I'm trying to get feedback from ESL teachers about a method I've devised, and am planning to test, to easily and pleasurably learn to read and learn vocabulary in/of another language.
Go take a look at:
http://bbs.chinadaily.com.cn/forumpost. ... pid=217372
And tell me what you think?
There has also been research done in China with this method ...
http://journals.cambridge.org/bin/blade ... 8402001049
DISCUSSION
More than five years of experimentation with the sandwich method in Guangdong and Fujian has met with general approval. Teachers and parents are happy to see the young learners, after class, spend more time listening to their English recordings and reading their English books. And they have noticed a remarkable difference between ‘sandwich class’ pupils and ‘non-sandwich class’ pupils in the degree of willingness to use English in their everyday conversations. ‘They never open their mouths’ is a frequently heard complaint from parents of ‘non-sandwich class’ children.
From the responses collected from 107 pupils’ parents who completed our questionnaire (see Panel 2) on the relationship between method/textbooks and children’s interest in EFL, we found children enjoyed SSM more than other methods/textbooks. The accompanying table shows the difference between SSM and X. (X stands for other methods/textbooks, whose names, for ethical reasons, are not mentioned here.)
However, doubt has been raised about the legitimacy of this method in terms of authenticity. There are indeed people ‘who fear that taking such liberties can only lead to a ‘pidginized’ corruption of the authentic language’ (Blair, 1991, p.30). After all, a sentence such as ‘I want to chi diao ni ‘(Ji, 1998a), where chi diao ni means ‘eat you up’ in Mandarin, is anything but authentic. But the sandwichmethod experimenters in China are encouraged by the following three facts:
1. The pupils are happy and so are their parents, who are often heard to say that the new methodology gives their children far more than just English and a positive feeling towards English.
2. The pupils are enthusiastic about piecing together the bits of English they learn from the sandwich stories. Sentences like “I want to go to bed,” “I don’t like Sly Fox,” and “My father is tall and strong,” are created and produced as whole chunks by the pupils who have not learnt them in previous sandwich stories yet.
3. Some of the pupils have happily crossed the sandwich bridge to a new world of storyland where mono-lingual EFL stories are provided with a beginning vocabulary of 700–1,000 words (Ji 2000).
There are also teachers who question the prospect of developing children’s communicative competence through sandwich stories. However, our sandwich experiments seem to have confirmed the following three arguments:
1. Since sandwich stories are motivating, children learn the embedded EFL items with ease and in large quantities. As children acquire more and more words and their sentences grow from sandwich to monolingual (completely in English), and from short to long, their ability to express themselves in English increases. As to communication, it should not be regarded as something that Chinese children have to learn afresh. They know, for example, how to be polite, how to get information, how to persuade others, how to describe, how to introduce themselves. It is English words and ways of putting words together that they don’t know. With words well understood and practiced, they certainly know how to do things with words. Their initial English sentences might not be idiomatic or native-like, being stripped of grammatical morphemes and function words similar to the first sentences produced by their English-speaking (though younger) counterparts, but they are never far from their communicative intent, be it a request, apology, command or exclamation.
2. Stories to children are as real as, or even more real than, reality. They actively take part in dramatizing the stories they hear, prolonging and adding more details to the stories. They are highly motivated to talk and shout. This kind of talking, albeit in a sandwich way most of the time, is everything but artificial. It has both intent and content for communication, two of the most important components of communication (Harmer, 1982). If communicative competence is acquired best through communication, it follows that children stand a good chance of developing their English communicative competence through talking about and acting out their sandwich stories, in which the percentage of English increases till it reaches over 90 %.
3. Stories, no matter how old or how fictional, are the best vehicle for teaching everyday language. For example, much of the dialogue between the three little pigs and the men who carried straw, wood and bricks respectively, can be used by children when asking for help today. The same is true of the dialog between the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse when children express their likes and dislikes. Such examples are innumerable.
CONCLUSION
SSM seems to have done the ‘unlikely’ job (Jacobs & Tunnell, 1996:30) pretty well: making one book serve two masters. It has proved to be a practical solution to the problem of motivation in EFL education for children. Yet, we must admit that SSM serves only as a bridge. It is, however, a safe and happy bridge. At the other end of the bridge are stories written completely in English. Before children cross this bridge, they speak unidiomatic English, code-switching back and forth between Chinese and English. This may seem a fatal flaw in SSM. But, to continue with the metaphor, just as the function of a bridge is primarily to help travelers to go from one place to another without running the risk of being drowned, so it is the function of sandwich stories to help young learners of EFL go from monolingual (only Chinese) to bilingual (both Chinese and English) without any risk of having their interests killed by boredom and difficulty.
http://journals.cambridge.org/bin/blade ... 8402001049
Sandwich stories ... A way to study vocabulary and reading
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woodcutter
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fluffyhamster
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I haven't had time to read this thread and its links properly yet, but I will try to do so shortly, and respond soon thereafter.
Unless what you're saying is "total rubbish" (to paraphrase what a certain somebody often more or less says!
), atreju, I promise not to be silly like this here "woodcutter" fella is being - try to ignore him until I get back! 
Unless what you're saying is "total rubbish" (to paraphrase what a certain somebody often more or less says!
), atreju, I promise not to be silly like this here "woodcutter" fella is being - try to ignore him until I get back! -
woodcutter
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fluffyhamster
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).Yes, I’m feeling quite alright, woodcutter, thank you for asking! 
What do you think, woodcutter, fluffyhamster, and others, of this sandwich story methodology?
Can you think of some pros and, especially, cons?
