March 1st
was the end of my first “free” long-term (16-week) course. By
“free,” I mean that it was my first course where I was given
complete control of the content, materials, syllabus design, and
activities. Basically, no material was provided, and the content was
expected to be based on the needs of the students.
In the
last session (after the goodbye-party murder mystery game, of
course), I spent some time getting feedback from the students about
what I should work to improve for the next group of students. What
things did they like? What things did they think were boring? What
did I not include enough of? What should I skip next time?
They were
very friendly in their feedback and told me that I was their favorite
teacher ever (which I appreciate, because I worked my booty off for
that class). I was very surprised, however, at their unanimous
criticism (but I was also very grateful for it, because it was
something I would not have independently realized).
And the
criticism was....(drum roll)....
NOT ENOUGH VOCABULARY.
It really
surprised me. First of all, I remember drilling vocabulary as a
Spanish student, and I also remember how much I hated it. Second, I'm
currently at the stage in language learning (for German) where
grammar seems like the most important thing. It seems that I've
forgotten that in my years as an advanced Spanish learner, the
grammar was all in my mind, and that it was the vocabulary that I
needed the most. As such, I can see that I've neglected a lot of
explicit vocabulary instruction in my teaching, in favor of
communicative grammar instruction.
On a side
note, as I was drafting this post, this quotation at the top of a
post from Teaching Cloggy Style resonated with me: While
without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary
nothing can be conveyed.”
So, in
the next few posts, I will be exploring different ways to enhance
vocabulary instruction and strategy training for my students (and for
myself as a language learner).
