May 28, 2024 • 25 mins
This one is for novice high - the level you'll spend the most time with in your career! Listen to get in-depth examples for exactly what novice highs can do with language, in teacher-friendly language of course!
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
What's up? Ken, OK, a saluteworld language teachers. Welcome
(00:05):
to the practical proficiencypodcast, where we make the
transition to proficiencyoriented instruction in your
world language class in a waythat works for you your unique
context and teaching style anddoesn't sacrifice your well
being along the way. I'm yourhost, Devon Gunning the teacher,
(00:25):
author conference, host,curriculum creator and
consultant behind la liberlanguage learning. This podcast
is for the creative worldlanguage teacher like you who's
ready to ditch the overwhelmingpressure of switching to
acquisition driven instructionand CI overnight, you're ready
to discover how using moretarget language in class can
(00:47):
actually bring you and yourstudents more joy, instead of
adding to your plate withpractical, authentic and down to
earth strategies that don'trequire reinventing the wheel or
more training. We'll worktogether towards the magic of
the community based targetlanguage rich classroom rooted
(01:08):
in the power of community andcomprehensible input. Let's go,
Hey, practical world languageteachers,
we're back with our seriesthat's investigating celebrating
and exploring exactly whatlevels your students are at.
(01:28):
Let's meet them where they're atand understand that whatever
language that they're producingis more of an indicator of what
level they are and what theyneed to reach the next level,
rather than coming at it fromany kind of deficit point of
view, and instead focusing onwhat they can do with language.
And let's make that very clear,language for teachers as well,
(01:53):
today's episode is novice high.
So we're gonna get to know thearea of levels really that
you're gonna spend the most timewith students novice high covers
for anything from the end of alevel one class or your your
introductory class, this couldbe your ninth grade core class
(02:13):
for French, or anything Inbetween, if it could also be
perhaps the second year of yourprogram, but many students will
start to reach into novice highat the end of a first year
program. Not all, but some will,and the way that you can tell is
by the following markers thatI'm about to give you. However,
(02:36):
people hang out at novice highfor a long time in the middle
school, high school system, orfor our international listeners,
for the age range of if you'vegot anywhere from 10 year olds
to 18 year olds, they're goingto hang out in the novice high
range for a little bit due tothe limited amount of exposure
that we have with them to givethem more input, to bump them up
(02:59):
that level. So without furtherado, let's dive in. Let's talk
about novice highs, the onesthat you're going to hang out
with the most, because you'reprobably going to have people at
a novice high level. This isalso, I would caution, the first
area that people usually mess upwith their programs is they rush
people through levels. They rushtheir students through levels.
(03:20):
That is because we often feelthat our novice low, previous
episode has to be, you know, thefirst part of level one, and
they get and then we get tonovice mid, and then in our
second year program, or ourlevel two class, then we
automatically assume, like theseguys should be at novice high.
(03:40):
And instead of meeting studentswhere they're at, we say they
should be novice high, and wejust continually give them
novice high tasks, even ifthey're not quite there yet. And
then when they get to levelthree, we're like, cool, they're
intermediate. That is, whoa,whoa, whoa, slow down. That is
not how this happens. And Ithink that when we discover and
talk about in detail whatnovice, high learners can do,
(04:04):
we'll realize that it's not thatwe've been pushing unfair
expectations onto students interms of how we grade them and
what we expect them to do inclass. We've been unfairly
labeling them so then when welook to our standards for either
actful or CEFR, because novicehigh will line up with the end
of a, one, the beginning of b2,I would say, without, with, not
(04:27):
having much familiarity myselfwith CEFR, I'm just starting my
journey with CEFR, but, andthat's for our international
listeners, but For teachers inthe US setting with act full
specifically, we're working innovice high quite a bit, and we
are and using those proficiencydescriptors, performance
(04:51):
indicators, all of that in orderto guide our assessments and our
programs. So we need tounderstand them. So. But in all
fairness, they're not exactly inteacher friendly language. So
that's where I come in. Let's dothis. Novice high is my favorite
I'm not gonna lie, novice highis my favorite spot for students
to be at. This is where Icertainly spent the most time in
(05:11):
my career, and where I love tosee students start to jump and
make the leap into their nextstage. This is also a very
familiar area for you, becausestudents at this stage are doing
a lot of the things that youhope they would be able to do by
the end of your program,especially if you only see them
for two to three years, stufflike they can comfortably,
(05:34):
albeit awkward, handle astraightforward social situation
that is straight out of act fullthat with the new 2024
performance indicators andproficiency guidelines, we are
seeing strict indicators of thisis exactly what novice highs can
(05:56):
do, And that is directly fromfrom actual that your novice
highs will be able to handlestraightforward social
situations. What is astraightforward social situation
I'm talking about? They come upto you in your class and they
need something, and they can askyou in the target language for
what they need. It's not goingto be pretty. You're going to
(06:18):
need to rephrase, and you'regoing to need to see a few check
for understanding and work forclarification and work for
shared meaning, which is, ofcourse, a linguistic competency
in itself. So the moreopportunities you give for
students to fumble over theirwords, it's actually awesome.