From Ji's research in China:
The role of the mother tongue
The Sandwich-Story Method (SSM) makes good use of the mother tongue in EFL education for children. Through our experimentation, we have identified six roles that the mother tongue can play in EFL education for Chinese children, as follows:
1. It resolves the conflict between the young learner’s interests and the comprehensibility of the EFL input. Interest results from comprehension. It is impossible to get someone interested in listening to your story if s/he cannot understand you at all.
2. It brings about maximum class participation. Beginners hate activities that require them to speak only English. By allowing them to use their mother tongue whenever their English is inadequate, we ensure active class participation.
3. It enhances the young learner’s self-confidence. Children no longer suffer from the anxiety arising from their inability to express themselves completely in English.
4. It serves as a bridge to authentic English materials. The percentage of EFL in children’s ‘sandwich interlanguage’ keeps increasing.
5. It helps with the cognitive development of young learners. The Chinese and EFL lexicons within the brain of the young learner will be semantically and associationally linked and later integrated in a network, where the two lexical systems are connected both within and across the first and second languages through a language-independent conceptual representation.
6. It helps children to develop bilingually. Children benefit from sandwich stories in their development in both English and Chinese.
http://journals.cambridge.org/bin/blade ... 8402001049
What do you think, woodcutter, fluffyhamster, and others, of this sandwich story methodology?
Can you think of some pros and, especially, cons?
From Ji's research in China:
The role of the mother tongue
The Sandwich-Story Method (SSM) makes good use of the mother tongue in EFL education for children. Through our experimentation, we have identified six roles that the mother tongue can play in EFL education for Chinese children, as follows:
1. It resolves the conflict between the young learner’s interests and the comprehensibility of the EFL input. Interest results from comprehension. It is impossible to get someone interested in listening to your story if s/he cannot understand you at all.
2. It brings about maximum class participation. Beginners hate activities that require them to speak only English. By allowing them to use their mother tongue whenever their English is inadequate, we ensure active class participation.
3. It enhances the young learner’s self-confidence. Children no longer suffer from the anxiety arising from their inability to express themselves completely in English.
4. It serves as a bridge to authentic English materials. The percentage of EFL in children’s ‘sandwich interlanguage’ keeps increasing.
5. It helps with the cognitive development of young learners. The Chinese and EFL lexicons within the brain of the young learner will be semantically and associationally linked and later integrated in a network, where the two lexical systems are connected both within and across the first and second languages through a language-independent conceptual representation.
6. It helps children to develop bilingually. Children benefit from sandwich stories in their development in both English and Chinese.
http://journals.cambridge.org/bin/blade ... 8402001049
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woodcutter
- Posts: 1303
- Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 6:14 am
- Location: London
Harry Potter
Good Morning all.
The boy in the picture is obviously reading the latest Harry Potter novel. His parents send him to bed at eight, so he can't do any homework, but he can get his flashlight out and delve into that rivetting adventure which will lead him to adventurous dreams.
If he were not a green-eyed, tow-headed creature, I might say he was reading the Koran or the Torah, but that is obviously a blanket on his head and not a prayer shawl.
I once read Goethe's "Faust" in a version that put the English on the left page and the German on the right page. It was a curious experience, though I only looked at the German page from time to time, again because of curiosity. I was trying to decide at the time if I wanted to study German as a third language or not (already studying French) and yet, reading the poetic drama was more of an exercise in heavy-duty theatre than in linguistics. I finally did not study German.
This sandwich thing is probably more fluid than using the dictionary. I personally don't think students should be reading L2 until they have a good firm hold on the basics. In the case of English, even that doesn't help too much because of the metaphorical way in which English is used, especially in writing. I would certainly not use this sandwich reading in my own practice, either as a teacher or as a student of language. I prefer immersion type activities myself.
peace,
revel.
The boy in the picture is obviously reading the latest Harry Potter novel. His parents send him to bed at eight, so he can't do any homework, but he can get his flashlight out and delve into that rivetting adventure which will lead him to adventurous dreams.
If he were not a green-eyed, tow-headed creature, I might say he was reading the Koran or the Torah, but that is obviously a blanket on his head and not a prayer shawl.
I once read Goethe's "Faust" in a version that put the English on the left page and the German on the right page. It was a curious experience, though I only looked at the German page from time to time, again because of curiosity. I was trying to decide at the time if I wanted to study German as a third language or not (already studying French) and yet, reading the poetic drama was more of an exercise in heavy-duty theatre than in linguistics. I finally did not study German.
This sandwich thing is probably more fluid than using the dictionary. I personally don't think students should be reading L2 until they have a good firm hold on the basics. In the case of English, even that doesn't help too much because of the metaphorical way in which English is used, especially in writing. I would certainly not use this sandwich reading in my own practice, either as a teacher or as a student of language. I prefer immersion type activities myself.
peace,
revel.
You’re a sensible one, woodcutter!
The boy in the picture isn't reading Harry Potter, Revel, though he could be, he's reading about my adventures in Fantasia...
Revel, I tried that too, reading the English and French version of a book simultaneously. It didn’t work. That’s why I started reading children’s stories, with the dictionary handy, to mark the words I didn’t know. That did work.
From your post I think I see that your perspective on studying languages is diametrically opposed to mine, in one way. Allow me not to go into that now.
How do you like this reply:
Reading is a kind of immersion activity, and with sandwich stories you delete the chance of making from this immersion activity a submersion activity. Reading a sandwich story is spending hour upon hour soaking up comprehensible input, much more than you, the teacher, could hope to give otherwise.
