you go and dig in there so i just want to
illustrate on page seven for example uh there is a a whole element in there
about like what it means to teach grammar in context and it has like patterns in
there about like making sure that we make the connection between meaning function and structure patterns i'm
going to get to that a little later on in the presentation if you go to page 9 in the guide i think
this is one of the key elements there is some critical parts in here about
what what it should be the balance in in learning and in pedagogy and in teaching and if you look at the
levels that are pre a1 and a1 what you're going to see the l stands for listening s for speaking what
you see is that the oral skills uh are are are collecting about 80
of the class time okay and basically what you're going to see also through
this that there are some implications for the teaching but there's also some expectations in terms of grammar
grammatical control so this chart there is just like absolutely fundamental and when you get
to page 13 in the guide you're going to see a
sort of a a cycle of learning around the grammar relating to action-oriented approach and
basically what you're going to see in there we go back to uh elements that roy was talking it's about the discovery
the precision and the application or the appli the application of the knowledge
or the ability in real context and because it's a cycle this is an invitation to sometimes
reteach some elements and go back and permit learners to go through cycles all the time
when we're talking about grammar i just want to bring you just quickly to talk like those learning
cycles that you've just seen they also exist with three different examples that the
teachers can do and those those cycles are interactive and as you click in in one area it
brings you with uh what that means and then for each of those there are patterns in
there with some concrete examples of what all of those means so it's an invitation to go and discover
this uh for the workshop tonight we're not gonna go in great details but this is uh an
invitation to go and explore this resource because the whole the whole focus here uh is based on
parts of this document barbara is there a question i see i just wanted to interrupt you for one second just that i
um i put a link to the document in the chat um if you want a copy that anyone wants
to go to it um but i will be sending this out in a couple of days
once i edit the recording from today and you'll have access and i'll send you the um a pdf of
the presentation as well but for anybody who did want access to that right away i put that in the chat so you have that
okay thanks barb the other thing you'll see at the end of the presentation my email is there
feel free to uh ask for any clarification be very happy because that that document
in itself is is worth like uh many hours of reading and and exploring and i think uh an
encouragement for everybody to go there okay now if we go back to pearson and the resources
the one thing that we knew when teachers we were building uh those uh those resorts like just
many resources that i've collaborated with basically what we knew from the teachers is that teachers wanted to have
grammar in there or vocabulary or whatever and we we tackle this issue in in a sense where
we were uh we were except we were okay with this concept as long as we stayed within the grammar
and context that approach so basically what you're going to see is that a lot of the of what you would
consider to be uh syntax or elements of language are always in context so you will see
anything that looks like a speech act is to say okay so excuse me vu mayday
these are structures when you need help okay so we wanted to make sure that the learners and the teachers
were guiding the learners to uh memorize some sentence structures
but to also understand where these stood from like what what is the logic why do i
need to do that okay so it's not just memorizing
but it's to say if you're going to be in a conversation this is where this will be this will be useful so
throughout like uh the the whole variety of resources that that pearson is offering in fsl context
you're always going to see these elements of vocabular or syntax or sentences that are always
around like uh social situations that are real out there okay all the discussion around that
we're having right now makes little sense if i am not aware as a teacher of where my learners are at
and when i'm talking about where my learners are at is not physically but i'm talking linguistically in
language acquisition if that that's like starting point number one which means the following
when i am in my classroom i should know where they're at they should know where they're at and
their parents should know where they're at this is what i call like triangular uh
evidence around the cefr and then once we've established a starting point everybody has a responsive to improve
and when we say everybody has a responsibility to improve that means that as a teacher i'm going to help you uh progress and went out
there but stagnation is not it's not part of the equation out there so we we we sort of clarified this
element now so this is the number one like where am i on the scale on the on the cfr scale and the second
part is to say if we're going to determine quality what are the
what is the criteria or what are the different criteria to make sure that the learners understand the criteria and
then we know the criteria okay so we're really trying to move from a model of quantity
towards really a model of quality it used to be that you would measure grammar by
quantities you got seven out of right seven out of ten right so that means that you you look
like a seventy percent so we're really trying to move away from this logic and to say okay as an a2
learner when we're talking about oral production the criteria of uh vocabulary range
that still needs a little bit of work your vocabulary right now looks like level two because you need to
incorporate more more terminology that is much more precise okay
so learners when learners also have that understanding of criteria we can get them to improve significantly
and when we're talking about criteria when we're in the cefr we're basically talking about three pillars
okay so the pragmatic the critical language sick is sociolinguistic basically the same
thing in english okay but basically what we're trying to make sure is to say your first element
your first look for is from a pragmatic view are you able to get your message
across when i've been working with adults right now and then i've got adults coming back to learning
french because they want to make sure that at work they are capable of using the language so this is not something happening
within four four four walls right now in a school this is about real life and a lot of
people want to get back to connecting with french because they say i need it at work and i want to feel
comfortable i want to make sure so the first element that i work with them in terms of their grammar is to say from a pragmatic point of view
are you able to communicate get your message across once you you get the feeling you can get