It's building their linguisticcompetency in more than just the
word part, right? So when theycome up to your desk and they
(06:43):
ask for something that theyneed, they're having a hard time
with it, you're filling in thegaps, and you're asking for
clarification and working withthem, and then you eventually
reach a shared moment ofcommunication, a shared
understanding of, Oh, you wantto go to the nurse, right? And
then they say, Yes, exactly, Ineed the nurse. Because they
(07:06):
probably won't remember thenurse, the word for nurse all
the time, right? But thatexchange, that interaction, they
can handle, that they can dothat your novice lows and your
novice mids will not be able tohandle that. Your novice mids
are going to come up to yourdesk and be like, I need and
they're gonna gesture andthey'll say, you know, leave,
(07:28):
leave. And you're gonna have towork a lot harder to come to any
kind of shared understanding.
But with your novice highs,it'll be a little awkward. They
might have to use some skillsfrom their first language in
order to get there, but you'llbe able to come to some shared
communicative understanding of,oh, you need the nurse. And
(07:51):
they'll say, Yes, I need nurse.
So it'll be a little clumsy, alittle awkward. Another example
of this is they could buysomething. So they're gonna go
to the store and say, pretendthis is a coffee that they just
bought. They're gonna go to acoffee shop in Japan, and
they're gonna say, I want theKyoto iced coffee special. And
they're literally, they're justreading off the menu board,
(08:12):
right? Because it's gonna be arepurposed, already pre packaged
phrase. So they're gonna look atthe menu board. And then they're
gonna just say it, I want theKyoto iced coffees or drip
coffee special. And then they'llsay price, or how much? The
person will say, you know, itcosts this much. And they'll
(08:33):
say, Okay, thank you. The personwill ask them, you know, do you
need anything else? And they'regonna be like, what? Anything
else, and it's gonna be a littleawkward. And they'll say coffee,
and the person who's talking tothem will get it like, oh, okay,
you you need a little bit helpwith your language. You ordered
cool. Okay, here's how much itcosts. And then they'll, you
(08:56):
know, they'll do some gesturesto exchange the currency. And
then they'll be on their way.
But they'll be good. They'll beable to do it. It'll be clumsy,
cute and awkward, though. That'show you know their novice high.
Another way that you know theirnovice high, because you can't
always judge that type ofcircumstance or scenario,
(09:17):
because there's not a lot ofexchange happening in your in
your classroom, there's plentyof social situations, but they
they must be straightforward.
Okay, it can't be somethinglike, you're going to go meet
with a neighbor and ask them forsomething like. It needs to be
straightforward. People thatthey're familiar with,
interacting with words thatthey're familiar and words that
are familiar to them, and thingsthat they've used before, things
(09:40):
where they can draw on theirmemorized phrases, their pre
packaged phrases, as I like tocall them, you know, like it's
that breakfast burrito ready togo. You just rip off the label
and put it in the microwave.
Their brain cooks it and it'sready to go. Those are the types
of phrases that your novicehighs will be comfortable with,
but they'll. Getting real fancywith it at novice high because
(10:02):
they'll start to recombine. Solet's say that you have these
magical novice High students inyour in your level two or in the
beginning of your level threecourse. There's a lot of people
in level three courses that arenovice highs. Okay, they're not
intermediate yet. They might bereaching with a lot of these
skills. But here's why we thinkthey're intermediate when
(10:23):
they're actually not. Here'swhat's happening. So
intermediate, low, they'recooking their own meal, okay,
like they're scrambling theireggs. They're scrambling the
burritos, all of these, allthese are language components.
They're, they're, you know,they're mixing up the beans,
they're making good stuff.
They're chopping up the peppersand onions, and they know how to
mix it, and they're addingspices, because, you know, why
would you do anything withoutspices? And then they are making
(10:45):
a meal that's intermediate, lowand, you know, it's not perfect,
like they probably put in toomuch salt, like I usually do,
but it's still a nice, homecooked meal, delicious,
wonderful. Can't wait to dive inon that conversation, eat that
breakfast burrito. Your novicehighs cannot cook yet with
language. Okay? They are notcooking with fire. They are not
(11:07):
cooking with language. Here'swhat they're doing. They are
looking inside their brainfreezer, and they are pulling
out. I like this breakfastburrito, and I like this pre
packaged bacon, and I also like,you know, this lovely soy meat,
tofu, scrambly, Eggy thing. I'mgonna put all that together and
a piece of fruit. So they areliterally making one of the,
(11:29):
what, I don't know, whatever youcall it, but it's not cooking,
right? Like they're puttingstuff in a microwave and they're
pressing a button, but it lookslike a nice meal when you take
it out of the packaging. Like,oh, there's burrito. Oh, look,
there's some tofu, scrambledeggs right there. Oh, look at
that. You have some fruit. Butthe student didn't do any
cooking. They are justrearranging and recombining
phrases. If we're going withthis microwave analogy, why not?
(11:54):
Let's dive way down that road.
Novice lows don't know where themicrowave is, or what to put in
it. And frankly, they reallyneed to go grocery shopping, and
you're doing that for thembecause you're their language
parent. So you're filling upeverything in their freezer
being like, here's a bunch ofburritos. Here's some things
that you can eat for breakfast.
Here's some good stuff that youcan have for dinner. Okay, one
(12:14):
day you'll be able to feedyourself, and you'll be really
excited. Novice mids arestarting to look inside that
freezer and pull things outlinguistically and put it in the
microwave to make their mealtheir sentence. They're starting
to learn how to use themicrowave. Novice highs are
getting to the point where theycan, they can make a meal on
their own using a microwave, buteverything is pre packaged.
