REAL LANGUAGE right away

Itinerary Spring and Summer 2012

2012-01-05T12:41:00.000-08:00

Happy 2012 from REAL LANGUAGE right away!

The new year has us gearing up for several presentations and exhibiting opportunities. Here is our itinerary :

February 4 : Speaking at the AATF Chicago/Northern Illinois winter program in Geneva, IL

March 8-10 : Exhibiting and presenting at CSCTFL in Milwaukee, WI

March 22-24 : Exhibiting and presenting at SCOLT in Atlanta, GA

July 5-8 : Exhibiting and presenting at the AATF Conference in Chicago

We hope to see you soon!

Elizabeth & Denise

New Year's Resolutions

2011-12-05T07:20:00.000-08:00

French and Spanish teachers : Do you need one more activity to use before winter break? Denise and I put together these New Year's Resolution conversations for that purpose-- it's a great way for your students to practice the close future tense. Have them brainstorm other resolutions and write short paragraphs about what they would like to do differently in 2012!

Rhythmic Chanting!

2011-10-06T06:15:00.000-07:00

I have found the use of rhythmic chanting very helpful as I introduce new conversations to my elementary school classes. It serves to teach them pronunciation, help them practice, and really get the language in their heads! (They are often chanting long after class is over.)

I put together these little youtube videos to enhance their experience of chanting-- they can now see the visuals as they chant, which is another way to reinforce the language. I hope that you French teachers will find them useful for your classes!

Check out our youtube channel at : http://www.youtube.com/user/reallanguage

Halloween Conversations-- try these with your students!

2011-10-06T06:01:00.000-07:00

It's October, and it's time to share our Halloween Conversation! Denise and I have been using this conversation with our classes for several years, and it is always a big hit. Feel free to click on them and print them out for your students.

Enjoy!

Thank you to Diana Soerens and Dan Baltierra for their help with the Spanish!

Some thoughts on student writing

2011-09-30T13:17:00.000-07:00

Denise and I have changed the way we approach student writing as we have implemented the REAL FRENCH tout de suite program with our 1st-6th grade students over the last few years.

Here are some of Denise’s thoughts on the subject and a writing sample from one of her new 5^th graders.

I’ve been teaching French for over 17 years to students in Grades 1-8, and one thing I often struggled with was how to evaluate writing. I always knew deep inside that filling up a student’s paper with red marks was not productive or fair because in many cases, he was not ever provided with what he needed to complete the task at hand. What often happened was that students would scale back on their writing and only use the simplest language to avoid those red marks or they would use translating programs or even worse, spend hours looking words up in a dictionary. I would then spend days trying to figure out what they wanted to say and making all the corrections only to see them glance at the grade and promptly throw the paper in the garbage. Later, we put a stop to the immediate disposal into the garbage. We asked students to hand in a corrected copy, but they would only write out what we had written. Subsequently, they would often finish the complete assignment without acquiring any more knowledge of the language but with plenty of frustration and negative thoughts about language learning.

What I love about Real Language is that it focuses on small, interesting chunks of language and provides the students with lots of different ways to use that language. They are applauded for being able to communicate – rubrics in level II include points for making sense and sharing information with a partner. Isn’t that what language is all about? Using Real Language, I have found that writing assignments now ask students to let their knowledge shine through by asking them to write what they know. I have them write in a journal during class with no teacher help, no partner help, no dictionaries, no computers nor books, and I have found their writing delightful!

The writing example above is from one of my fifth grade students. She came new this year and spent one week with me during the summer using the Real Language level I program, and then she started with Level II with all the other fifth graders. She wrote this after about three weeks of French class. They know I’m not going to pick it apart, so they allow themselves to use language to communicate even if they don’t have everything they need. For example, Caroline did not know the possessive adjective, his, but she did know “birthday” and “he”, so she wrote “He birthday is the 10th of January.” I understand. She has communicated. This is success. She feels it and wants to learn more! I have been blown away by the writing in my classes. It is much, much better now that we are teaching grammar within a meaningful context and for the purpose of communication and NOT on its own in a vacuum.

REAL SPANISH ahora mismo Level II has gone to press!

