I have waited for this moment for a long time. I have always wanted to learn and/or acquire another language that went beyond a few lessons so I could “get by” while traveling to a new place. This summer has provided me the time and opportunity to start working toward this goal via on-demand Brazilian Portuguese videos and resources through Mike Peto’s CI Masterclass subscription website. 

I have always believed in the power of being a student in a Comprehension-Based Communicative Language setting using Comprehensible Input in order to not only acquire the language but, more importantly, to watch the art of other educators as they work to make their language comprehensible for us, their students. Besides short demos at conferences, I have not experienced this much seat time with a language since 2009 while attending my first NTPRS National Conference learning Swedish with Jan Holter Kittok and Barb Cartford. Luckily, there are so many language educators teaching via Zoom or videos, and I am thrilled to join in as a student this summer. 

As of now I have had 11 hours of Portuguese and of course, I am having so many “AHA” moments. In today’s post, I want to start with an “AHA” moment that was quite impactful after only having 5 hours for a consecutive week with an additional hour of reading homework. I will then back-track with AHA moments from each day. 

“AHA” Moment ~ After the Homework: Thinking and Pronouncing Words in my Head in Portuguese  

After completing 5 consecutive days acquiring Portuguese, day 6 provided me with a day to do homework, which was just reading a new text, playing games with that text via www.textivate.com, and then listening to a song. So why was this impactful? It was because after the 6th hour of language on “day 7” I woke up with Portuguese in my head. I was hearing the pronunciation of words in my head and I was able to “pronounce” the written word in my head even though there was a lot of new vocabulary. 

As a Spanish speaker, there are many similarities between Spanish and Portuguese. This certainly is helping me process language quicker, but the key difference that I see so far is the drastic differences in pronunciation and spelling. Spanish is a beautifully phonetic language and so far Portuguese does not seem this way. I will say the task of reading a new text without ever hearing it is challenging because in truth I do not know if the pronunciation in my head is correct. The recommended homework stories were written in a way that I could comprehend them but they did not include audio for the pronunciation. But still on each day, there was Portuguese going through my head. The power of acquisition and our brain was at play and I was super motivated to continue the process. Following this day I had to take a 10-day hiatus from the class but because of the power of acquisition I had no problem when I started the next hour of class and that language was still in my head.  

 “AHA” Moment ~ Day 5: Trying Not to Take Notes

I know in most classes and trainings, we say there is no need to take notes because the acquisition process is going to happen regardless of writing down anything that a teacher says. I do wholly believe this and do tell my students the same, but I love taking notes. So from days 1-4 I was taking lots of notes during the class and making a lot of connections for myself on paper. On day 5 I said, today will be my day without notes, but guess what – I still took notes. I have referenced those notes some days but really I’m not going back and rereading them every night. For me, I do think they’re offering me a bit of processing time for the new words that I am seeing. I also do take pictures of some of the great content that’s occurring on my screen. I do know that some of my notes are about things I want to incorporate in my own classes and course AHA moments I am having. But with regard to language learning, I guess this is just me as a learner and so I am really going to have to remember this because I know I will have students who are the same way when I go back into the classroom.   

 “AHA” Moment ~ Day 4: Writing Sentences with a One Word Image

Over the last few years I have incorporated One Word Images into my classes but it is not a regular “go to” activity for me. I do think it needs to be incorporated much more in my classes next year. For the basics of how to do it, you can check out Mike Peto’s post and if you search the internet you’ll find many others. My take away from this class and Mike’s practice was that he was actually writing the sentences on the screen during the class as we were building the One Word Image. I thought this was very effective and by doing so, the sentences with correct syntax were on the screen for me to read. In many ways that written language serves as a Write and Discuss for students. Every time I have done a One Word Image, I would just draw the object and a few words on my board/screen but not full sentences. “AHA” 

 “AHA” Moment ~ Day 3: Calendar Talk Can Be More 

During day 3 of classes, I saw a great example of what Calendar Talk could be. I often incorporate calendar talk with just talking about the days, date, wins and losses for sporting events in my school community, and birthdays. Now although I do think all of that is very important, I see it can go in a different direction. Mike provided us with three questions: 

-What happened yesterday? 

-What is happening later today? 

-What will happen tomorrow? 

Just like the same “AHA” moment I had on day 4 Mike would write full sentences on the screen/board. He wrote about himself and a student so we are seeing both first and third person in addition to the question written in second person and future tenses, present tenses, and past tenses. Since I do not know Portuguese I was excited to be bombarded by all of these tenses at once and everything was still comprehensible. I wrote about this in my reflection post #2. As a language teacher I still understand how conjugation and grammar works with regard to verbs but I do not have to know how to conjugate these verbs in order to understand them and as I am experiencing more time with Portuguese (again I am on hour 11), I am beginning to see patterns but I have yet to look up a conjugation chart.  

 “AHA” Moment ~ Day 2: Ending and/or Starting the Class with Write & Discuss 

As I wrote in reflection 3 earlier this summer, I fundamentally want to use Write and Discuss everyday as a part of our class routine this year. 

I know that many teachers including Mike use this daily with students but I also know how we are as teachers, we get so into the content of the lesson we are developing with students that we run out of time for the Write and Discuss time. This has happened already in Portuguese class, and I know that it will happen to me. As I return to the school year, I know I will have to use timers to keep me on track. I do think using timers is a great strategy and I’ve been implementing that for many years now. I will say that on days in Portuguese class when we did not do an official Write and Discuss Summary – we still had great sentences written on the screen during the actual activities like I just said with One Word Image and Calendar Talk. In any event when we don’t do the Write and Discuss, we do a summary at the beginning of the next class of what was discussed the day prior. This is a fantastic use of class time because it reviews exactly what happened the day prior (especially for people that may have been absent). From a planning standpoint ending with the Write and Discuss is ideal because if you write it with the class at that moment you will remember exactly what happened and you will not have to spend out of school time preparing readings. Again, I see how effective these summaries can be during any class or used the following day. 

This post has become too long. So I will write about Day 1 at another time. 
Gary

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