To me the thing paramount in language study is comprehension, you see. The best way to comprehend things is to know what words have been said; the best way to know what words have been said is to know those words; the best way to learn those words is by encountering them in context with the definition readily available. Reading does that - if you bother to look in the dictionary when you see a word you don’t know - better than immersion classes, I think. When you’re just starting to study a language, however, you don’t have this source of input, sandwich stories help to bridge this gap; when you’ve read a couple of sandwich stories, you’ll know a couple of thousand of words and with that you can start to read books entirely in the language you’re studying.
After you've read some books entirely in the target language, say six months after you've started to study the language, you can work on your productive skills.
The boy in the picture isn't reading Harry Potter, Revel, though he could be, he's reading about my adventures in Fantasia...
Revel, I tried that too, reading the English and French version of a book simultaneously. It didn’t work. That’s why I started reading children’s stories, with the dictionary handy, to mark the words I didn’t know. That did work.
From your post I think I see that your perspective on studying languages is diametrically opposed to mine, in one way. Allow me not to go into that now.
How do you like this reply:
Reading is a kind of immersion activity, and with sandwich stories you delete the chance of making from this immersion activity a submersion activity. Reading a sandwich story is spending hour upon hour soaking up comprehensible input, much more than you, the teacher, could hope to give otherwise.
To me the thing paramount in language study is comprehension, you see. The best way to comprehend things is to know what words have been said; the best way to know what words have been said is to know those words; the best way to learn those words is by encountering them in context with the definition readily available. Reading does that - if you bother to look in the dictionary when you see a word you don’t know - better than immersion classes, I think. When you’re just starting to study a language, however, you don’t have this source of input, sandwich stories help to bridge this gap; when you’ve read a couple of sandwich stories, you’ll know a couple of thousand of words and with that you can start to read books entirely in the language you’re studying.
After you've read some books entirely in the target language, say six months after you've started to study the language, you can work on your productive skills.
Back to music
Good morning!
My guitar teacher gets frustrated with me and my overall sloth in reading music. When I download a piece from the internet I try to make sure it is noted not only with those little black dots (which I have been reading poorly since my first trumpet lessons at 8 years old) but also in tabulature. She and I both find that I am reading the tabulature exclusively, not even seeing the staff with the little black dots. Then she passes me a new song which does not have any tabulature and I note "fa, la, sol" over and under the little black dots to try to remember what note they represent on sight and she gets frustrated again, telling me that I need to recognize the little black dot in its own language, without the translation above or below it, because, as she is well right, my eye tends to see the word and not the dot when reading the music.
Reading was useful in learning Spanish (lots of Steven King and Dean R Koontz novels reread in the first year in Barcelona), maybe in part because Spanish can be read aloud from the text with little danger of acquiring bad pronunciation habits. Lots of useful vocabulary, sentences, expressions were gleaned from that work. When I could finally read Cien Años de Soledad in Spanish, feeling comfortable skipping over the words that didn't seem essential to overall understanding and enjoyment of the novel, I finally left reading aside as a vocabulary exercise and considered it the pleasurable activity in culture adquisition it can be.
It is true, at least to me, that unless a "word" is in a student's vocabulary pool, it will not be understood. But it is also true that unless the sound of that word is also in that pool, that word will not be understood aurally. The grammar or structure of English is pretty straightforward and should not cause difficulties in reading. Even phrasal verbs, idioms and good old metaphore should not cause greater difficulties if good dictionary skills are understood and used. If the objective of the student is to improve reading comprehension, perhaps this sandwich reading is helpful. Many doctors and businessmen only want to be able to read and write in English, leaving the speaking to such silly things as social occasions that occur between meetings where their better speaking colleagues handle the oral part.
How many times have I taken the written exercise away from my student and found that he/she does not recognize the same exercise aurally, even though that exercise has been practiced a dozen times? "Mr and Mrs Brown built a house in North Plains" suddenly sounds like Greek to the student! Reading is no doubt an important skill, students are more often alone than with their language teacher. And yet, how many times have I caught a student doing sentence six when I have clearly asked them to do sentence seven? They do sentence six because they have just done sentence five and are looking at the words, not listening to the words.
Naturally, my objectives are ruled by the work I do. I am a native teacher teaching in a country where the language being learned is not common, and so students expect me to be useful to them in speaking, not in reading. Teachers who cling too tightly to the text are not too popular in this situation. That may be where you see us as diametrically opposed, Atréju, though I suspect that we actually share a lot in our points of view.
peace,
revel.
My guitar teacher gets frustrated with me and my overall sloth in reading music. When I download a piece from the internet I try to make sure it is noted not only with those little black dots (which I have been reading poorly since my first trumpet lessons at 8 years old) but also in tabulature. She and I both find that I am reading the tabulature exclusively, not even seeing the staff with the little black dots. Then she passes me a new song which does not have any tabulature and I note "fa, la, sol" over and under the little black dots to try to remember what note they represent on sight and she gets frustrated again, telling me that I need to recognize the little black dot in its own language, without the translation above or below it, because, as she is well right, my eye tends to see the word and not the dot when reading the music.
Reading was useful in learning Spanish (lots of Steven King and Dean R Koontz novels reread in the first year in Barcelona), maybe in part because Spanish can be read aloud from the text with little danger of acquiring bad pronunciation habits. Lots of useful vocabulary, sentences, expressions were gleaned from that work. When I could finally read Cien Años de Soledad in Spanish, feeling comfortable skipping over the words that didn't seem essential to overall understanding and enjoyment of the novel, I finally left reading aside as a vocabulary exercise and considered it the pleasurable activity in culture adquisition it can be.