2011-07-14T08:22:00.001-07:00

REAL SPANISH ahora mismo Level II is now complete! We hope to have it printed and on our website by early August! For now, we wanted to give you a little sneak preview of our Partner Conversations book, our Student Activity Book, our Teacher's guide, our Audio CD, and our eBook.

First, the Partner Conversations is the foundation of our approach. Level II builds on the vocabulary and structures from Level I, and at the higher level, the conversations are more situational and humorous. These conversational activities allow students to communicate using a large variety of structures, vocabulary, and expressions from everyday language. The visual cues and English translations ensure comprehension, and students find it rewarding to be able to speak right away. Each conversation provides choices so it is never static and can be repeated numerous times.

The Partner Conversations are embedded in the Student Activity Book, so each student has a copy for their reference. After each Conversation, a variety of activities that reinforce the written and oral language are provided. Activities include writing, grammar exercises, listening comprehension, vocabulary exercises, and speaking practice.

The Teacher's Guide offers evaluations, rubrics, and supplemental activities. Grammar, listening comprehension, vocabulary, and speaking evaluations are included. This book is reproducible.

REAL SPANISH ahora mismo Level II also includes an Audio CD. Recordings of native speakers allow students to imitate authentic language as they listen.

The Partner Conversations eBook is an essential resource for teachers who are able to project in their classrooms. The electronic PDF allows the instructor to teach directly from the conversation on the screen. Many teachers enjoy using this resource with their Smartboards.

Vacation Conversations from Level II -- Try these out!

2011-05-13T09:47:00.000-07:00

The end of the school year is fast approaching, and Denise and I are hard at work on REAL SPANISH ahora mismo Level II program! We thought we would share a conversational activity from Level II French (and the in-progress Level II Spanish!) for you to try with your classes! Enjoy! (For more information on REAL FRENCH tout de suite Level II, visit our website!)

REAL LANGUAGE right away- testimonials!

2011-05-10T09:57:00.000-07:00

Denise and I have heard back from a few of the teachers who use the REAL LANGUAGE right away programs, and we thought we would share some of their impressions with you! If you would like to add your own impressions of the program, feel free to write to us at hippocampepublications@gmail.com or comment on this post-- we love hearing from you!

I have really enjoyed this program because I have seen tremendous progress in my students' comprehension and speaking abilities. I really like the fact that the students are not just given isolated vocabulary, but rather the words are put into a context. It's real French! It is also a very intuitive way to learn French. My students have commented that it's not only fun to act out the dialogues, but they feel that their French has substantially improved as well. I would highly recommend the Real Language program.

– Dale Ziegler, Sacred Heart Academy, Chicago, IL (Elementary School French teacher)

Real Language materials pair extremely well with any textbook series as they cover the most common Level 1 topics and structures. I've found that by adding conversations to things we are already studying, more of my students are able to perform on assessments. And it is truly music to my ears to walk around my classroom and hear ALL of my students speaking FRENCH! And not only are they speaking they are having a full comprehensible conversation with excellent pronunciation!

--Sarah Woodward-Jones, Fayetteville-Manlius Central Schools, Manlius, NY (Middle School French teacher)

We are loving it. My first and second grade classes have been reenergized. The students love working on the mini dialogues and I am amazed at how quickly they can recall the material. THANK YOU for coming to IN-NELL and for sharing such a great idea.

--Claudia Nole, Park Tudor School, Indianapolis. (Elementary School Spanish teacher)

I think your program is great! It reminds me of how I learned English as a foreign language in South America: short conversations and focusing on chunks of the language.

– Andrea Suarez, Villamadonna Academy, Villa Hills, Kentucky (Elementary School Spanish teacher)

For students who have language-based learning challenge or who simply need to learn a foreign language differently than how it is taught at the high school level--fast paced with a lot of vocabulary to be acquired. The Real French Tout de Suite program offers a lot of flexibility for a teacher. The constructs are simplistic, authentic, very useful and can be easily modified for an older student. This program is perfect for use in a differentiated Level I classroom or in an alternative French program designed for students requiring a different model than that offered by a traditional program, with a traditional text. I am grateful to the authors who have a keen understanding of what works and who have done a lot of my work for me! Bravo!