your message across you can start to relax from uh from the anxiety part of it
but now your your next job is to do some fine tuning on the grammar okay so so a lot of times
what has happened i think anxiety has started from day one since they start to learn the language
and they've never really felt confident because the pragmatic was not the element that we focused on
typically what we focused on was linguistic and then linguistic criteria typically was around precision or if you
want like to to to get it right all the time so part of it is to say we're trying to
to improve the lexic we're trying to improve the vocabulary but when people don't have the vocabulary a little bit like i'm doing
i've been doing like since since the first minute i've been talking tonight is when i don't have the right word what is my strategy to describe what i'm
trying to do so in uh in the cnc of our language or in in cfr strategies
paraphrasing becomes really key so when you can't exactly find the perfect terminology you
need to be able to describe it so that people will communicate with you syntax is always like a game to to
improve like how does it work for a francophone learning english the issue is to like how can you reduce
the quantity of the tell me now that you have okay because in english sometimes you go you're it's much more direct
in terms of syntax and in french it's a little more uh voluminous so basically how do you adapt
to these things and how can you gradually get a feeling of where it needs to do where it needs to go so it's it's all
the question we're going to have an exercise of this in a few seconds we're going to show you a real concrete example
and then the social language stick we've talked about this one before when i gave the example of finding the apartment in montreal
so this is always a really key out there is to say okay who are we talking to so is this a friendly situation is this
somebody that is uh an authority an authority somebody that i need to think differently so
those are always key elements that we need to take part in there i just want to uh just quickly highlight
what's in uh in the in the bold in the in the yellow component in here is that and here's
how i think how we really need to change around this test lexical test syntax
so if our goal is to measure proficiency in six skills and i'll talk about the oral comprehension
uh reading comprehension oral production and and reading production and finally oral
interaction and and reading not reading but writing interaction
basically to provide the picture of a learner the the quantitative or if you want
those all those tests will not give you the right score if you want the right score you got to be able
to look at every skill in isolation and really try to generate a picture on that
now let's come to grammar and context when we're really talking about the different levels i'm just going to take a little bit of
water one of the questions i think and with a lot of teachers is like
when do i score grammar and how much importance should it give it to and basically this one i'm not going to
give you a straight answer i'm going to get you into reflective mode with learners are
are at the a1 and a2 and you're going to see the cfr is going to build itself as we're moving out there an a1 learner
is considered to be a big beginner learner and the question becomes like how much
grammatical grammatical control do we expect people that are beginners to have
the logic would be like logically hardly any control hardly any ability to
understand all the rules so when you're trying to balance out like acquisition and progression versus
precision the logic would be that if my learners are a1 a1.1 or pre-a1 if you want an a1
then let's not worry about getting it right this is about all about acquisition and
being aware about some of the rules and not overload them with rules
to make a parallel with a physical skill let's see people are starting to learn
to skate if they are a 1.81 a 1.1 and a one okay so they're
true beginners and skates your logic would be that they are likely going to fall more
than they are going to advance your biggest job as a hockey coach or as
a skating coach is to say i'm going to show you how to stand up i'm going to show you how to fall i'm
going to show you how to get back up okay and if you can stand up and not break your legs or break your
neck when you're there you're actually learning to skate okay well my expectation in terms of speed
in terms of crossing in terms of any kind of manipulation it's totally
limited because i'm fully aware you're just you're just a beginner okay when i was a hockey coach i remember coaching my son when he was at
the novice level and uh we were coaches on the bench were watching what was this what was
called uh a hockey game but basically the reflection out there like i remember talking to about
saying this doesn't feel like hockey at all like this feels like i'm watching bowling on the ice and i see like bodies falling in this
corner and bodies falling out there but the boys would come back and the girls come back to the band
with big smiles because their feeling was that they're playing hockey so that's the same logic that applies in
the classroom is to say okay we got to get them to play the game of the language
but let's not expect any miracles out there they're going to be many off-sides out there they're going to
be they're going to be falling all the time but we're going to show them how to persevere and we're going to help them acquire a
little bit some of the rules but in a really slow way now when the learners are moving
okay and then when we get to the a2 level the description of a2 is that a2 is about it's a survival
level there's no expectation of excellence in there there's no expectation of major
control but there's a there's a social expectation that you can survive with the language
and that you have enough skills to be able to ask for clarifications of somebody speaking too fast
you might be able to say
okay so you got that ability to make yourself understood and to try to clarify like
when you're like a lot of times when we're traveling in in foreign countries for example and we have like a little awareness of
the language we're sort of at that level we just want to make sure like how do i get to the restaurant
okay so what you're going to see is the colors are changing and the boxes
are getting a little bigger which means as the box are getting a little bigger then we are going to gradually show them
a little more control in terms of grammar okay but it's it's got to be totally
uh uh respectful like go back to my words from the uh from the opening
statements it's got to be respectful of where they're at now when we get to the b1 you see this box is sort of
increasing when we're looking which means that the learner has got now more language acquisition the the learner has
got much more control but even a b1 which is like start the start of autonomy now
because the b one of francais is english we talk about the threshold
level is that i can copy in any scale but i am not going to be eloquent eloquent sorry