It is true, at least to me, that unless a "word" is in a student's vocabulary pool, it will not be understood. But it is also true that unless the sound of that word is also in that pool, that word will not be understood aurally. The grammar or structure of English is pretty straightforward and should not cause difficulties in reading. Even phrasal verbs, idioms and good old metaphore should not cause greater difficulties if good dictionary skills are understood and used. If the objective of the student is to improve reading comprehension, perhaps this sandwich reading is helpful. Many doctors and businessmen only want to be able to read and write in English, leaving the speaking to such silly things as social occasions that occur between meetings where their better speaking colleagues handle the oral part.
How many times have I taken the written exercise away from my student and found that he/she does not recognize the same exercise aurally, even though that exercise has been practiced a dozen times? "Mr and Mrs Brown built a house in North Plains" suddenly sounds like Greek to the student! Reading is no doubt an important skill, students are more often alone than with their language teacher. And yet, how many times have I caught a student doing sentence six when I have clearly asked them to do sentence seven? They do sentence six because they have just done sentence five and are looking at the words, not listening to the words.
Naturally, my objectives are ruled by the work I do. I am a native teacher teaching in a country where the language being learned is not common, and so students expect me to be useful to them in speaking, not in reading. Teachers who cling too tightly to the text are not too popular in this situation. That may be where you see us as diametrically opposed, Atréju, though I suspect that we actually share a lot in our points of view.
peace,
revel.
[sigh] I wish you’d not all be so damn sensible!
I agree with you revel: this sandwich story methodology, as I’ve explained it, does not teach a student to understand the language when it is spoken. It can therefore be no more than a supplement to other language learning activities, like watching tv and talking.
But wait! There’s more!
Please read this short article if you haven’t already, revel:
http://journals.cambridge.org/bin/blade ... 8402001049
It is the one from which I’ve posted excerpts above. It describes the positive experience with this methodology Chinese children have when learning English, surely a bigger language disparity than that of Spanish children learning English?
The teachers in this study do much more than just let the children read the book; they let the children act out the stories, talk about it, etcetera.
And the story needn’t even be put in print, the author describes how he’d read bedtime stories to his daughter, starting in Chinese and gradually increasing the percentage of English words…
Whadda ya say, convinced?
I agree with you revel: this sandwich story methodology, as I’ve explained it, does not teach a student to understand the language when it is spoken. It can therefore be no more than a supplement to other language learning activities, like watching tv and talking.
But wait! There’s more!
Please read this short article if you haven’t already, revel:
http://journals.cambridge.org/bin/blade ... 8402001049
It is the one from which I’ve posted excerpts above. It describes the positive experience with this methodology Chinese children have when learning English, surely a bigger language disparity than that of Spanish children learning English?
The teachers in this study do much more than just let the children read the book; they let the children act out the stories, talk about it, etcetera.
And the story needn’t even be put in print, the author describes how he’d read bedtime stories to his daughter, starting in Chinese and gradually increasing the percentage of English words…
Whadda ya say, convinced?
atrevu,
I am interested to acquaint myself nwith this new approach but already I do feel some apprehensions about it.
I laud efforts at interesting young learners in reading; in fact, I do feel our students read the wrong things, and they read English texts for the wrong reasons, and there should be some guiding them towards reading appropriate materials with appropriate intentions. It would seem to me that children use books to accumulate "knowledge", English books in particular to "practise pronunciation" (ever noticed they always read aloud, which I find so counterproductive). and for entertainment they refer to TV!
But what I find difficult to believe in your account is that the students of English actually acquire "cognitive skills". You are giving them food for thought in chunks, and they digest it through the medium of Chinese. They understand English only because it runs parallel to their Chinese cognition processes, that is, they have to translate simultaneously.
This is what I find is the first thing that should change in China: learn to think and conceptualise in the target language. The first object therefore must be to overcome the habit of translating. The teachers continually translate, their textbooks always are bilingual (or if they are not, their teachers translate!).
You mentioned the possibility that students may make grammar mistakes using the English acquired through this method. I fear they will reinforce them through repetition, a process we are watching here all the time.
I am interested to acquaint myself nwith this new approach but already I do feel some apprehensions about it.
I laud efforts at interesting young learners in reading; in fact, I do feel our students read the wrong things, and they read English texts for the wrong reasons, and there should be some guiding them towards reading appropriate materials with appropriate intentions. It would seem to me that children use books to accumulate "knowledge", English books in particular to "practise pronunciation" (ever noticed they always read aloud, which I find so counterproductive). and for entertainment they refer to TV!
But what I find difficult to believe in your account is that the students of English actually acquire "cognitive skills". You are giving them food for thought in chunks, and they digest it through the medium of Chinese. They understand English only because it runs parallel to their Chinese cognition processes, that is, they have to translate simultaneously.
This is what I find is the first thing that should change in China: learn to think and conceptualise in the target language. The first object therefore must be to overcome the habit of translating. The teachers continually translate, their textbooks always are bilingual (or if they are not, their teachers translate!).
You mentioned the possibility that students may make grammar mistakes using the English acquired through this method. I fear they will reinforce them through repetition, a process we are watching here all the time.