(12:38):
Okay? They're not cookinganything. There's no There's no
heat, there's no knivesinvolved. They're not ready for
that. So what does this looklike? It means that when it
comes time for you to have afinal exam, something like that,
maybe you're due, maybe you'reawesome, and you do some sort of
final portfolio, like I'm doingwith a curriculum client,
(12:59):
however you want to do this, butaround the time of this
recording is being released,like we're doing a lot of, you
know, end of year stuff, a lotof end of year exams. So let's
say that your novice highstudent is sitting down with you
to show you, to demonstrate toyou how much they've learned so
far this year, how much languagethey've acquired in a speaking
assessment, you ask them aquestion like, What do you like
(13:22):
to do on the weekends? They knowthe question, they understand
your question, and they're ableto answer your question with
things that they've alreadylearned in class and things that
they can recombine. They'repulling out the burritos from
the freezer, the bacon from theother side of the freezer and
the scrambled egg tofu thing,okay? And they can put it
(13:44):
together to make a meal. Whenyou ask it, they can say things
like, I like basketball on theweekends. And if they're really,
you know, on it, I like to playbasketball on the weekends. And
they may also say, I also likegoing to the movies. And so when
you start to ask for moredetails, like, wow, tell me
(14:06):
more. Who do you go to themovies with? They'll start
giving you some answers. Theymight say, I go with my mom. And
you might say, like, cool. Whatdid you see? And then that might
be where the conversation stops.
They might be like, uh, thatbecause that's the you're
(14:27):
starting to get into creativelanguage. Like, what did you
see? They're gonna have to,they're gonna have to go with, I
saw. And then, you know,remember the title, all that
good stuff. And creativelanguage won't be there for them
yet, especially if they've neverheard the word I see before, or
that phrase, like the inSpanish, or like je Vu in
(14:48):
French. So if you're asking themin the they also novice highs. A
huge marker of this is that ininterpersonal interactions,
they're going to hang on fordear life and borrow. Everything
that you use in the question,everything that you use in the
conversation to create theirlanguage. So a very or not
create, recombine. So a verycommon trait of novice highs is
(15:11):
they willtake the question that you've
already given them, such as,What movie did you see, and in
order to try and answer yourquestion, they'll say, you see,
Aladdin, they'll use the phrasesthat you just gave them in an
effort to try and put them intotheir freezer and cook them
(15:32):
really quickly. But they won'tbe able to make creative
language. So I hope that thoseexamples help to clarify. Like,
okay, that's, yeah, I understandwhere we're at. Like, that's
some of my students. Some of mystudents over here can start to
do creative language, but notthey can't consistently hold it
over time. That's how, you know.
Let's look at some moreindicators on here. I'm going to
(15:54):
check my notes and make surethat we covered everything. We
definitely looked at some, somenice examples. But something
else to keep in mind with yournovice highs, I want to make
sure that we really understandthis, because, again, this is
where most of you are going tospend. This is where you're
going to spend the majority ofyour careers. Working with
novice highs. They canunderstand and react to most of
(16:15):
the questions. As long asthey're about straightforward
everyday things, they can alsoconfidently respond, especially
if you give them requests thatthey're used to hearing a lot,
they can respond to those. Andthey will start to combine
phrases. They'll start toconnect memorize phrases.
They'll start to useconjunctions. And their their
thoughts will start to havelogical sequence to them. So
(16:36):
what you'll start seeing is thatwith novice highs, whenever you
ask them to write something thatis on the lengthier side, for a
language learner, such as, youknow, five sentences, or, you
know, speaking about themselvesor something else for more than,
like, 10 seconds at a clip, thenthey will be able to organize
those ideas. There will be abeginning, middle and end, and
(17:00):
that's also something that youcan help coach them on. They
will also have a presence oftransition words, and they'll
have conjunctions, and they willhave some nice organization of
thought. The best part, though,is that you'll see with novice
highs that they have strongability to converse with peers
(17:21):
for short bursts, so it doesn'tlast long. They might be able to
banter like back and forth onceor twice. So keep that in mind
with your interpersonalactivities, that once you get to
question two, that might be allyou can do, but as long as
they're about simple, extremelyfamiliar topics, the same things
that you're talking about innovice low and novice mid those
(17:42):
everyday routine I see thisobject, this person, this place,
or this thing multiple times aday. They'll be good. They'll be
able to handle that. They alsocan spontaneously produce a
rejoinder or some sort ofreaction or emote in the
language. It won't beconsistent, but they can do it,
(18:02):
and that's how you know thatthey're novice high is that it's
starting to happen more and morefrequently when it comes to
conversation, when it comes tointerpretive listening and
interpretive reading, they'll beable to read interpretively at a
pretty high level. So those whoare at in presentational terms
or in speaking terms at novicehigh their reading comprehension
(18:23):
is much higher. So you can givethem materials for an
intermediate low or for even anintermediate, mid student, and
they'll be pretty comfortablewith it. They want they'll be
able to tell you less and lessthe higher it goes, but they'll
be comfortable with it. They'llbe fine. You don't need to
always give them things at thenovice high level, because what
students can read is vastcompared to what they can say.
(18:47):
And of course, all that readingand input is going to just
explode all of the thingsavailable to them in their
lexical dictionary. Or as thefun analogy that we've been
using, their freezer full oflittle language burritos. You
will also see a novice side thatsome students will start to move
into a two paragraph range.