b1s basically have the ability to function but they also are the masters of
strategies okay so they have their own ways and they will miss a lot of information and they are going to
still make a lot of mistakes now just to clarify like where b1 stands in the delft process for
example well we were testing students in ontario in 2018 with the dell
maybe half of our grade 12 immersion students were still getting tested at the b1
typically they were good b1 levels and they scored quite highly out there
but it's still a level where i do not totally control but having said that when you get to the b1 some concepts of
grammar are should be mastered for example that you are aware at the b1 that you need to conjugate
your verbs okay so uh a b1 that tells you
a hamburger that doesn't quite work out there because b1 knows that every verb
is conjugated in comparison to english because sometimes in english that is one of the difficulties for the learners
especially at the a levels to say the verb like when i say i like and the verb to like
that doesn't change okay there's no change but that doesn't apply because your er is
always conjugate all the time okay so this is something that you have to permit them to acquire
before they are moving out there the the one thing that you find out also is that the more complex the verbs are
the more difficult it is for them to make that switch because they are really good in
a they have a sense of ability with anything that's in levels up but when they get
the other roofs it's it's a little less often and they don't have the same mastery out there okay
let's move on now let's go to the b2 now the b2 what you see that this box now is
significantly bigger than all the other ones and the bader is the level
of self-correction or that ability or that awareness when you are making mistakes i have the
tools to self-correct okay now i go back to what i just said on the previous slide when we were
testing grade 12 students some of them in immersion were at the b2
and typically the scores in b2 are not as high as the b1 because our learners at b2 are still progressing
typically people who are going to go to university uh even if they study on france they
might be at that level level out there but the advantage of b2 it permits them to go to c1 and c2
and i want to make that connection out there is to say when we get to b2 and we are in grade 12
immersion that's where we need to put a lot of emphasis on much more precision but but having said
that you notice that through all of those levels and all those steps the grammar precision whatsoever needs
to evolve uh in a proper way
okay so i go back to those families in the a's there's no doubt that i'm basically
acquiring when i am at the b level then i need to demonstrate uh some some some
some parts of control i need to be able to show some kind of grammatical control because
one day when i get to the sea level there should be the expectation that i have quite
i've got control that that actually is very solid okay but that means that you have to
permit them to grow and if we're talking about the school life i'm talking elementary
panel and secondary panel you still see that through all the process learners
are still acquiring now having said everything that i said even c2s that are exceptional will still make
mistake okay and i'm a perfect example uh like i said if you're going to calculate how
many mistakes tonight there's lots okay let's compare and now this can be my final image with the cfr
tonight if uh communication was an ice cream cone and we can see how it grows
from a 1.1 to c2 and grammar was going to be one of those
elements that i'm going to put in my ice cream i want to make sure that my ice cream is
balanced out there and if the major ingredient in the ice cream
in the communication cone is the grammar ingredient well it might have a bad taste so what
i'm saying is that we need to find like how much of the grammar goes into this ice cream cone
to make sure that it still has a lot of flavor it still tastes good but it still feels like quality ice
cream okay now i'm gonna have a few statements and then we're gonna move pretty quickly out
here these are three observations that we find from teachers and they come from the document but i think they're
interesting because i think they're reflections for us about like how we need to go in there okay my students
perform well very well when i teach and assess grammar concepts one at a time but they
don't seem to apply their grammatical knowledge when they are speaking or writing okay
so this is basically at the heart of the whole discussion tonight just to see if grammar does not apply in context
well no matter how well you do when you're learning those drills you're basically learning drills
okay so we got to make that connection out there is that we don't spend all this time teaching
and this has no implications so that's an invitation to do less less of those uh those out there
let's look at the next bullet i have been focusing on improving my students confidence and ability to speak spontaneously if
you listen to any of the workshops i do like i would say like this is a big part of uh my proposition or
suggestions around pedagogy but i'm not sure how or when to incorporate grammar instruction
to improve the quality of their communication so the whole timing on grammar is also a key feature a lot
of times what we see is that teachers permit and create those elements of speaking but they
don't know how to establish the correction so the big mistake is to say i will never correct
because you need to have those moments of consequence consolidation so that they can make sense of when they
have been making mistakes but the other mistake is to correct all the time so if you correct me all the time every time i make a mistake
then i i tend to to freeze and as i become adult i then i as i'm when i grow into an adult
i might say i think i'm just going to refrain from speaking better because i'm worried about making mistakes
and finally the third bullet i'm working on planning my french course based on action-oriented tasks
this is another suggestion i think this is the way to go i know that grammar is an important part
of language learning why not i'm not sure how to teach and evaluate it effectively using
this approach and this is basically going back to the ice cream cone before
i think we need to target some key elements in there we need to know what we're
when we're designing those those uh action-oriented tasks where we want to go with them and we've got to start predicting what is the
vocabulary they're going to be needing and what are some elements of of language
that is going to help them communicate better and that so that that means there's a huge reflection in there
okay i'm going to move quickly now on a few elements in there and talk eventually i'm going to
highlight a few uh a few approach the one thing that i think is important here
is that this comes from the ontario curriculum in fsl from 2013 and 2014
like at the elementary and sigma basically what you're going to find in there is to