-Lorin Pritikin, Francis W. Parker School, Chicago (High School French teacher)

I am so excited! I have been using your program for 9 weeks and the KIDS love it!!! They are speaking more Spanish than ever. I cannot wait until Spanish 2 comes out!!! Thank you all that you do.

-Joe Uriz, Parsons Elementary School, Gwinnett County, Georgia (Elementary School Spanish Teacher)

RL provides real life and age-appropriate conversations for elementary level. Students love short dialogs and practical vocabulary. I enjoy reading your blog for best practices. RL is a wonderful resource in the classroom to generate conversation and expand vocabulary. I use your method in 3^rd and 4^th grades and it works!!

-Gigi Olmstead, Catherine Cook School, Chicago (Elementary School French Teacher)

REAL LANGUAGE right away on the radio!

2011-03-09T10:52:00.001-08:00

It was our pleasure to join Tom Alsop on his online radio program. To learn more about Tom and his wonderful contributions to the field of language teaching, visit his website: http://www.masterclassworkshops.com/

Listen to the radio program at : http://radio.uccs.edu/index.php/2011/shows/twlc/1966

Another round of conferences!

2011-02-14T07:48:00.000-08:00

We hope to connect with many other language educators in the coming weeks. Here is our itinerary :

March 4-6 CSCTFL in Indianapolis

http://csctfl.org/conferences/2011conference.html

Session will be Friday, March 4^th at 1:00 pm.

March 10-12 SCOLT in Baton Rouge

http://scolt.webnode.com/a2011-conference-information/

Session will be Friday, March 11^th at 9:15 am.

April 1-3 NECTFL in Baltimore

http://www2.dickinson.edu/prorg/nectfl/Conference/Conference2011.html

Session will be Sunday, April 3^rd at 2:00 pm.

Article Published in Learning Languages Magazine!

2011-02-14T07:36:00.001-08:00

Denise and I are proud to have an article in NNELL's publication Learning Languages magazine! The magazine arrived in mailboxes late last week, and it is full of wonderful article on early language instruction. Members of NNELL can download it on their website.

Spontaneous Production?

2011-01-28T08:37:00.000-08:00

Oral assessment is often tricky….how do you equip students to express themselves orally and what is the best way to evaluate them?

As Denise and I prepared to write Level II of REAL FRENCH tout de suite, we thought long and hard about these questions. It’s one thing to have students memorize and perform a conversation, but how do you assess their ability to produce language spontaneously? How do you know if they own the language?

In the past, Denise and I would have students write skits and perform them; if we guided them well enough, these skits ended up being fairly well written and well presented. However, they were scripted and students were not asked to react to the language coming at them—a skill that is essential for using language effectively.

So we came up with a rubric for the Jeu de rôles—an oral assessment where students are asked to prepare a number of situations and perform them spontaneously for the class. A situation is chosen at random, a partner is chosen at random, and the students are asked to improvise and act out a situation on the spot. Here is an example of the Jeu de rôles rubric :

Of course, it takes time to prepare students to speak spontaneously. I give the students at least two class periods to prepare. The situations are based on the conversations they have already practiced, so they begin by being able to reference the conversation, and then slowly they rely on it less and less. In this video clip, my eighth graders are practicing the different situations, and switching partners often.

And here you see the end result: two students acting out the situation from Conversation 3e- Making plans.

As you can see, they are very comfortable with the language, and they are responding spontaneously to one another!

Our New Students Amanda and Jake!

2010-12-09T13:19:00.000-08:00

One of the most gratifying things about implementing the REAL LANGUAGE right away curriculum over the last few years is seeing how much more easily new students integrate into our French program. Denise and I teach a K-8 French program at the Avery Coonley School in Downers Grove, IL. Over the years, it has often been challenging to know how to help new students adapt to the program without having the background that the other students have.

