According to our educational psychology textbook, Vygotsky advocates for the idea of a dynamic assessment environment, in which a student is given problems to solve and then given further guidance - hints - if he or she is unable to solve them. Although this is probably not very common in a traditional classroom (issues of fairness come to mind, and "giving hints" isn't really something that's done when it comes to testing time) it seems like a strategy that would work especially well for students having difficulty learning a second language or with learning disabilities. It could not only motivate a child by showing him that he can arrive at an answer himself, but it could also similarly boost his self esteem and make the school environment a more inviting one.
But how can we operationally define a dynamic assessment environment? As a researcher, is it something I can even expect to see in a classroom? While ideally I would like to measure achievement in two groups - one in a dynamic assessment environment and one in a traditional direct instruction classroom - ethical issues as well as parental concerns would probably prevent me from doing this.
Several people in our program have already told me how much trouble they had learning a second language in high school. In fact, it seems that there is a distinct subset of the population that simply does not think in such a way that makes second language learning easy. I wonder how much easier being in a dynamic assessment environment might make that experience. Instead of a teacher marking an answer right or wrong, she could, during a test, encourage a student to consider whether a verb is regular or irregular, point out that adjectives need to agree with nouns in gender and number, and so forth. Thus, without explicitly giving the student the answer, the teacher could point that student in the right direction to find the answer for himself.
Perhaps more realistically, I could compare foreign language students who receive explicit phonetic training versus those who do not. As an undergraduate, I often struggled with the pronunciation of French words until I took a French phonetics course. While teaching phonetic symbols to high school students may not be completely effective, and certainly not interesting to them, there may be certain techniques to help students be able to use the language and be well understood by native speakers. My thought is that students who have a good grasp of pronunciation would be more inclined to participate in oral exercises in class, as they would not be so worried about making mistakes. This could certainly make class discussions more effective and rewarding.
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4 comments:
Robbie, this is good thinking. I like the "dynamic assessment" topic, and we would have to think some more about the best way to study it. Someone told me about their high school where students could "buy" a hint for a given number of points on the test. I thought that was interesting. You might be able to set up an interview situation with a few French students doing a quiz and try that process....
I also like your phonetics idea. You have lots of good options.
In college, I had a French class with a crazy Frenchman as a professor. In his class, we had to give 5-minute speeches without any notes or visual aids. If we stumbled over a word or lost our place, the professor would help us out, and we continued with the presentations. While it was a terrifying experience for many of us in the class, we all greatly benefited from the learning opportunity. I thought of that class while I was reading your blog, because I realize now that actually was a "dynamic assessment." I think you should take this idea and run with it!
While I was interested in the dynamic assessment idea, I agree with you that studying phonetic training would be much easier. If you do decide to research phonetics, you should definitely talk with Prof. Whitely in Romance Languages. I took a class with him and in one part of it we explicitly dealt with the issue of whether it would be effective and time effective to directly teach phonetics/linguistics. He is a linguistics professor and very knowledgeable in his field. Profa. Alarcon is also a linguist and I'm not sure, but I think Prof. Gonzalez is as well.
So, I was definitely one of those students who couldn't wait to be finished with my French classes...even in college! I didn't enjoy them as much because it was just really hard for me to be good at it! I struggled a lot with all of the different forms of the same word. I think it may have helped me if I felt "success" more by figuring it out myself. Not just getting an answer wrong. So, I think it's a great idea. Definitely one that many people can relate to!
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