say we're we're really proposing a change about the teaching of the grammar we
really need to reflect on on all of our behavior that way and we need to really reflect out that
and basically the the message from the curriculum is to say uh this has got to be reflecting the
student's needs in terms of their of communication and it has to look like authentic
language okay anything outside of that makes no sense the other part that i want to to
highlight here is the whole aspect in the curriculum about gradually
improving linguistic or or language structures well this is exactly what we've been
talking about with the cefr is that as they are moving or or
reaching the b2 level all those elements come into place okay so the curriculum is actually
proposing exactly the same thing now the other part that's interesting in the curriculum it talks about
differentiation so everything i've been talking to you tonight is that if differentiation is
not at the table then grammar will be perceived as useless now and just before i get to my a few of
the images i want to share with you is that when learners are learning grammar
they need to understand whether the rule that they're learning is it similar to my grammar or is it
dissimilar or if you want different from my grammar basically that is the the first
component or the most important component now remember i talk about a plurilingual
aspect of that this they say okay if somebody in the classroom is from arabic origins how does it work in
arabic if it's from somebody that is japanese in the classroom how does this work in japan and then you
start to also create a culture of multilingual
abilities in the classroom to say people who speak many languages are are are not necessarily lucky but
they are uh able and this is like something that we're really trying to value we want to highlight that as something
plus and as i'm learning my french grammar i also want to learn elements of japanese grammar if there's somebody
speaking japanese in the classroom now let's look what it looks like in the fl
in the classroom here and i want to talk uh quickly about angelica gallant galante i talked to
you about her she's at mcgill university in montreal right now does a lot of research on plurilingual and plurilingualism and
her discussions go around what is called the plurilingual lab you can look her up if you want that
when the presentation is over but i remember uh being at a seminar i've actually
interviewed angelica and basically what she's saying is that you try to create an identity with the
learners that is a plurilingual identity so for example denis speaks french he speaks on gla
he's also uh loves italian food he's travel in italy so i have connections in italy i've gone
to spain i like spain spanish wine i i might like hockey i might like
rugby i might like uh soccer i might have connections with so basically what are the languages and
the cultures that are part of the nicu's no soul so angelica will talk about a plural polar angle so
sorry let me re rephrase this a plurilingual identity for every learner but when when
when uh angelica is promoting uh vocabulary acquisition she says okay
let's take our time with that and let's make sure that the students make connection so part of what i want to show you here
is that uh i get a picture of a pum because i want to focus on that vocabulary element
but then we're going to go to all the languages that exist in my classroom so i happen to have somebody italian
and i say okay barb you're italian so barbara how do you say uh italian and then i
want to hear in the classroom say una mella and then i asked my students okay so una mella is that uh the same as
fosse or is that different so students should say well that feels different okay does it feel the same as english no
it feels different now i go to german and see
one would say i knew einen apfel okay does it feel like french but ho
when i get to english an apple an apple that feels similar okay so i want
my source to make connection to say french and english are different but german and then english they feel
similar on that concept okay because you want you don't want to over generalize because sometimes the rules will change
uh in italian what was interesting is that it's a mela for for for a palm when i'm
talking about the fruit but if i'm referring to la pandada it'll be ilipomo di adamo then i can say
oh yeah but in some circumstances it feels different spanish la manzano that feels different
but neil lande feels the same as english and german with in appella okay whatever the pronunciation
i do not pretend to be a master out there now let's go to the next step and let's get to the grammar
part of it to say okay now here's the mistakes that i hear in the classroom in
their system okay so instead of telling my learners this is wrong i say hey in communication
you're getting your message across but i want this to to go to the next step and i say okay
we go through the same thing in a melarosa so the color comes after uh the noun just like
in german oh hotel which is red uh comes before just like english again
and just like dutch okay so what i see now is that the similarity that observed
happens on a couple of occasions but spanish italian and french the color comes afterwards okay and
you've noticed in there you can get your students to go on a step and say it's interesting because in french
in italian una and in german ein so those words like the the sound the
same they're close and they're they're sort of taking a different twist but it's interesting like there's some similarities
that i see here okay i'm going to make a few uh quick comments in in wrapping up here
and then we're going to open up to some questions from the audience danielle pink here i just use him in
terms of he talks about timing and to me when we're going to talk about
grammar acquisition and grammar development it's all about timing and the timing is
connecting to the cdfr what do the learners need and how much of it the balance has got
to be and that we need to generate this i i showed you this triangle at the beginning this
is from the document in grammar you're going to be talking about like the meaning
the function and we're going to talk about patterns and there's some questions that are out
there in this guide and i'm really telling you to go back and do this and those patterns
are critical when we're referring to the cfr also and understanding where they're at okay
and i'm just going to get to the following images that come out there and wrap up with a few a few more and
then we're going to open up the questions what i want you to notice in there and i showed you this early on
expectations for grammatical control when we're pre-a1 to a1 is really just to create like
expectations are not often applicable at these early stages of proficiency
students are acquiring the language what you're going to notice also in those circles is the importance of the oral skills
okay grammar and then and oral and and and oral skills they go hand by hand if you
want learners to become confident on francais you got to get them to listen to a lot of french and to speak