This year, I’ve had the privilege of starting Level II of REAL FRENCH tout de suite with my 6^th grade class. My two new students, Amanda and Jake, who have been taking French for just 13 weeks, have adapted incredibly well this year. I am amazed at their level of comprehension and production, as well as their overall confidence and enjoyment of learning French. When asked about how the method works, Jake said, “It forces you to speak French.” Amanda added, “I like it because you actually get the chance to talk in French instead of having a grammar lesson in a language that you can’t really speak.”

Here is a video of the two of them practicing a conversation – you can see, they are very comfortable!

Level II in action!

2010-11-09T08:58:00.001-08:00

Denise and I have been enjoying using REAL FRENCH tout de suite Level II with our students for the last 2 months. Here is a video of a group of 6th graders practicing Conversation 1b "A l'arrêt du bus" :

REAL FRENCH tout de suite LEVEL II = done!

2010-10-10T14:14:00.000-07:00

We’ve taken a little break from blogging, but we haven’t taken a break from REAL LANGUAGE right away. As you may have gathered from our facebook and twitter posts, Denise and I have been working very hard to complete REAL FRENCH tout de suite Level II. And now we can return to our blog and announce with enthusiasm that the Student Activity Book, Teacher’s Guide, Partner Conversations, Audio CD, and eBook are now complete and in our hands! They will be available on our website in the coming weeks!

The process of writing Level II has been very rewarding. It included moments of great joy, laughter, and fun, but there were also moments that required perseverance as we figured out how to structure the curriculum for this new level. We pushed through, and we are delighted with the result. Level II truly is a new and different; it integrates grammar, writing, listening comprehension, and varied activities to get students speaking!

We have had the pleasure of using this new curriculum with our middle school students since September. We are very happy with how balanced the approach feels and how the entertaining real-life conversations motivate the students to speak French! We hope you will enjoy looking at the sample conversation on this post—feel free to print it out and use it with your students!

C'est bientôt les vacances !

2010-05-19T06:35:00.000-07:00

We hope that you are enjoying these last days of the school year; it's never too late to get your students talking, so we thought we would give you a conversation to keep them interacting meaningfully in the target language. Enjoy! (Just click on the image, right click & copy it so you can use it with your students!)

To check out other REAL LANGUAGE right away conversations and materials, visit our website!

The end goal : Ownership.

2010-05-04T13:02:00.000-07:00

Denise and I finished writing Level I of REAL FRENCH tout de suite! and REAL SPANISH ¡ahora mismo! just last August, and it’s been an exciting year of sharing these materials with others and even better, getting to use them in our own French classrooms at the Avery Coonley School in Downers Grove, IL.

We very much enjoyed our recent “conference tour” where we were able to present at and attend a variety of foreign language conferences. We came away from the IN-NELL, CSCTFL, Wisconsin FLESFEST, and NECTFL conferences with renewed energy and ideas for our own teaching.

Denise and I were particularly challenged by workshops given by John Demado and Laura Terrill at the CSCTFL conference. Both speakers talked about teaching language in such a way that allows students to come to a point of ownership. As John Demado says, “you do not renovate that which you do not own,” and we want students to feel empowered to use the language meaningfully and move forward in their personal linguistic development. We believe that ample practice time is an essential factor in the journey toward ownership, and we see this over and over again as we use our REAL LANGUAGE right away materials.

As we prepared our presentation for the NECTFL conference and pondered this idea of ownership, we wanted to emphasize the way in which our REAL LANGUAGE right away program is set up to do just that. As we presented, we urged teachers to use our materials with the objective of having their students internalize and own the vocabulary, structures, and linguistic functions in this unique communicative program. We were able to show some video of the students using the follow-up activities in our Teacher’s Guide, which allow students to use the language they have practiced in the Partner Conversations and take it to the next level, one where the language comes to them automatically and is in fact, their own.

Here is a clip of my 1st grade class that will give you a feel for this :

As you can see, the students are participating in a Classroom Mixer where they are using the structure "Est-ce que tu as...?" (Do you have...?) in a very spontaneous and automatic way. It is so rewarding for students to arrive at this point of comfort and ease in using the language!

Where to find us in the coming weeks!

2010-02-22T09:32:00.000-08:00

Denise and I are gearing up to attend and present at a number of conferences in February and March. We look forward to sharing our program and collaborating with colleagues to promote early language learning. We hope to connect with many language teachers in the coming weeks.