Hi Roger,
If you should look on the internet for keywords like ‘indepent reading’, ‘pleasure reading’, and ‘school achievement’, I’m sure you’ll find a wealth of information of the positive effect reading has on school achievement. I had done this earlier and found this, for example:
https://www.ala.org/PrinterTemplate.cfm ... ntID=67369
Primary and Elementary Grades 1–5
The amount of independent reading students do significantly influences their level of reading performance. In a series of studies considered to be benchmark indicators of children’s exposure to print, Anderson, Wilson, and Fielding (1988) and Fielding, Wilson, and Anderson (1986) asked fifth-grade students to record their activities outside of school. In one study, fifty-three students kept logs of free-time activities for eight weeks, and in the second study, 105 children kept logs for twenty-six weeks. In both investigations children averaged ten minutes per day reading books–little more than 2 percent of their time but enough to make a significant difference in reading achievement scores. Fifty percent of the children read from books four minutes a day or less. Thirty percent read two minutes a day or less. Almost 10 percent reported never reading any book on any day. For the majority of children, reading books occupied 1 percent or less of their free time.
Anderson, Fielding, and Wilson (1988) compared the amount of student reading with their scores on achievement tests. The number of minutes spent in out-of-school reading, even if it was a small amount, correlated positively with reading achievement. The more students read outside of school the higher they scored on reading achievement tests. Students who scored at the 90th percentile on a reading test spent five times as many minutes as children at the 50th percentile, and more than 200 times as many minutes per day reading books as the child at the 10th percentile. The researchers conclude that “among all the ways children spent their time, reading books was the best predictor of measures of reading achievement reading comprehension, vocabulary, and reading speed, including gains in reading comprehension between second and fifth grade” (285).
Greaney and Hegarty (1987), leading researchers in the area of independent reading, asked 138 fifth graders to use diaries to record their leisure activities four days a week. Results showed that 18 percent indicated that they do not read at all, and 31.5 percent read three or more hours during the weekly reporting period. Overall, students devoted 7.2 percent of their leisure time to reading. Correlational measures show a significant relation between the amount of time devoted to independent reading and reading achievement, verbal ability, attitude toward reading, and home influence factors. And students who read the most scored in the top quartile in reading achievement tests. Tunnell and Jacobs (1989) summarized numerous studies from the past sixty years and found a statistically significant relation between academic achievement and independent reading.
Watkins and Edwards (1992) found that proficient middle-grade readers tend to spend more time doing recreational reading and make greater gains in reading achievement than less able readers. Less able readers consistently read less than proficient readers and rank below average in reading skill. Academic performance is closely related to reading performance. Watkins and Edwards also found that teachers’ attitudes toward reading significantly affect the amount of extracurricular reading students do.
https://www.ala.org/PrinterTemplate.cfm ... ntID=67369
This is in response to your scepsis of ‘my’ assertion that reading facilitates the development of “cognitive skills.”
Come to think of it, primary school children also come upon a lot of unknown words in their reading, like students in a sandwich class would, advanced readers maybe as much as 3000-5000 a year, a bit less advanced children a little less, if I remember correctly.
I have been reading up on the literature since our previous debate, in China Daily, where you said the same as you do know, as did I; that children need to learn to think in the target language, not constantly translate every English word into Chinese. Here’s what might be of interest now: given the choice between a bilingual and a monolingual dictionary the teacher usually chooses the monolingual one, the student the bilingual. Studies have confirmed that the bilingual dictionary is more effective, maybe because with a bilingual dictionary the student can more easily relate the new word with concepts already formed in his mind, in his native language.
That’s maybe too general a response, how’s this: Words are learned incrementally; the first time you encounter a word, you can’t be supposed to know every intricacy of its meaning and grammar – the two are linked, I now think – or even if you do, you’re likely to forget it after a while; the learning curve of forgetting is fast at first and slows down after a while, so, studies have shown that the best way to remember a word is to come across it a quick intervals at first, and at longer intervals later, the time between intervals increasing exponentially: the first repeating after 5 minutes, the second after an hour, the third after a day, and so on. Sandwich stories allow for this possibility. Can you notice I’ve written this down before, I’ve just written my research proposal.
That too might still be too general; you say that I give the students food for thought, and they digest it through their understanding of Chinese.
First I’ll need to say my method differs a bit from Yi’s; I put the definitions of the English words in the margins the first time, later at my fancy, Yi doesn’t, at all. This to invoke recall; at the next encounters of the word the student will have to expend energy to remember what the word means, so increasing his mental activity – from the little it was when merely looking at the defintion at the side of the page – and so increasing the chance of his remembering the word when he comes upon it five pages later.
I give them the words in a context they understand, Roger. Studies will have to show if they do still know the words in an all English text, but those of Yi and Burling seem promising. If you take any credence to Krashen’s writings, which you seem to do, wanting the students reading in English, you’ll maybe agree that this is a good way of giving your students comprehensible input; the students understand close to everything of the Chinese text, and close to nothing of the English. i + 1 in action, I think.
After they know some English words, those then become the i, and other English words the +1. The percentage of English words so increases, and the percentage of Chinese words decreases. So while when they are just beginning your statement of the students only understanding the English because of the Chinese context is true, later on it is no longer. But, I think, that is precisely the point and the forté of the method; the students keep reading because they are gripped by the book, hopefully, and so learn, aquire, English words. When they are just beginning to read they wouldn’t know what the English words mean, but after a while they will.