a lot of french i know i showed you this also at the a2 and b1 the grammatical control increases
slightly when we get to there you'll see here systematic grammatical errors are normal
okay we need to expect that okay the mother tongue still has major
consequence on on language development out there and you still see that the the the oral skills are
prevalent and when we get to b2 that's when we could have a really our balance approach
okay i'm going to just go back to this this graphic out there or this pattern
and this is an invitation to go and really ver visit that document i
think it's worth it i'm just going to conclude here with this my feeling is that for many many years
and this is not just in second language uh being frank
we had that feeling is that grammar was like darth vader it was like this uh evil uh evil
personas or or evil character that was sort of the enemy and grammar for a lot of learners
sometimes looked like these rules that you can find on uh the the
great site in terms of of language for for francophones it's got like fabulous but what's
interesting is this is the rules on the participating most francophones
still don't get it right okay and this is what it looks like when you're trying to figure it out and try
to understand okay and i can tell you uh after years and years of being exposed
to this most people still don't get it right then when you're in second language this seems like magic for all of those
people darth vader needs to be transformed into uh a grandmother in grammar
okay and this is the model that we're proposing is that when we have grammar in context
okay so this soft gentle approach to grammar is really like in starking contrast to
uh what we had with darth vader okay so this is an invitation
to go there i have many slides in the powerpoint where you can connect to these that are
elements that i i want you to go and explore okay uh and then um ken o'connor if you
get a chance you go and listen to uh keywords maybe we have the time and then maybe i'll i'll show ken because it's
sort of short and then we'll go to the questions and answers
uh bart can you tell me that we can hear the sound
i can't yet okay i think i'm just gonna uh share in a few seconds i just needed
to illustrate that i wanted that there okay i'm back at it
now you should be able to hear but i think his comments are claims that the essential question that we have about grades and grading
is this how confident are you that the grades that students get in your schools in your school districts
meet these four conditions because i believe that these are the conditions of quality for grades
for grades to be effective they need to be consistent accurate meaningful and supportive of
learning first of all they need to be consistent it shouldn't be a matter of chance
whether a student is in teacher x or teacher-wise class if they're achieving at the same level
they should get the same grade and unfortunately that often has not been the case
because teachers have had very different ideas about what ingredients should go into grades
and they've had very different ideas about performance standards and as a result students who have been
achieving at the same level have frequently got the same grades and in any system but especially
in a standard space system i think we have to see that as being unacceptable secondly grades
need to be accurate very important decisions are made about and by
students on the basis of grades for those to be good decisions they need to be based on
accurate information and of course grades basically result
from combining a whole lot of information most commonly into a single symbol
anytime we scrunch information in that way there's a real danger that we lose accuracy so we need to think about
what contributes to accuracy and so that's a second really important condition
third and somewhat similar but a little bit different is are they meaningful as much as is possible for a summary
symbol does it give information about students achievement of learning goals
and fourth and i believe most importantly are they supportive of learning is what
we are doing in the assessment and learning process making it obvious to everybody involved
students parents teachers that the focus of what we're doing is on learning that school put a little tritely is a
learning game not a grading game and i think we will know what we have got somewhere with
this when we find we have students and parents coming to us and saying
not what can i do to improve my grade but what can i do to improve my learning
and ultimately that's i think where we want to get to and hopefully we'll get there fairly soon in a very general way
okay i just wanted to make the connection here is that everything that ken o'connor says here
is to if we connect the grammar ingredient in there what is the proper balance okay because
i think that is an issue for a lot of learners and a lot of our teaching out there is that maybe there's been for years an
imbalance uh about the grammar and what i've been proposing to you tonight is to
shift this this uh this focus out there and and really rethink about how we go
about it and making sure that grammar has found its proper pace and it's really useful
okay now i'm going to uh open up to uh to the floor and answer
questions oh sorry i probably needed just to show uh because i didn't uh share my uh my email
i just want to go uh okay where are we whoops i don't want to go back to sorry uh we do have um i mean we do have
some questions in the chat please so before i open the floor maybe you can um speak to those
uh two questions that are there so there's one here um from um warren in winnipeg
that um they start immersion in kindergarten and for many students their
grammar professions to get stuck um what is happening are our expectations off
or should we be hanging in there what do you recommend when the data for written conventions
is low okay so basically if i read or understand the question properly
here is that students eventually get into the zone that we call like a lack of growth or they're sort of
communicating at a level and then they stop uh the progress and if i'm wrong warren feel free
to enter jack and this is what basically what in the immersion process we talk about the facility where basically
uh students are like no more they're progressing no more and then they basically like they they
platoon is this is exactly what are you talking about warren or am i am i off track exactly that they just get they seem to
get reach a certain level of proficiency and then their scores especially in writing
uh they don't seem to advance in the use of tenses and uh it's you know it's well they have
good ideas they they have good organization but they're it's just terrible grammar correct correct and then basically i
think part of it is how and when i give uh other types of workshops we talk about how you develop
each of the skills so when we're talking about the writing or the euro production basically one of the issues we've had is
that we we tend to give quantity in terms of writing so we
provide one opportunity we've got a different opportunity but we're giving students many texts to write okay and then we're