However, they're probably justusing recycled, recycled,
(19:09):
recycled language. This used tohappen all the time. In my
Spanish two class, where wewould be we would have some sort
of writing prompt about dailyroutines. You know, tell me
about your daily routine. Tellme a couple things, and they'd
be able to list, list, list,list, list, list, like a like a
mofo, like they would be setthey'd be able to tell me a lot
of different things about whatthey do every day. But guess
(19:31):
what? All of those sentences hadthe exact same structure. If all
of your sentences that you'rereceiving from a student, even
if the paragraph is ratherlengthy, or even if the speech
has a good duration to it and agood fluency to it, if all of it
has the same structure, that isa big indicator to you that the
student is at novice high whatthey're doing is they are using
(19:55):
that familiar structure, theonly one that they know, the
only. One that they feelcomfortable using, and they can,
you know, they can explore andwork with it and use different
vocabulary terms to expressdifferent ideas, but they're
never going to express them indifferent ways. That's how you
know they're novice. High lengthdoes not determine a student's
ability to jump between levels.
(20:19):
Let's think of a better way tosay that, a better way to say
that is that the length ofdiscourse doesn't necessarily
indicate a difference inproficiency levels. So if you
have a student who's doing veryrepetitive work, it's not a bad
thing. It's actually wonderful,because they are producing for
(20:40):
you, but because there's novariation in the structures,
then that's indicating to youthat they're at a novice hat.
They can also sometimes be anovice mid who are just, you
know, using the same plug instarter sentence and then just
changing the thing that they'retalking about. That happens a
lot. How you know that theirintermediate low is that not
only do they have organizationof idea, not only do they have
(21:03):
sequence, but they're startingto become creative with their
language. And we're going totalk more about that when it
gets to intermediate, low. Whenit comes to the magic word in
the in the language teachingcommunity, I say magic word
sarcastically because I'm not ahuge fan of it. But when it
comes to errors, errors, let'sall be reminded as well that
(21:24):
errors is defined in secondlanguage acquisition as a non
native utterance, which meansthat right off the bat, if
native speakers are using it,guess what? It's grammatical.
Doesn't really matter if itruffles your feathers. It will
indicate, you know, differentsociolinguistic undertones, but
(21:50):
anything that a native speakerwould use is grammatical under
the definition of research basedsecond language acquisition,
that's how we define it in thelanguage sphere. So it doesn't
always necessarily mean that thelanguage is neat or tidy. All of
the language that I'm using isvery much so native speaker
(22:12):
English, but there's a lot oftimes where I'll use slang, or
things where, you know, lettersare dropped off and things like
that, so important to note thatyour novice highs will have a
couple minor spelling, wordorder, morphology, all of that
(22:35):
sentence structure. They'll havea couple of those minor errors.
It will be something that mightmake you go, Oh, okay, and then
you move on. If it really ismake it is making the sentence
twist it up, that's when youneed to pay attention to it. But
if it's just oh, okay, I'm readyto move I think I understand
what they're saying, then you'regood.
(22:58):
Most importantlythings to remember about novice
highs is that they have a lotmore vocabulary to work with,
because if we're thinking aboutthe cone, the cone of
excellence, from actful theyare, they're getting a lot
higher in the cone. So thereason that you will be working
with novice highs for themajority of your career. Lucky
(23:18):
you. Novice highs are amazing isbecause it takes quite a while
to fill up that cup. You'regoing to just keep adding new
words, new structures, newthings to their toolkit, new
things for them to use. Andthat's a good thing. We want to
give them that time to grow anddevelop and master all the new
things that are being added totheir Chalice of excellence
(23:41):
according to act fall. So don'trush it. It's okay for students
to hang out in novice high for awhile. They might even hang out
in novice high until level fourin your program or year four of
your program. That's fine. Theyalso may be reaching into
intermediate low, but they mightnot be able to consistently
produce the work required of anintermediate low and that is a
(24:04):
whole nother thing. We'll talkmore about that in the
intermediate low episode. Butfor now, I hope you have a much
deeper understanding of thestudents that will be in your
room for the majority of yourprogram. You know, like the end
of level one up through four,even if you are working in a
traditional high school system,and if you're not there, you
(24:24):
could have novice highs in yourprogram for up to four years.
You might have some that areready in level two, and you
might have some that are readyin level three, and you might
have some that are ready inlevel four. It has so much to do
with the quality of the inputthat you're giving them the
amount of seat time that theyhave with you and the amount of
input driven seat time, thetypes of activities that they're
(24:47):
working with, the balancebetween explicit grammar
instruction versus the amount ofinput driven instruction that
they're being given. And mostimportantly, they're.
Motivation. Their motivation isa huge part of this puzzle. So
let the novice highs be novicehighs for as long as their
novice highs, and when it istime to acknowledge that
(25:09):
intermediate low, that's whenwe'll address it. Thanks so much
for being here. Give thispodcast a rating so that other
people can find it and earn someawesome karma points for it. You
can also now text the podcast.
So check out the informationbelow, because I'd love to hear
questions and comments from youabout what should our next
(25:32):
series of episodes be? I'vealready got a nice collection of
some teacher questions from thattext feature and from Instagram,
DMS, things like that, so I'mreally excited to bring those to
you, but for now, I'll see youin the next episode where we
start talking about intermediatelows.
