Hi Whizzes!
Let’s talk about False Output🥶🥶🥶, and how it should have no place in a research-based second (etc) language learning environment. In order for you to understand what false output looks like, I will give examples from my time as a student, fully admitting that some of the things I’m presenting I did myself as an educator when I had no idea what in Goddess’ name I was doing.
When I took German my last year of college, we had a main class period taught by a professor and also auxiliary class periods taught by a graduate student. For the graduate student bit, we were assigned a “journal entry” assignment on a weekly basis. Still have ‘em. Let me be clear—this was my FIRST year of learning German. I wrote those journal entries successfully, IN THE EYES OF THE EDUCATORS WHO WERE FACILITATING A NON-RESEARCH BASED CLASSROOM. How? Because I could write them and use anything they’d given me at my disposal. I could use the textbook (RUN THE OTHER WAYYYYYYY), for example. It was like being given puzzle pieces and putting them together🧩🧩🧩. Anyone with a functioning brain can do this. Some people will do it faster⏱ ⏲ ⏰ 🕰 ⌛️ ⏳. Some people will put the puzzle pieces together and build sentences and paragraphs that sound more native-like than others💡 🔦 🕯 🪔. Yes—but none of these people, including me, wrote that journal entry by retrieving language from a robust mental representation of the language in their brain🍝🍝🍝🍝🍝🍝 (for some strange reason I always imagine the robust mental representation of the language as a plate of spaghetti, jaaaaa).
After such few hours of being exposed to German, it would have been impossible, unmöglich, volks. We shouldn’t have been asked to write journal entries in a beginner German class—it’s ludicrous🤹 🤹♂️ 🤹. What is needed in language acquisition is not to be given puzzle pieces to put together, but to be fed the ingredients that will allow us to EVENTUALLY generate the puzzle pieces oneself—maybe pooping them out, or vomiting them…or sneezing them out…hey…whatever floats your boat. ⚡️The only proper ingredient for this to (maybe) happen is COPIOUS amounts
of comprehensible, compelling and communication-enhancing linguistic input.
In my Quechua class during my first MA, same thing. We were made to write, and I could see the delight on the professor’s face at hearing what we wrote, but I can assure you I speak now, after 2 years of learning Quechua full time, perhaps 5 words of Quechua. It was, again, putting puzzle pieces together, not being given the ingredients to generate them myself. 👺👺👺
What does false output look like orally? There are a few different ways—but fundamentally it’s whenever learners are made to speak the language and the facilitator and learner believes that that speaking is what the learners actually know, or will know right after the role play. If a facilitator asks their students to do an airport role play and believes that now students know how to go up to an airline worker and speak to them, this is false output, not to mention that role plays are disrespecting the authentic context of the classroom—DO NOT DO ROLE PLAYS. What is a role play? Ok CLASE, today we’re going to practice the dialogue for:
😵Buying something at a store
😵Ordering something at a restaurant
😵Talking to an airline agent
😵Being a tourist and asking directions
🤢ETC, ETC, (AND SO HELP ME GODDESS), ETC.
When a facilitator makes learners repeat something after her and somehow thinks that the students “know it”, it is ALSO false and forced output.
Your Protestations—
But in YOUR language classroom, Constanza, students are speaking all the time, like when they are reading the lines for Reader’s Theater—they don’t know that stuff either!
Exactly. But EVERYONE INVOLVED knows they don’t know that stuff. They process a chapter in my classroom in multiple different modalities, and it is UNDERSTOOD, on both sides, that what we are doing is strengthening their mental representation of the language in their brains through receiving comprehensible, LEVEL APPROPRIATE and compelling linguistic input.
And we do it over and over and over again, with THE SUBSEQUENT CHAPTERS, so that things NEVER GET BORING (hence the compelling part), and they are receiving essentially the same linguistic input over and over again (frequency—essential) with only a few more added vocabulary words per chapter. It never gets boring because the story KEEPS GOING (thanks, story). Processing linguistic input through theater is vastly different than doing role plays👎👎👎. This is the magic of Input Wand Materials, folks💫💫💫. A lot of synthesis of my 30+ years as a student and 10+ years as an educator went into them. A LOT.
Authentic output happens spontaneously, and can be generated with no help whatsoever (no puzzle pieces). It cannot be borne out of memorization, rote repetition, or putting puzzle pieces together. That stuff disappears days or weeks after (welcome to my fancy boarding school Mandarin class). Facilitators who believe that what learners write on non-research based, memorization-based tests is actually stuff the students “know” are practicing delusion🙀 😿 😾 .
On the hamster-wheel of “took it for four years, aced the tests, don’t speak a word” keeps turning. It is unconscionable. You (and I, unfortunately), don’t speak a word of (failed to acquire) TARGET LANGUAGE because the neural pathways aren’t there, and the neural pathways aren’t there because facilitators spent time, precious time, on practices that build no neural pathways, but simply make them, the facilitator, feel like they are doing their job because the Target Language is coming out of your mouth or your hand. When ignorant administrators ask for proof of linguistic acquisition, the facilitators show these journal entries, perhaps videos of learners talking, the ACED TESTS, and the hamster wheel of non-research-based hell keeps turning.
Constanza Ontaneda
your own personal Language Acquisition Witch