observing the same mistakes over and over most of the research is going to say the following first of all you got to
shorten the the the length of the text that you're asking them to write so when we're testing uh a1 for example
the length of a text is 40 to 60 words very short but what you're trying to do in the classroom is to say okay you're going to
write text number one and then before i look at it you're going to talk with your friends you're going to
look with your friends at the quality of your text and you're going to manipulate and change to make it a little better
when i have a first look at it i don't give it any scores i'm just going to make comments okay and then when my comments i'm going to say i
think question number one do i understand the message okay is your message sort of clear
okay good message is clear can we improve the text now with adjective adverb and then this is
where learners are learning in context and then you go back and you say okay now we're going to rewrite the text
to me the logic was that instead of giving them 10 texts to write okay you're going to write the same text
10 times okay so you're going to go back and forth back and forth back and forth and then you say okay i think we like it now because now your
message is clear and your precision is improving and i like this choice of words
this this vocabulary because this is better now the one thing that you're going to observe as a teacher
is there are patterns that are happening all the time okay student number one suit number two the same pattern
this is what the grammar in context is all about to say okay guys we need to pay attention now this
is what i'm observing okay and we need to correct this structure for this reason because students need to
understand why they're making the mistakes a lot of the times the mistakes are very logical when you understand
yourself the the the the leg okay so in english it works this way so
it seems very logical to me for me to apply this i go back to my roush bum i don't say anything wrong
because the words are right okay so what i say i understand your message but if you're going to be a french
speaker eventually la pam needs to become a hooch the palm has got to disappear but until you're a1 a2 i can live it
with it for a while but then gradually we're going to get there so this why like the facilization is should not be our main
focus what we got to make sure is that communication is happening they take risk and then we gradually correct those
mistakes so so so it's a lot a lot of it is like shifting the pedagogy around the writing
and the speaking the other part about speaking is that we don't provide them enough opportunities to speak student to
student typically conversation is teacher to student so it's like a ping-pong
ping-pong game that's going on and students don't have enough opportunity in the classroom
to speak all the time so oral interaction oral production has got to be structured so it's like a
big part of what's going on in the classroom if you go back to these uh circles that i showed you listening and
speaking they got to go back they go they got to go together so students need to hear a lot of it and they need to speak and when they're
speaking we need to make sure that we're recording what they're saying and this is the opportunity also to say
okay i like that i got the message but i heard this structure
okay we say okay we understand that he's 12 years old and we know why he's saying just reduce
we're applying the english grammar but how does it work in in france this way so instead of saying
you're wrong then i go to the classroom how does it work in in in german how does it work in this
exactly like i showed you with the apple the logic is that you apply that grammar rule
with all the language that are out there to say what are the pattern what do we see is it just french that's kind of weird or spanish is kind of
weird and italian's weird like the french one and my english grammar is like the
german so we got to spend more time when we're at it but we gotta really explain go in
details and and try to to break the the mythology about you're wrong
so it's not about being wrong it's that you're off to me when you're off that's sort of different is to say okay
you're still getting your message across but we need to fine-tune it so it becomes a little better so
fossilization is about uh making fine tuning so that it gets a little better it gets a little
better but it's a little bit like skating i go back to that skating analogy uh when i look at those hockey players i
had when they were at novice and i also coached them when i was at it's like like a world of difference
we were actually seeing real hockey games when they were in but none of them is going to ever make the hockey the nhl
okay because that's not the goal they're not going to be at that level but they could play the game much better
but i we have to be very patient from falling on the ice looking like like a bowling game
to get 10 years later looking great so in language sometimes our issue
is that we're not patient enough and we don't have like a because we're busy covering content so a
lot of times what i part i try to promote is say we gotta move away from teaching stuff to really teaching skills
and the stuff will help us get to the skills i don't know if it was kind of a long answer out there but i
i i think uh i wanted to make sure i was clear that's very helpful thank you my
pleasure one of me where there was another question hey barb in the in the chat it was very
similar to that one um um
[Music] yeah i teach i teach fsl in high school with students that are in
since kindergarten um and that the consistency on district exams in the writing scores
is extremely below their other competencies reading speaking listening so
and you did talk to that yeah and then and then let's let's do a quick reflection here
if you're in second language and i know some provinces insist a little more on like i know alberta for
example will insist more on the writing of it but when you think in real life okay and i look at my own children about how much
because my my children learned uh they went to school quebec how much writing they actually do in
english in their life right now zero okay none and i'm i'm assuming when they get to work maybe they will do
but it's quite possible that uh writing and uh and the reading hopefully they do a
little more but but i think we insist a great deal on the writing
and we need to really go back to those those uh graphics that you see those pie charts
i think the classrooms need to look that's the proper balance to have in the classroom because the social skill is the oral
skill the writing skill most people are not gonna write as much as they speak
and i'll talk to like i'll give myself as an example when i was at the ottawa carlton district school board i was at
the at the board office i was a consultant in france sometimes there were memos that needed
to go to this and i remember barry vickerton like asking me did he can you just sort of prepare the memo