Now, to grammar. I’ve just read Tolstoy’s account of his education-experiment, after I stumbled upon it, in his school in the village of Jasnaja Poljana – I’ve tried finding a version on the internet for you, but failed. It’s an engaging read altogether, but as I’d have to translate and type it myself, and as the force of it would then lessen, I'll not post try and post it. Only thing I could find on the internet on it, is this academicy thing:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2002/11/33148.shtml
In the summer of 1859, Tolstoy in "his village" proclaimed the news of the opening of a voluntary school free of charge on his estate. Morosov reports on the first school day when 22 children came with their parents: "We left the school, said goodbye to our dear teacher and promised to be there early the next morning. Our ecstasy and delight knew no limits... " They spent the first months learning the ABCs. "Three months passed and our school thrived. In this time we had already learned to read and the number of students rose from 22 to 70. Children from all corners of our countryside were there, children from urban petty-bourgeois, small merchants, farmers and people from the intellectual class... "
The Pedagogical Problem of Punishment
Although Tolstoy wanted to abolish all coercion along with class work, house work and grades, situations arose that provoked grave reactions... Students of a free school are not braver, more orderly or more just. Rather what characterizes a free school is the reaction to everyday senile or seemingly disruptive conduct. On account of his high claim to practice a free, non-authoritarian education, Tolstoy had more problems than teachers at state schools whose conduct was predetermined by certain rules.
Tolstoy's moral claim to give children and adults equal rights made his instruction more open, free, and unconstrained and simultaneously assumed a greater measure of humaneness, tolerance and strength. Tolstoy was by no means immune from mistakes. The decision-making process and the dynamic of teacher-student interaction distinguished Jasnaja Poljana from other schools at that time.
"Disruptive cases" were discussed by the whole class. Tolstoy decided he would not be master over praise and punishment... No one should be punished for exuberance, high spirits, disobedience or laziness.
Education as Dialogue
The "pedagogical relation" was an important characteristic consciously considered by Tolstoy and Morosov. This relation was essentially different from the traditions of a tainted authoritarian one-sided teacher-student relation. For Morosov and his class, the pedagogical relation was an education experience based on community and mutuality. "We were one heart and one soul about these joys, pleasures and rapid advances. Without him, the world was empty to us. He also could not be without us. We were inseparable and only left him deep in the night."
Education for Tolstoy was a common experience with the goal of making life more understandable. The traditional teacher's role lost dominance in Jasnaja Poljana. Only one accepted by students can teach. The teacher role must be delegated so to speak, ascribed by the participants. Tolstoy remarked: "The freedom to suddenly run away from lessons is useful and necessary, a way of preserving the teacher from the most extreme and grossest errors."
Democracy in the school meant for Tolstoy self-determination of the themes by the students and a dialogical relation to the learning community. In a section describing a race with gymnasts from Tula, Morosov described how Tolstoy's school increased the zest for life, created a pleasant atmosphere and realized learning successes...
The dialogue was a central resource in education for Tolstoy, not instruction or didactically processed material. For him, education became dialogue. These educational conversations took place in swimming, ice-skating, traveling, strolling and instruction itself in a seemingly accidental and spontaneous way.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2002/11/33148.shtml
This doesn’t do it justice though, and lays the emphasis in all the wrong places… his method of teaching reading and writing to me look similar to how Yi does it, and in a similar atmosphere of the outside world. He doesn’t appreciate the necessity of teaching grammar moreover, and he should know a bit about that, being an influential writer, linguist, and pedagogue.
He writes disparangily on the explicit teaching of words, grammar, and concepts; the children already know all the rules of grammar, it is the filological definitions they don't know, and don't use anyway, if they do know them; The examples are also legion of the perfect writer with nill knowledge of grammar, and the filological student with less perfect writing... etc... etc... It's a shame it isn't on the Gutenberg site.
He also writes on techniques to teach reading, writing, drawing, history, etc. He is particulary enthousiastic about the old testament because his pupils are so enthralled when they listen to him and remember so much of it later, it is far more engaging than your average history book.
… I don’t know about grammar faults becoming ingrained when using this method. I would think that after enough English input they would start to recognize what sounds right, what looks right, and what doesn’t. And after practicing talking and writing for a while, the faults would lessen. I really don’t know… the notion that somehow faults in the grammar would become ingrained in the students comes from Behaviorism, that’s were that ‘get it right in the beginning’ approach came from, you know more about that than I. But English children make mistakes with their English as well, don’t they?
As I’m a Psychologist I should know a bit about Behaviorism... The thing I know is that they trained rats and pigeons to do elaborate things, and from this experience developed theories of learning, for humans… linguists then applied those theories to language teaching. I have to wonder as to the wisdom of both.
But, yes, maybe studies have shown that if you let non-native children talk and talk among themselves, their grammar doesn’t improve, I don’t know. As I say: I think, but who am I, that if you let them, in addition to talking among themselves, let them talk with better students, let them listen to the radio and television, their talking will improve, as they will get to recognize what sounds right. And you can let your students do all that in addition to using sandwich stories.
The principal plus of sandwich stories is that it quickly teaches lots of words in a pleasurable way. As Yi concludes:
SSM seems to have done the ‘unlikely’ job (Jacobs & Tunnell, 1996:30) pretty well: making one book serve two masters. It has proved to be a practical solution to the problem of motivation in EFL education for children. Yet, we must admit that SSM serves only as a bridge. It is, however, a safe and happy bridge. At the other end of the bridge are stories written completely in English. Before children cross this bridge, they speak unidiomatic English, code-switching back and forth between Chinese and English. This may seem a fatal flaw in SSM. But, to continue with the metaphor, just as the function of a bridge is primarily to help travelers to go from one place to another without running the risk of being drowned, so it is the function of sandwich stories to help young learners of EFL go from monolingual (only Chinese) to bilingual (both Chinese and English) without any risk of having their interests killed by boredom and difficulty.
Done now.