Ciao.
What's up? Ken, OK, a saluteworld language teachers. Welcome
(00:05):
to the practical proficiencypodcast, where we make the
transition to proficiencyoriented instruction in your
world language class in a waythat works for you your unique
context and teaching style anddoesn't sacrifice your well
being along the way. I'm yourhost, Devon Gunning the teacher,
(00:25):
author conference, host,curriculum creator and
consultant behind la liberlanguage learning. This podcast
is for the creative worldlanguage teacher like you who's
ready to ditch the overwhelmingpressure of switching to
acquisition driven instructionand CI overnight, you're ready
to discover how using moretarget language in class can
(00:47):
actually bring you and yourstudents more joy, instead of
adding to your plate withpractical, authentic and down to
earth strategies that don'trequire reinventing the wheel or
more training. We'll worktogether towards the magic of
the community based targetlanguage rich classroom rooted
(01:08):
in the power of community andcomprehensible input. Let's go,
Hey, practical world languageteachers,
we're back with our seriesthat's investigating celebrating
and exploring exactly whatlevels your students are at.
(01:28):
Let's meet them where they're atand understand that whatever
language that they're producingis more of an indicator of what
level they are and what theyneed to reach the next level,
rather than coming at it fromany kind of deficit point of
view, and instead focusing onwhat they can do with language.
And let's make that very clear,language for teachers as well,
(01:53):
today's episode is novice high.
So we're gonna get to know thearea of levels really that
you're gonna spend the most timewith students novice high covers
for anything from the end of alevel one class or your your
introductory class, this couldbe your ninth grade core class
(02:13):
for French, or anything Inbetween, if it could also be
perhaps the second year of yourprogram, but many students will
start to reach into novice highat the end of a first year
program. Not all, but some will,and the way that you can tell is
by the following markers thatI'm about to give you. However,
(02:36):
people hang out at novice highfor a long time in the middle
school, high school system, orfor our international listeners,
for the age range of if you'vegot anywhere from 10 year olds
to 18 year olds, they're goingto hang out in the novice high
range for a little bit due tothe limited amount of exposure
that we have with them to givethem more input, to bump them up
(02:59):
that level. So without furtherado, let's dive in. Let's talk
about novice highs, the onesthat you're going to hang out
with the most, because you'reprobably going to have people at
a novice high level. This isalso, I would caution, the first
area that people usually mess upwith their programs is they rush
people through levels. They rushtheir students through levels.
(03:20):
That is because we often feelthat our novice low, previous
episode has to be, you know, thefirst part of level one, and
they get and then we get tonovice mid, and then in our
second year program, or ourlevel two class, then we
automatically assume, like theseguys should be at novice high.
(03:40):
And instead of meeting studentswhere they're at, we say they
should be novice high, and wejust continually give them
novice high tasks, even ifthey're not quite there yet. And
then when they get to levelthree, we're like, cool, they're
intermediate. That is, whoa,whoa, whoa, slow down. That is
not how this happens. And Ithink that when we discover and
talk about in detail whatnovice, high learners can do,
(04:04):
we'll realize that it's not thatwe've been pushing unfair
expectations onto students interms of how we grade them and
what we expect them to do inclass. We've been unfairly
labeling them so then when welook to our standards for either
actful or CEFR, because novicehigh will line up with the end
of a, one, the beginning of b2,I would say, without, with, not
(04:27):
having much familiarity myselfwith CEFR, I'm just starting my
journey with CEFR, but, andthat's for our international
listeners, but For teachers inthe US setting with act full
specifically, we're working innovice high quite a bit, and we
are and using those proficiencydescriptors, performance
(04:51):
indicators, all of that in orderto guide our assessments and our
programs. So we need tounderstand them. So. But in all
fairness, they're not exactly inteacher friendly language. So
that's where I come in. Let's dothis. Novice high is my favorite
I'm not gonna lie, novice highis my favorite spot for students
to be at. This is where Icertainly spent the most time in
(05:11):
my career, and where I love tosee students start to jump and
make the leap into their nextstage. This is also a very
familiar area for you, becausestudents at this stage are doing
a lot of the things that youhope they would be able to do by
the end of your program,especially if you only see them
for two to three years, stufflike they can comfortably,
(05:34):
albeit awkward, handle astraightforward social situation
that is straight out of act fullthat with the new 2024
performance indicators andproficiency guidelines, we are
seeing strict indicators of thisis exactly what novice highs can
(05:56):
do, And that is directly fromfrom actual that your novice
highs will be able to handlestraightforward social
situations. What is astraightforward social situation
I'm talking about? They come upto you in your class and they
need something, and they can askyou in the target language for
what they need. It's not goingto be pretty. You're going to
(06:18):
need to rephrase, and you'regoing to need to see a few check
for understanding and work forclarification and work for
shared meaning, which is, ofcourse, a linguistic competency
in itself. So the moreopportunities you give for
students to fumble over theirwords, it's actually awesome.