this is going to go out and then we'll revisit your memo before it goes up and i was a francophone with a high level of english
but when it got to writing barry would look at my text say oh danny it shows that you're french and then he would look at my text and
say okay i want to scratch this we're going to scratch this he helped me write my text and then when the text was over and said yeah
that's exactly what what i was trying to say okay and i've used a lot of times colleagues when like i needed to write
official documents the log the same logic will apply you want to make sure people are capable and they have the ability to sort of uh
generate or or share their ideas but but the expectation of
uh of high levels when it gets to writing really most times people are going to
write within collaboration they're going to get some help they're going to get support so one of the questions i would have for writing
is how much collaboration is going on between students when they're writing are they all writing on their own so you notice that some are strong and some are
weak all the research indicate when students write together they write better because they can they
can provide feedback for each other they're going to notice mistakes and that's how one of the the quick ways to improve to
improve grammar also is this this bouncing board that they have in the writing process
i know that we've gone over time so i do want to thank everybody for coming on the webinar today um we we
will stay a little bit longer if you do still have questions we'll definitely stay longer to answer them but i do i know
we've gone over and i do want to thank everyone some will have to leave so thank you for joining us
are there any questions hi um my name is jacqueline i was the one
who talked about my high school students in the writing i'm in newfoundland and we do public
examinations here in grade 12 and they're actually equally all four
strands are treated equally in terms of the i guess expectation on their final exam so it's 25
for their reading writing speaking and listening um but the kids really really struggle with
that writing piece and um they've been in an immersion since kindergarten and so they you know i i feel they have
much more confidence in the speaking of the language um and they don't really care too much
when they make that mistake because they are getting their point across and the communication is across but i think they've been beaten down
with grammar and writing and being wrong so often that it's it's almost
like they give up when they get in high school and they don't even care too much anymore about that writing skill
and it's it's um it's a little disheartening um but i'll give you uh
uh statistics that we had in ottawa because uh when i was at the board office we knew that we had issues with
retention rates especially at boys okay boys were dropping up like flies in all
the programs especially for french after grad nine grade nine that was the first opportunity
they would drop out uh the immersion boys were dropping earlier than the girls okay so so we
would lose students around and basically when you would survey the boys they would say well we got out of french
because it's not practical enough okay because they perceived that it was getting more complex
and the reason they're they're saying it's more complex it's because there was such a high emphasis on grammar precision on grammar
acquisition and grammar [Music] the importance of grammar so i think sometimes
we've spent a lot of time teaching the drill teaching the rule teaching all
of this and then we lost track about well if the purpose is to communicate what are we generating out there that
feels authentic so when they're writing is this an authentic contest are we writing to real people
and ideally you get them to write to real people you get them to really publish what they're writing
because if you're going to write on a blog and everybody can read the blog or if you're going to write a letter to your mp well then
grammar precision or like at least coherence or autograph will matter the issue sometimes is that
it's quantities of uh of writing that they do to please the teacher and it does not reflect what they need
so a big part of the of the of the issue is that to to be good in grade 12
this has got to start in kindergarten whenever they're starting the writing process whenever they're going to do
work on those skills so that you can balance the process at the end because it's been normal this is what
we've been doing and then through all the process there's been this ongoing feedback and and back and forth but i would like
to refer you if you get a chance jacqueline you go see what the john hatty says about like
surface learning versus visible learning and deep learning and what john hattie is saying is that
we got to take our time and we got to do it much better and really get the students to
understand and get a feeling and to me every time we're working on a skill we going to make sure we
get we get the we get the the authentic context and then feedback and then like i go
back like if you get to rewrite your documents and and if it's going to go out there to a real person that makes like a big big
difference but so it's it's a little bit of a philosophical uh
shifting that i'm talking about but it but and we're not going to change the world tonight but hopefully it's it's a time for a
reflection on those things thank you i am part of a deep learning uh committee at my school which we've
just started this year actually um so i am familiar with hattie and we've been doing a lot of research
and i guess work around that so it's it's exciting the changes that are coming yes absolutely and i can honestly say
like in ontario what's uh when we the cfr became a key element in in all
of the work that we've been doing we've seen some major major change in practices
and we've we've had a lot of teachers reflecting on this but what sometimes is interesting is
that i i'll just give you an exam uh one teacher sat in my workshops three times
over a period of about two years and i remember he came to me at the end of the third time and he says danny i really like what you're talking
about but now when i get to the classroom i go back to what i do okay and i said so what is it that you do well i teach
them verbs because then my students are really good at birds i said listen nobody's ever going to punish you
for your students being good at birds but i said can they go to in the in a restaurant and order food
he said oh that'd be really complex for them so i said what's the goal here so we want your students to be really good
at knowing all of the verb tense and scoring well hunter or to use it in real life he says you were like
but he says when i go to the classroom i do what i do so i said listen i i can i can promote some ideas out there but you're
the one that needs to change or you you need to to reflect on practice and modify and
adapt but uh and i haven't seen him since then but uh he was like a nice nice gentleman and he was keen on it and
he thought that made sense but he didn't know how to go about it in the classroom so a big part of what we're trying to do is to say