If you should look on the internet for keywords like ‘indepent reading’, ‘pleasure reading’, and ‘school achievement’, I’m sure you’ll find a wealth of information of the positive effect reading has on school achievement. I had done this earlier and found this, for example:
https://www.ala.org/PrinterTemplate.cfm ... ntID=67369
Primary and Elementary Grades 1–5
The amount of independent reading students do significantly influences their level of reading performance. In a series of studies considered to be benchmark indicators of children’s exposure to print, Anderson, Wilson, and Fielding (1988) and Fielding, Wilson, and Anderson (1986) asked fifth-grade students to record their activities outside of school. In one study, fifty-three students kept logs of free-time activities for eight weeks, and in the second study, 105 children kept logs for twenty-six weeks. In both investigations children averaged ten minutes per day reading books–little more than 2 percent of their time but enough to make a significant difference in reading achievement scores. Fifty percent of the children read from books four minutes a day or less. Thirty percent read two minutes a day or less. Almost 10 percent reported never reading any book on any day. For the majority of children, reading books occupied 1 percent or less of their free time.
Anderson, Fielding, and Wilson (1988) compared the amount of student reading with their scores on achievement tests. The number of minutes spent in out-of-school reading, even if it was a small amount, correlated positively with reading achievement. The more students read outside of school the higher they scored on reading achievement tests. Students who scored at the 90th percentile on a reading test spent five times as many minutes as children at the 50th percentile, and more than 200 times as many minutes per day reading books as the child at the 10th percentile. The researchers conclude that “among all the ways children spent their time, reading books was the best predictor of measures of reading achievement reading comprehension, vocabulary, and reading speed, including gains in reading comprehension between second and fifth grade” (285).
Greaney and Hegarty (1987), leading researchers in the area of independent reading, asked 138 fifth graders to use diaries to record their leisure activities four days a week. Results showed that 18 percent indicated that they do not read at all, and 31.5 percent read three or more hours during the weekly reporting period. Overall, students devoted 7.2 percent of their leisure time to reading. Correlational measures show a significant relation between the amount of time devoted to independent reading and reading achievement, verbal ability, attitude toward reading, and home influence factors. And students who read the most scored in the top quartile in reading achievement tests. Tunnell and Jacobs (1989) summarized numerous studies from the past sixty years and found a statistically significant relation between academic achievement and independent reading.
Watkins and Edwards (1992) found that proficient middle-grade readers tend to spend more time doing recreational reading and make greater gains in reading achievement than less able readers. Less able readers consistently read less than proficient readers and rank below average in reading skill. Academic performance is closely related to reading performance. Watkins and Edwards also found that teachers’ attitudes toward reading significantly affect the amount of extracurricular reading students do.
https://www.ala.org/PrinterTemplate.cfm ... ntID=67369
This is in response to your scepsis of ‘my’ assertion that reading facilitates the development of “cognitive skills.”
Come to think of it, primary school children also come upon a lot of unknown words in their reading, like students in a sandwich class would, advanced readers maybe as much as 3000-5000 a year, a bit less advanced children a little less, if I remember correctly.
I have been reading up on the literature since our previous debate, in China Daily, where you said the same as you do know, as did I; that children need to learn to think in the target language, not constantly translate every English word into Chinese. Here’s what might be of interest now: given the choice between a bilingual and a monolingual dictionary the teacher usually chooses the monolingual one, the student the bilingual. Studies have confirmed that the bilingual dictionary is more effective, maybe because with a bilingual dictionary the student can more easily relate the new word with concepts already formed in his mind, in his native language.
That’s maybe too general a response, how’s this: Words are learned incrementally; the first time you encounter a word, you can’t be supposed to know every intricacy of its meaning and grammar – the two are linked, I now think – or even if you do, you’re likely to forget it after a while; the learning curve of forgetting is fast at first and slows down after a while, so, studies have shown that the best way to remember a word is to come across it a quick intervals at first, and at longer intervals later, the time between intervals increasing exponentially: the first repeating after 5 minutes, the second after an hour, the third after a day, and so on. Sandwich stories allow for this possibility. Can you notice I’ve written this down before, I’ve just written my research proposal.
That too might still be too general; you say that I give the students food for thought, and they digest it through their understanding of Chinese.
First I’ll need to say my method differs a bit from Yi’s; I put the definitions of the English words in the margins the first time, later at my fancy, Yi doesn’t, at all. This to invoke recall; at the next encounters of the word the student will have to expend energy to remember what the word means, so increasing his mental activity – from the little it was when merely looking at the defintion at the side of the page – and so increasing the chance of his remembering the word when he comes upon it five pages later.
I give them the words in a context they understand, Roger. Studies will have to show if they do still know the words in an all English text, but those of Yi and Burling seem promising. If you take any credence to Krashen’s writings, which you seem to do, wanting the students reading in English, you’ll maybe agree that this is a good way of giving your students comprehensible input; the students understand close to everything of the Chinese text, and close to nothing of the English. i + 1 in action, I think.
After they know some English words, those then become the i, and other English words the +1. The percentage of English words so increases, and the percentage of Chinese words decreases. So while when they are just beginning your statement of the students only understanding the English because of the Chinese context is true, later on it is no longer. But, I think, that is precisely the point and the forté of the method; the students keep reading because they are gripped by the book, hopefully, and so learn, aquire, English words. When they are just beginning to read they wouldn’t know what the English words mean, but after a while they will.