It's building their linguisticcompetency in more than just the
word part, right? So when theycome up to your desk and they
(06:43):
ask for something that theyneed, they're having a hard time
with it, you're filling in thegaps, and you're asking for
clarification and working withthem, and then you eventually
reach a shared moment ofcommunication, a shared
understanding of, Oh, you wantto go to the nurse, right? And
then they say, Yes, exactly, Ineed the nurse. Because they
(07:06):
probably won't remember thenurse, the word for nurse all
the time, right? But thatexchange, that interaction, they
can handle, that they can dothat your novice lows and your
novice mids will not be able tohandle that. Your novice mids
are going to come up to yourdesk and be like, I need and
they're gonna gesture andthey'll say, you know, leave,
(07:28):
leave. And you're gonna have towork a lot harder to come to any
kind of shared understanding.
But with your novice highs,it'll be a little awkward. They
might have to use some skillsfrom their first language in
order to get there, but you'llbe able to come to some shared
communicative understanding of,oh, you need the nurse. And
(07:51):
they'll say, Yes, I need nurse.
So it'll be a little clumsy, alittle awkward. Another example
of this is they could buysomething. So they're gonna go
to the store and say, pretendthis is a coffee that they just
bought. They're gonna go to acoffee shop in Japan, and
they're gonna say, I want theKyoto iced coffee special. And
they're literally, they're justreading off the menu board,
(08:12):
right? Because it's gonna be arepurposed, already pre packaged
phrase. So they're gonna look atthe menu board. And then they're
gonna just say it, I want theKyoto iced coffees or drip
coffee special. And then they'llsay price, or how much? The
person will say, you know, itcosts this much. And they'll
(08:33):
say, Okay, thank you. The personwill ask them, you know, do you
need anything else? And they'regonna be like, what? Anything
else, and it's gonna be a littleawkward. And they'll say coffee,
and the person who's talking tothem will get it like, oh, okay,
you you need a little bit helpwith your language. You ordered
cool. Okay, here's how much itcosts. And then they'll, you
(08:56):
know, they'll do some gesturesto exchange the currency. And
then they'll be on their way.
But they'll be good. They'll beable to do it. It'll be clumsy,
cute and awkward, though. That'show you know their novice high.
Another way that you know theirnovice high, because you can't
always judge that type ofcircumstance or scenario,
(09:17):
because there's not a lot ofexchange happening in your in
your classroom, there's plentyof social situations, but they
they must be straightforward.
Okay, it can't be somethinglike, you're going to go meet
with a neighbor and ask them forsomething like. It needs to be
straightforward. People thatthey're familiar with,
interacting with words thatthey're familiar and words that
are familiar to them, and thingsthat they've used before, things
(09:40):
where they can draw on theirmemorized phrases, their pre
packaged phrases, as I like tocall them, you know, like it's
that breakfast burrito ready togo. You just rip off the label
and put it in the microwave.
Their brain cooks it and it'sready to go. Those are the types
of phrases that your novicehighs will be comfortable with,
but they'll. Getting real fancywith it at novice high because
(10:02):
they'll start to recombine. Solet's say that you have these
magical novice High students inyour in your level two or in the
beginning of your level threecourse. There's a lot of people
in level three courses that arenovice highs. Okay, they're not
intermediate yet. They might bereaching with a lot of these
skills. But here's why we thinkthey're intermediate when
(10:23):
they're actually not. Here'swhat's happening. So
intermediate, low, they'recooking their own meal, okay,
like they're scrambling theireggs. They're scrambling the
burritos, all of these, allthese are language components.
They're, they're, you know,they're mixing up the beans,
they're making good stuff.
They're chopping up the peppersand onions, and they know how to
mix it, and they're addingspices, because, you know, why
would you do anything withoutspices? And then they are making
(10:45):
a meal that's intermediate, lowand, you know, it's not perfect,
like they probably put in toomuch salt, like I usually do,
but it's still a nice, homecooked meal, delicious,
wonderful. Can't wait to dive inon that conversation, eat that
breakfast burrito. Your novicehighs cannot cook yet with
language. Okay? They are notcooking with fire. They are not
(11:07):
cooking with language. Here'swhat they're doing. They are
looking inside their brainfreezer, and they are pulling
out. I like this breakfastburrito, and I like this pre
packaged bacon, and I also like,you know, this lovely soy meat,
tofu, scrambly, Eggy thing. I'mgonna put all that together and
a piece of fruit. So they areliterally making one of the,
(11:29):
what, I don't know, whatever youcall it, but it's not cooking,
right? Like they're puttingstuff in a microwave and they're
pressing a button, but it lookslike a nice meal when you take
it out of the packaging. Like,oh, there's burrito. Oh, look,
there's some tofu, scrambledeggs right there. Oh, look at
that. You have some fruit. Butthe student didn't do any
cooking. They are justrearranging and recombining
phrases. If we're going withthis microwave analogy, why not?
(11:54):
Let's dive way down that road.
Novice lows don't know where themicrowave is, or what to put in
it. And frankly, they reallyneed to go grocery shopping, and
you're doing that for thembecause you're their language
parent. So you're filling upeverything in their freezer
being like, here's a bunch ofburritos. Here's some things
that you can eat for breakfast.
Here's some good stuff that youcan have for dinner. Okay, one
(12:14):
day you'll be able to feedyourself, and you'll be really
excited. Novice mids arestarting to look inside that
freezer and pull things outlinguistically and put it in the
microwave to make their mealtheir sentence. They're starting
to learn how to use themicrowave. Novice highs are
getting to the point where theycan, they can make a meal on
their own using a microwave, buteverything is pre packaged.