Itinerary for REAL LANGUAGE right away!

February 27 Attending IN-NELL Annual Conference in Indianapolis; we will have books available at a table
March 4-6 Presenting on Saturday afternoon at CSCTFL in Minneapolis
March 13 Attending FLESFEST at the University of Wisconsin Waukesha
March 25-27 Presenting and exhibiting at NECTFL in New York City

REAL FRENCH tout de suite Conversation 2a with 1st graders

2010-02-16T14:03:00.000-08:00

Here's a taste of REAL FRENCH tout de suite in action ! Two first graders present a conversation for the class.

Preview of Level II

2010-01-26T07:55:00.001-08:00

We are working hard on REAL FRENCH tout de suite ! Level II. We wanted to give you a little preview of the Partner Conversations, and we encourage you French teachers to try it out with your classes!

Level II continues the communicative approach of Level I, but a more formal analysis of grammar is integrated. It brings back many of the structures and vocabulary from Level I, and the conversations become more situational, allowing students to role play in an authentic way.

Enjoy!

To see examples from Level I or to purchase materials, visit w ww.reallanguagerightaway.com

Our gift to you!

2009-12-08T06:24:00.000-08:00

Need an extra activity to get your students speaking before winter vacation? Here’s a great conversation to practice in the wintertime, and we have it here for you in both French and Spanish. We hope your classes enjoy it!

We are planning to create a supplement of a series of holiday conversations by March of 2010. We hope you enjoy this preview!

Bonnes fêtes !
¡Feliz Navidad! ¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

www.reallanguagerightaway.com

Try these with your classes!

2009-11-06T08:18:00.000-08:00

We very much enjoyed sharing our method and products at the ICTFL conference, and we would like you to be able to try some of these examples with your classes. Simply click on the image below, then right click and "copy image." Then you can paste it into PowerPoint or Microsoft Word to use with your classes!

Feel free to follow our blog, (just click on "follow" below!) as we will be posting conversations from time to time!

Also, there are more examples available in pdf form on the “preview” page of our website : http://www.reallanguagerightaway.com/preview.asp Download them and try them out!

Come see samples of our products at ICTFL on Saturday!

2009-10-22T14:12:00.000-07:00

We will be presenting at the Illinois Council of Teaching of Foreign Language conference in Lisle, Illinois on Saturday, October 24th at 8:00 am. We are eager to show the evolution of our method and share it with our colleagues! Hope to see you there!

Here's a little taste of the REAL FRENCH tout de suite program !

2009-10-19T08:08:00.000-07:00

2009-10-02T08:37:00.001-07:00

Denise and I have been using our newly created REAL FRENCH tout de suite program for just a little over a month now. The response from the students is very positive, and we are finding them engaged in learning French in a new way!

Although we have been using our conversational model as it’s developed for the last few years, we have never had a program that has been so organized and had the support of the written activities (from the Student Activity Book) and the supplemental activities and evaluations (from the Teacher’s Guide). These components hold the students responsible for the language learned, and the games add variety and fun to the class.

Our second graders absolutely love the “find your friend” activity; it involves finding the person with the same visual as they practice the given structure. For example, in conversation 2b, where they discuss feeling sad, cold, hungry, etc., students are assigned a different “problem” and have to ask their classmates what’s wrong until they find the person with the same problem. Denise’s students often ask to repeat the activity! This kind of repetition is what allows them to truly own the language they are practicing!

Our website will be up and running in just a few days, and all of the products are available in both French and Spanish.

2009-08-21T09:01:00.001-07:00

After an intense spring and summer of writing, the REAL LANGUAGE right away programs are about to go to press!

The basic philosophy behind our approach is that we want to provide the students all of the tools that they need to have a meaningful and grammatically sound exchange in the target language right away. Our conversational model allows for this, and the visual cues & English translations ensure comprehension as the students practice these short dialogues.

We hope you will check out our website : www.reallanguagerightaway.com, which will be up and running in early September 2009.

This blog will update you on our upcoming presentations, publications, and our reflections as language teachers.