Hi Whizzes!
So, today’s blog will shed some light on how come all those things don't work.Yes, the BORING classes you took in high school and college, the apps that might or might not rhyme with YO, IS THAT BINGO? And the textbooks (etc etc etc) . Believe it or not, it has taken me eleven full years of practice as an educator, and 30+ as a learner, to come to the simplicity of my answer:
Okay, OKAY. If you’ve been with me long enough, this is not news, but JUST GIVE ME A CHANCE!!! REVOLUTION IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN, YO (something tells me this nebulous slang word, the illustrious yo, (NOT THE SPANISH WORD THAT MEANS I BUT THE ENGLISH ONE THAT MEANS…YOOOOOOO!!!! AS IN….WASSUP, YO?) is about to become the word of the day). Double parentheses—now that’s talent, yo. Oh dear…somebody stop her (me).🏊🏽♀️ 🏊🏽 🏊🏽♂️
And here are your protestations:
The BINGO app provides Comprehensible Linguistic Input!!!
One knows exactly what the sentences they are presenting mean because one can click on word and get meaning!
Indeedy.
And there are plenty of comprehensible sentences in the textbooks, and your teachers provided you with at least some comprehensible sentences, right? Ok. Let us stick to the BINGO app. Let us just say that all the linguistic input provided there is comprehensible.
Ay, there is the rub. Oooh....I saw Fat Ham on Broadway the other day with my 8th graders, and it was FUNNY and they made the there's the rub joke real good! Ok, back to the topic. Comprehensible is just not enough. Scarcity mindset, or fact? Me being overly judgmental, never satisfied, or…
That is why all the other C's exist.
I'm going to focus on Compelling today.
The revolutionary thing is that compelling is just a compelling way of saying this revolutionarily compelling statement:
YOU READY?
DRUM ROLL PLEASE
🥁 🪘
🥁 🪘
🥁 🪘
Neither the BINGO app nor all the other JAZZ you wasted your time on
Drum ROLL AGAIN, YO….
🥁 🪘
🥁 🪘
🥁 🪘
And just in case anyone mistakes the sentence above as me saying that the DO provide it, I’m going to write it again in one full negative statement:
ALL THOSE THINGIES (YO), DON’T PROVIDE THE RIGHT DATA TO YOUR 🫀HEART🫀.
🫀 ATTACK! CALL 911!🚑 🚒 🚐
🫀, you say? Ridiculous, bonkers, rubbish. The 🫀 has NOTHING to do with language acquisition, you say.
Oh yeah? Every moment of every second of every iota of every everything in your life, from the time you were in the womb, involved an emotion. Language acquisition starts in the womb. 🫄🏽 🫃So every SINGLE utterance you ever heard in your native tongue starting then until this fateful moment had and continues to have a corresponding emotion or set of emotions associated with it.
Language acquisition is an EMO matter.
🫦When your momma sang you that lullaby as you were in her womb—emotion.🩸
🫦When she started yelling at you soon after you exited her body and began CRYING UNCONTROLLABLY and RUINING HER SLEEP—emotion🩸.
🫦When she told you how proud she was of you after you won the spelling bee—emotion🩸.
🫦When she told you (adolescent you) you were a good for nothing that would never amount to anything—emotion🩸.
So, that BINGO app might be providing you with linguistic input that your 🧠 can comprehend, but your 🫀 couldn't care less, which is why time after time people tell me they have used the app, and it has not worked, in any language whatsoever, ever in the history of ever.
I was supervising Study Hall at my old (as in, don't work there anymore) middle school and literally asked my students to give me sentences that the BINGO app had given them:
🐈The ocean is fat.
🐓He went to the grocery store.
🦃Alisha is a teacher.
Ok, that was bad enough, but typical of me, that wasn’t enough torture and I wanted more💪 🦾, so I literally asked a 7th grade student of mine to SHOW me the app on her phone, and I did a beginner's lesson. Here we go. The implicit instructions were: match this sentence to the Spanish meaning:
🐭The girl.