(12:38):
Okay? They're not cookinganything. There's no There's no
heat, there's no knivesinvolved. They're not ready for
that. So what does this looklike? It means that when it
comes time for you to have afinal exam, something like that,
maybe you're due, maybe you'reawesome, and you do some sort of
final portfolio, like I'm doingwith a curriculum client,
(12:59):
however you want to do this, butaround the time of this
recording is being released,like we're doing a lot of, you
know, end of year stuff, a lotof end of year exams. So let's
say that your novice highstudent is sitting down with you
to show you, to demonstrate toyou how much they've learned so
far this year, how much languagethey've acquired in a speaking
assessment, you ask them aquestion like, What do you like
(13:22):
to do on the weekends? They knowthe question, they understand
your question, and they're ableto answer your question with
things that they've alreadylearned in class and things that
they can recombine. They'repulling out the burritos from
the freezer, the bacon from theother side of the freezer and
the scrambled egg tofu thing,okay? And they can put it
(13:44):
together to make a meal. Whenyou ask it, they can say things
like, I like basketball on theweekends. And if they're really,
you know, on it, I like to playbasketball on the weekends. And
they may also say, I also likegoing to the movies. And so when
you start to ask for moredetails, like, wow, tell me
(14:06):
more. Who do you go to themovies with? They'll start
giving you some answers. Theymight say, I go with my mom. And
you might say, like, cool. Whatdid you see? And then that might
be where the conversation stops.
They might be like, uh, thatbecause that's the you're
(14:27):
starting to get into creativelanguage. Like, what did you
see? They're gonna have to,they're gonna have to go with, I
saw. And then, you know,remember the title, all that
good stuff. And creativelanguage won't be there for them
yet, especially if they've neverheard the word I see before, or
that phrase, like the inSpanish, or like je Vu in
(14:48):
French. So if you're asking themin the they also novice highs. A
huge marker of this is that ininterpersonal interactions,
they're going to hang on fordear life and borrow. Everything
that you use in the question,everything that you use in the
conversation to create theirlanguage. So a very or not
create, recombine. So a verycommon trait of novice highs is
(15:11):
they willtake the question that you've
already given them, such as,What movie did you see, and in
order to try and answer yourquestion, they'll say, you see,
Aladdin, they'll use the phrasesthat you just gave them in an
effort to try and put them intotheir freezer and cook them
(15:32):
really quickly. But they won'tbe able to make creative
language. So I hope that thoseexamples help to clarify. Like,
okay, that's, yeah, I understandwhere we're at. Like, that's
some of my students. Some of mystudents over here can start to
do creative language, but notthey can't consistently hold it
over time. That's how, you know.
Let's look at some moreindicators on here. I'm going to
(15:54):
check my notes and make surethat we covered everything. We
definitely looked at some, somenice examples. But something
else to keep in mind with yournovice highs, I want to make
sure that we really understandthis, because, again, this is
where most of you are going tospend. This is where you're
going to spend the majority ofyour careers. Working with
novice highs. They canunderstand and react to most of
(16:15):
the questions. As long asthey're about straightforward
everyday things, they can alsoconfidently respond, especially
if you give them requests thatthey're used to hearing a lot,
they can respond to those. Andthey will start to combine
phrases. They'll start toconnect memorize phrases.
They'll start to useconjunctions. And their their
thoughts will start to havelogical sequence to them. So
(16:36):
what you'll start seeing is thatwith novice highs, whenever you
ask them to write something thatis on the lengthier side, for a
language learner, such as, youknow, five sentences, or, you
know, speaking about themselvesor something else for more than,
like, 10 seconds at a clip, thenthey will be able to organize
those ideas. There will be abeginning, middle and end, and
(17:00):
that's also something that youcan help coach them on. They
will also have a presence oftransition words, and they'll
have conjunctions, and they willhave some nice organization of
thought. The best part, though,is that you'll see with novice
highs that they have strongability to converse with peers
(17:21):
for short bursts, so it doesn'tlast long. They might be able to
banter like back and forth onceor twice. So keep that in mind
with your interpersonalactivities, that once you get to
question two, that might be allyou can do, but as long as
they're about simple, extremelyfamiliar topics, the same things
that you're talking about innovice low and novice mid those
(17:42):
everyday routine I see thisobject, this person, this place,
or this thing multiple times aday. They'll be good. They'll be
able to handle that. They alsocan spontaneously produce a
rejoinder or some sort ofreaction or emote in the
language. It won't beconsistent, but they can do it,
(18:02):
and that's how you know thatthey're novice high is that it's
starting to happen more and morefrequently when it comes to
conversation, when it comes tointerpretive listening and
interpretive reading, they'll beable to read interpretively at a
pretty high level. So those whoare at in presentational terms
or in speaking terms at novicehigh their reading comprehension
(18:23):
is much higher. So you can givethem materials for an
intermediate low or for even anintermediate, mid student, and
they'll be pretty comfortablewith it. They want they'll be
able to tell you less and lessthe higher it goes, but they'll
be comfortable with it. They'llbe fine. You don't need to
always give them things at thenovice high level, because what
students can read is vastcompared to what they can say.
(18:47):
And of course, all that readingand input is going to just
explode all of the thingsavailable to them in their
lexical dictionary. Or as thefun analogy that we've been
using, their freezer full oflittle language burritos. You
will also see a novice side thatsome students will start to move
into a two paragraph range.
