If you've ever owned a dog, and had to give him pills, you know it's a nightmare. The dog will gag and spit and run and carry on as if he's never eaten gravel, socks, worms, a tennis ball, mud...and make you feel like the most abusive dog parent ever. One of the most common tricks is to put the pill in some peanut butter, making it appetizing for Doggo and less traumatic for DogMama (or DogDad). We know the dog needs the medicine, we just have to make it palatable and seem like something that he wants.
Contextualized grammar is the pill-in-peanut-butter for the proficiency-based WL classroom. We know the students need language structures and rules in order to be able to communicate. Globs of words aren't communication beyond the Novice Mid level. In my experience, even if I flood them with mountains of input in target language materials, there will still be students who do not learn to produce the structures on our required time-table without more direct modeling or scaffolding. So I have steadily and intentionally been working contextualized grammar practice/tasks (oh BVP, now I have to think about that word choice!) into communicative instruction.
Here are some of my "peanut butters":
- Daily starter - Question du jour - Bellringer. I use Google Classroom and use a Question, but this could be done easily with a projected question, answered on paper, turned in and redistributed daily. I ask a question - short answer or multiple choice - about the topic/theme we are working on. For Novices, I often provide multiple choices that model complete sentence answers using the structures I want them use. For Novice High/Intermediate, I will use a short answer.
- Exemple - Novice: Quelle matière scolaire préfères-tu? a. Je préfère le français. b. Je préfère les maths. c. Je préfère l'anglais.
- I gave them complete sentences for choices, modeling that Je préfère for them. Do this for a few days, then give them a short answer to complete, they have seen this construction repeatedly. Hopefully they can then reproduce "Je prefere..."
- I gave them complete sentences for choices, modeling that Je préfère for them. Do this for a few days, then give them a short answer to complete, they have seen this construction repeatedly. Hopefully they can then reproduce "Je prefere..."
- Exemple - Intermediate: Comment serait le living dans ta maison idéale? Quels meubles aurais-tu? AIDE: Il y aurait.... J'aurais....
- Notice that I gave them some help to start their sentence. And I have NOT taught them the conditional mood directly. They will do this several days in a row, by which time they will have seen/used the JE, TU, IL/ELLE forms of conditional verbs.
- Exemple - Novice: Quelle matière scolaire préfères-tu? a. Je préfère le français. b. Je préfère les maths. c. Je préfère l'anglais.
- Interpersonal Writing - Asking personal questions about the topic at hand, using the TU form (which is closest to the JE form in French, rather than the VOUS form), providing several examples as a model. Here's an example about NOEL - how do you celebrate Christmas? from my Novice Mid holiday unit
- A contextualized presentation of the structure in question - Yes, a real lesson about the language BUT completely in context of the communicative theme. So the relevance of the structure is clear: we are talking about illness and injury, being able to say "I cut myself" or "I take care of myself" is obviously necessary, so we learn reflexive verbs. (And then I can reuse the lesson by changing the verbs/ vocabulary to match the theme we are working on!)
- Presentational Writing in Context with Models/Scaffolding - In Level 1 (Novice Mid), after we had been working with fruits & vegetables vocabulary for a bit, and we did our lesson above, students did a "living fruits & veggies" à la Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs project which gave them opportunity to practice their adjective placement and agreement. They had to personify 4 fruits/veggies (2 feminine, 2 masculine). There was very high engagement, I gave examples for both masculine and feminine forms, but gave no particular rules or instructions about what to include. They were able to creatively use language of their choice AND practice the adjective placement/agreement structures repetitively. But it wasn't grammar drills or worksheets.
I am constantly reworking and creating ways to help my students become comfortable producing comprehensible language, and these are a few of my tricks I've devised so far. Peanut butter is much more delicious than swallowing a hard, powdery pill, right? These structures-in-context tricks have helped my doggos...I mean students...improve their communication! Ouaf!