Now, to grammar. I’ve just read Tolstoy’s account of his education-experiment, after I stumbled upon it, in his school in the village of Jasnaja Poljana – I’ve tried finding a version on the internet for you, but failed. It’s an engaging read altogether, but as I’d have to translate and type it myself, and as the force of it would then lessen, I'll not post try and post it. Only thing I could find on the internet on it, is this academicy thing:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2002/11/33148.shtml
In the summer of 1859, Tolstoy in "his village" proclaimed the news of the opening of a voluntary school free of charge on his estate. Morosov reports on the first school day when 22 children came with their parents: "We left the school, said goodbye to our dear teacher and promised to be there early the next morning. Our ecstasy and delight knew no limits... " They spent the first months learning the ABCs. "Three months passed and our school thrived. In this time we had already learned to read and the number of students rose from 22 to 70. Children from all corners of our countryside were there, children from urban petty-bourgeois, small merchants, farmers and people from the intellectual class... "
The Pedagogical Problem of Punishment
Although Tolstoy wanted to abolish all coercion along with class work, house work and grades, situations arose that provoked grave reactions... Students of a free school are not braver, more orderly or more just. Rather what characterizes a free school is the reaction to everyday senile or seemingly disruptive conduct. On account of his high claim to practice a free, non-authoritarian education, Tolstoy had more problems than teachers at state schools whose conduct was predetermined by certain rules.
Tolstoy's moral claim to give children and adults equal rights made his instruction more open, free, and unconstrained and simultaneously assumed a greater measure of humaneness, tolerance and strength. Tolstoy was by no means immune from mistakes. The decision-making process and the dynamic of teacher-student interaction distinguished Jasnaja Poljana from other schools at that time.
"Disruptive cases" were discussed by the whole class. Tolstoy decided he would not be master over praise and punishment... No one should be punished for exuberance, high spirits, disobedience or laziness.
Education as Dialogue
The "pedagogical relation" was an important characteristic consciously considered by Tolstoy and Morosov. This relation was essentially different from the traditions of a tainted authoritarian one-sided teacher-student relation. For Morosov and his class, the pedagogical relation was an education experience based on community and mutuality. "We were one heart and one soul about these joys, pleasures and rapid advances. Without him, the world was empty to us. He also could not be without us. We were inseparable and only left him deep in the night."
Education for Tolstoy was a common experience with the goal of making life more understandable. The traditional teacher's role lost dominance in Jasnaja Poljana. Only one accepted by students can teach. The teacher role must be delegated so to speak, ascribed by the participants. Tolstoy remarked: "The freedom to suddenly run away from lessons is useful and necessary, a way of preserving the teacher from the most extreme and grossest errors."
Democracy in the school meant for Tolstoy self-determination of the themes by the students and a dialogical relation to the learning community. In a section describing a race with gymnasts from Tula, Morosov described how Tolstoy's school increased the zest for life, created a pleasant atmosphere and realized learning successes...
The dialogue was a central resource in education for Tolstoy, not instruction or didactically processed material. For him, education became dialogue. These educational conversations took place in swimming, ice-skating, traveling, strolling and instruction itself in a seemingly accidental and spontaneous way.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2002/11/33148.shtml
This doesn’t do it justice though, and lays the emphasis in all the wrong places… his method of teaching reading and writing to me look similar to how Yi does it, and in a similar atmosphere of the outside world. He doesn’t appreciate the necessity of teaching grammar moreover, and he should know a bit about that, being an influential writer, linguist, and pedagogue.
He writes disparangily on the explicit teaching of words, grammar, and concepts; the children already know all the rules of grammar, it is the filological definitions they don't know, and don't use anyway, if they do know them; The examples are also legion of the perfect writer with nill knowledge of grammar, and the filological student with less perfect writing... etc... etc... It's a shame it isn't on the Gutenberg site.
He also writes on techniques to teach reading, writing, drawing, history, etc. He is particulary enthousiastic about the old testament because his pupils are so enthralled when they listen to him and remember so much of it later, it is far more engaging than your average history book.
… I don’t know about grammar faults becoming ingrained when using this method. I would think that after enough English input they would start to recognize what sounds right, what looks right, and what doesn’t. And after practicing talking and writing for a while, the faults would lessen. I really don’t know… the notion that somehow faults in the grammar would become ingrained in the students comes from Behaviorism, that’s were that ‘get it right in the beginning’ approach came from, you know more about that than I. But English children make mistakes with their English as well, don’t they?
As I’m a Psychologist I should know a bit about Behaviorism... The thing I know is that they trained rats and pigeons to do elaborate things, and from this experience developed theories of learning, for humans… linguists then applied those theories to language teaching. I have to wonder as to the wisdom of both.
But, yes, maybe studies have shown that if you let non-native children talk and talk among themselves, their grammar doesn’t improve, I don’t know. As I say: I think, but who am I, that if you let them, in addition to talking among themselves, let them talk with better students, let them listen to the radio and television, their talking will improve, as they will get to recognize what sounds right. And you can let your students do all that in addition to using sandwich stories.
The principal plus of sandwich stories is that it quickly teaches lots of words in a pleasurable way. As Yi concludes:
SSM seems to have done the ‘unlikely’ job (Jacobs & Tunnell, 1996:30) pretty well: making one book serve two masters. It has proved to be a practical solution to the problem of motivation in EFL education for children. Yet, we must admit that SSM serves only as a bridge. It is, however, a safe and happy bridge. At the other end of the bridge are stories written completely in English. Before children cross this bridge, they speak unidiomatic English, code-switching back and forth between Chinese and English. This may seem a fatal flaw in SSM. But, to continue with the metaphor, just as the function of a bridge is primarily to help travelers to go from one place to another without running the risk of being drowned, so it is the function of sandwich stories to help young learners of EFL go from monolingual (only Chinese) to bilingual (both Chinese and English) without any risk of having their interests killed by boredom and difficulty.
Done now.