However, they're probably justusing recycled, recycled,
(19:09):
recycled language. This used tohappen all the time. In my
Spanish two class, where wewould be we would have some sort
of writing prompt about dailyroutines. You know, tell me
about your daily routine. Tellme a couple things, and they'd
be able to list, list, list,list, list, list, like a like a
mofo, like they would be setthey'd be able to tell me a lot
of different things about whatthey do every day. But guess
(19:31):
what? All of those sentences hadthe exact same structure. If all
of your sentences that you'rereceiving from a student, even
if the paragraph is ratherlengthy, or even if the speech
has a good duration to it and agood fluency to it, if all of it
has the same structure, that isa big indicator to you that the
student is at novice high whatthey're doing is they are using
(19:55):
that familiar structure, theonly one that they know, the
only. One that they feelcomfortable using, and they can,
you know, they can explore andwork with it and use different
vocabulary terms to expressdifferent ideas, but they're
never going to express them indifferent ways. That's how you
know they're novice. High lengthdoes not determine a student's
ability to jump between levels.
(20:19):
Let's think of a better way tosay that, a better way to say
that is that the length ofdiscourse doesn't necessarily
indicate a difference inproficiency levels. So if you
have a student who's doing veryrepetitive work, it's not a bad
thing. It's actually wonderful,because they are producing for
(20:40):
you, but because there's novariation in the structures,
then that's indicating to youthat they're at a novice hat.
They can also sometimes be anovice mid who are just, you
know, using the same plug instarter sentence and then just
changing the thing that they'retalking about. That happens a
lot. How you know that theirintermediate low is that not
only do they have organizationof idea, not only do they have
(21:03):
sequence, but they're startingto become creative with their
language. And we're going totalk more about that when it
gets to intermediate, low. Whenit comes to the magic word in
the in the language teachingcommunity, I say magic word
sarcastically because I'm not ahuge fan of it. But when it
comes to errors, errors, let'sall be reminded as well that
(21:24):
errors is defined in secondlanguage acquisition as a non
native utterance, which meansthat right off the bat, if
native speakers are using it,guess what? It's grammatical.
Doesn't really matter if itruffles your feathers. It will
indicate, you know, differentsociolinguistic undertones, but
(21:50):
anything that a native speakerwould use is grammatical under
the definition of research basedsecond language acquisition,
that's how we define it in thelanguage sphere. So it doesn't
always necessarily mean that thelanguage is neat or tidy. All of
the language that I'm using isvery much so native speaker
(22:12):
English, but there's a lot oftimes where I'll use slang, or
things where, you know, lettersare dropped off and things like
that, so important to note thatyour novice highs will have a
couple minor spelling, wordorder, morphology, all of that
(22:35):
sentence structure. They'll havea couple of those minor errors.
It will be something that mightmake you go, Oh, okay, and then
you move on. If it really ismake it is making the sentence
twist it up, that's when youneed to pay attention to it. But
if it's just oh, okay, I'm readyto move I think I understand
what they're saying, then you'regood.
(22:58):
Most importantlythings to remember about novice
highs is that they have a lotmore vocabulary to work with,
because if we're thinking aboutthe cone, the cone of
excellence, from actful theyare, they're getting a lot
higher in the cone. So thereason that you will be working
with novice highs for themajority of your career. Lucky
(23:18):
you. Novice highs are amazing isbecause it takes quite a while
to fill up that cup. You'regoing to just keep adding new
words, new structures, newthings to their toolkit, new
things for them to use. Andthat's a good thing. We want to
give them that time to grow anddevelop and master all the new
things that are being added totheir Chalice of excellence
(23:41):
according to act fall. So don'trush it. It's okay for students
to hang out in novice high for awhile. They might even hang out
in novice high until level fourin your program or year four of
your program. That's fine. Theyalso may be reaching into
intermediate low, but they mightnot be able to consistently
produce the work required of anintermediate low and that is a
(24:04):
whole nother thing. We'll talkmore about that in the
intermediate low episode. Butfor now, I hope you have a much
deeper understanding of thestudents that will be in your
room for the majority of yourprogram. You know, like the end
of level one up through four,even if you are working in a
traditional high school system,and if you're not there, you
(24:24):
could have novice highs in yourprogram for up to four years.
You might have some that areready in level two, and you
might have some that are readyin level three, and you might
have some that are ready inlevel four. It has so much to do
with the quality of the inputthat you're giving them the
amount of seat time that theyhave with you and the amount of
input driven seat time, thetypes of activities that they're
(24:47):
working with, the balancebetween explicit grammar
instruction versus the amount ofinput driven instruction that
they're being given. And mostimportantly, they're.
Motivation. Their motivation isa huge part of this puzzle. So
let the novice highs be novicehighs for as long as their
novice highs, and when it istime to acknowledge that
(25:09):
intermediate low, that's whenwe'll address it. Thanks so much
for being here. Give thispodcast a rating so that other
people can find it and earn someawesome karma points for it. You
can also now text the podcast.
So check out the informationbelow, because I'd love to hear
questions and comments from youabout what should our next
(25:32):
series of episodes be? I'vealready got a nice collection of
some teacher questions from thattext feature and from Instagram,
DMS, things like that, so I'mreally excited to bring those to
you, but for now, I'll see youin the next episode where we
start talking about intermediatelows.
Ciao.
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