🐹The boy.
🐰 🦊The girl, the boy.
They call these things sentences. The nerve. If that’s a sentence, then I’m normal. Makes me want to estrellar my head against the wall. You can figure out what estrellar means by deduction. Or if that don't work, there's always GOOGLEY WOOGLEY.
Ok, let’s skip the NON-SENTENCES THEY CALL SENTENCES, AND focus on the incredible, mind-bogglingly interesting things they call sentences which ARE sentences. So, yes…let’s go back to the fat ocean:
The Ocean is Fat
(I felt the need to capitalize the words so they look more poetic).
Maybe I'll add a dash and we can make believe it's a line from an Emily Dickinson poem:
The Ocean is Fat—
Ah, now I feel better already.
Ok, that feeling of wellbeing didn't last long. The nausea is returning fast, and I'm NOT pregnant. Emily—your dash...it's not enough. Maybe I am never satisfied.
The question here, about the obese ocean is:
WHO IN THE NAME OF #()#*(Q#)#@$ CARES?
How do I explain this to you—unless human beings, regardless of age or what "subject" they are studying, have an emotional connection 💃🏽 🕺🏽 🕴to the matter, they will not learn. The "funny" (read tragic) thing is that education has reached degrees of abuse so severe these days that in fact humans DO have an emotional connection to the matter—rage, boredom, apathy, fury, numbness, fear. They have this emotional connection to the notion of "school" or "that class" or "that teacher", but they have not absorbed any of the learning, because those emotions raise the affective barrier so high that it is impossible to absorb anything whatsoever.
So, here comes the big whammy, and ALTHOUGH EVERYONE SAYS DUH, this MORE OFTEN THAN NOT does NOT translate into classroom practice:
Unless humans associate POSITIVE, FUN (at times), CALM (at times), FREE, SAFE, COMMUNITY and COMMUNICATION ENHANCING, PURPOSEFUL feelings with what they are trying to learn, they will not learn it.🍄🍄🍄
On my second-to-last day of classes of my teaching career (at least in this iteration).🌞 🌝 🌛 🌜 I previewed the cover and some illustrations to the third book in the Novice Mid Brujas trilogy for my Spanish 1 and French 1 students (since we only gotten to the second one), plus illustrations from the Novice High and Intermediate Low trilogies because those are the ones that my illustrator had finalized. My students went literally nuts.♀️ 🧜🏽 🧜🏽♂️ 🧚🏽♀️ 🧚🏽 🧚 They were yelling at the top of their voices, jumping up and down, laughing uncontrollably, excited at seeing the characters they've grown up with:
1. Older
2. Doing interesting things
They, as the middle schoolers that they were, added non-existent romantic meaning to at least half the slides. 🌹🌹🌹It was HILARIOUS. But THIS was possible because we had LIVED, BEEN, SEEN, KNOWN these characters all school year long. 🩸Emotions.🩸 Emotions. 🩸Emotions. They had a positive association to:
1. The class
2. Me
3. Each other
4. The story
5. The LANGUAGE
Funny, that unless the first 4 were met, the last one, the one they supposedly come to class for, would be a moot point.
We are not walking brains. 🐾🐾🐾🧠🧠🧠We are WHOLE human beings. Remember, unless your 🫀is being activated, in a GOOD WAY, ya ain’t gonna learn nothin’. Because, the ocean might be fat (I can feel the ocean slapping me right now in disbelief and me being like...IT WAS THE BINGO APP SAID IT, NOT MEEEEEEEE, I SWEAR), but unless I know WHY THIS MATTERS, WHAT HAPPENS NEXT AND HOW BEING FAT AFFECTS THE OCEAN...
🦷who cares.
🦴what did you say?
🫁zzzzz.
Constanza Ontaneda
your own personal Language Acquisition Witch