go to those documents because they're very practical they show you how to do it and when you're using a resources like
pearson is offering it's like understand the logic behind the grammar don't teach the grammar out of context
otherwise it makes no sense it won't help the learners
[Music] there any other questions before we end for the season
any uh just go blue seems to be for uh secondary level high school seven years
old it was uh when we had designed just kobu the one thing that we when i say we like i'm
talking about the pearson team and i sort of became part of that team i have i'm not gonna take the credit for
but uh people like leslie and i think you you referred to leslie before in you versus workshops um we
knew that there was sort of a vacuum for resources that were grade nine to twelve uh or or maybe more like ten to twelve
there there's sort of a good bundle in grade nine but there was a lack of resources that
was really practical in core french and probably also immersion so when we generated the
resource we've made it uh we've aligned it with the cfr and so you have scenarios that work from
uh for the a2 level so basically we went from a2 to b2 okay so you can select
scenarios and it's designed to to use in grade 10 11 and 12. is there a version of a similar title
for middle school uh yes there's uh the whole series and barb can get in touch with you
for all of that which grades are you talking about you're talking seven and eight four to six
four four to six uh echo pro yeah yeah yeah i'm familiar with that
that's good yeah so a vehicle pro and then uh grade seven and eight uh there was uh mahrez almighty and then the
point connexion in grade nine is a really popular resource with pearson and then just kobu uh basically wraps up
the whole process out there and just who if you want was this uh reference to the cfr also to say
we want to bring them from uh sort of a lower level at the a2 and and find your
path or find they can find their path uh to a higher level at the b2 knowing fully well well
you can get to the sea levels the other thing about this school blue cisco blue is our first digital only um
resource oh yeah yeah i took a look at the uh the sample that you have and it
looks it looks really exciting okay well i must get some supper good
night dennis thank you monsieur and nice uh chatting with you uh soldier and i wish you all like and i
want to thank you for being there uh i i'm always amazed and that you guys are taking time on your own time so
compliments to you on the hard work that you do also right because uh 2020 and 2021 are certainly complex
years and i want to compliment you on this hard work and jacqueline it must be late that in your part of the world almost time
for bed i have used the scope with my class it's
it's a great resource i have to say okay were you part of the workshops we gave uh with the newfoundland
yes i was yes okay great yeah yeah and it's something else
it is yes we're in lockdown again so uh one question i do have and it's not
really i guess it is related to the writing piece a little bit before we go i'm really struggling now that we're
home and the kids are writing and they're just chucking everything into google translate
right because they're not physically writing on a piece of paper in a classroom they're you know they're doing
everything online yeah so i i don't know what to do
or how to i guess deter them from they all want to use google translate and i know as soon as i read it they haven't
you know written all of it themselves so okay so let's let's go back to a few things that
i said okay like shorter text so get them to write text and get them to write like just
spontaneous like tell them like this is not about getting it right let's not tell them like i think part of
it is we got to stop uh what i call the money uh it's like it's wrong like if you guys go to translate
like everybody does it okay when i write in english sometimes i'm going to go and check like what does lingwii propose
whatsoever i do i do it all the time just to make sure that i'm sort of right okay so you want to teach them actually how
to use those translations and then to get in there and say okay we're going to write a short text but let's use jamboard for example and you're
going to write this little note and i just don't worry about it getting right because that's the big fear and that's what we're observing
they're worrying about making mistakes so then they write it all on anglais and they're trying to get it all right and then they go to translate and then
you're losing the whole purpose behind it okay so what you do is that either you're working in a in a
google document that you can see live this is the one thing i would do i get smaller groups writing
get them to work like in teams and you can see the documents as their writing okay and so you're just going to write
just write don't worry about it and then you're going to write four sentences and then we're going to start looking at these things that we're going
to talk and i'm going to engage with you in a conversation about it and then you're going to go
back and you're going to rewrite but don't worry about the translation because this is about like trying to
improve and this is i think one of the issues with that with the grammar is that students think that they need to
be they can't make mistakes they're not supposed to make too many mistakes otherwise so what we're trying
to do out there is in this if you get an uh i don't think in that if you uh that transforming fsl
if you get to see the written productions out there you want to show them what it looks like and what like
the scoring so the whole scoring part of it is is a big feature but i would say change change your habits
because if they're going to work on their own and they're going to do that it defeats the whole purpose get them to write short texts and then
spontaneous okay let's go and just let let's just write a little note out here a little uh feeling and just like see
put it on a jamboard i want to see what it looks like and then get them to to comment each other
okay you engage in an oral conversation around it to say okay yeah that i wanted like which one which
one do we like the best which one are we going to send let's say we're going to write a little note to the premiere or we're going to
write to justine tudo okay so we're going to write we're going to write like one or two paragraph or we're going to post a tweet
okay so a tweet is really short so what would be a good tweet and we want to talk about what it what
it's gonna be so so i think sometimes we need to to step back change how we go about it
and then be really clear to say listen people use those translation all the time which ones are the good ones okay show
them and ask them which one do you prefer okay and then that this could be fun
what you can do also is to say okay once we take a tax okay what do you think it feels like in english
what would be that text now in english okay and then you play with it and you really change the whole culture
around the whole thing awesome great
you