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Probably the single biggest 'innovation' in the new Language Ab Initio and Language B courses is the discrete Listening Comprehension assessment. We all started whispering about it as soon as listening skills started to be mentioned in curriculum review meetings and reports to teachers. It is now a reality and it brings a lot of excitement to the ongoing subject-specific seminars around the world.
Yes, it is a new assessment, but how new is listening really to these courses ? I assume that, for as long as you have been teaching either or both of these courses, you have been - using the target languages as much as possible in your lessons - doing lots of classroom presentations with your students - using the audio resources that come with many language acquisition course books - playing plenty of online video clips (YouTube, anyone ?) and/or sound files (podcasts, anyone ?) - bringing native speakers or fluent speakers of the target language into your classroom - setting up virtual classrooms and Skype connections with target language speakers around the world - encouraging your students to watch movies in the target language and to turn off or ignore the subtitles - doing plenty of other things that expose your students to the sounds of the target language So what is the fuss all about ? Workshops, online discussions, workshop leader upskilling sessions and random conversations reveal that teachers' concerns center mostly around 'variation' (yes, one of the five conceptual understandings !), accessibility, findability and the level of difficulty of most online resources. As far as VARIATION is concerned, there is what sounds like a guarantee that all the recordings that the students will listen to in their Listening Comprehension assessment will be of broadcasting standard. This means that there will be no room for dialects, poorly pronounced statements, background interference or the use of slang. What the students will hear is of the same standard as what we might expect to hear on official media broadcasts such as news bulletins, weather forecasts, documentaries, tourism promos and the like. FINDABILITY thereby becomes a matter of selectability. There is no such word but you know what I mean. We will find many thousands of videos and audio files in the target language - that's for sure. But we will have to be very careful with what we choose to expose our students to. The courses move fast and the resources that we use must reflect the level that the students have reached at that particular moment in time. I believe that the fuss is not about the intrinsic difficulty of a listening comprehension assessments, but rather about the time it will take all of us to find and/or develop appropriate listening comprehension resources for our courses. Exposing the students to the recordings that accompany our course books isn't enough, as these will not present much variation. We will all have to go and search beyond that. Hence, we will set up a database of such resources, grouped per language, so that everyone can benefit from everyone's treasure hunts - and make the Language Ab Initio / Language B world a better place for all of us ! Add your comments please ...
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Are you surprised by the title of this post ? So am I ... and I was even more surprised when I came across this question in an online forum for DP Coordinators. Of course we will not identify the source of the post but we will have to have a serious chat about the fact that this question is even asked.
The following is the question we encountered : "Hi folks! Can you run an ab initio class combined with a Lang A class? We have a situation where all students have opted for Lang A <language named> except for 2 who want to do <language named> but as an ab initio (they don’t know <language named> at all). The teacher is willing to run the 2 classes at the same time, but from an IB perspective is this allowed ?" Apparently in some schools a. there isn't enough money to hire enough teachers to teach the various language courses or b. there isn't enough understanding of the Group 1 and 2 courses or c. there is a complete disregard for the study of mother tongue literature and language acquisition or d. not enough courses are being offered to ensure that every student can study two languages at a proficiency-appropriate level or e. there isn't much difference in the proficiency of Language A students and Ab Initio / B students or f. the well-being of the teachers and/or students isn't being taken very seriously ... I don't think I need to convince anyone in this forum that every course in the Group 1 and 2 spectrum requires its own schedule, its own physical space, its own qualified teacher and its own budget. In our opinion teachers must never be put in a situation where they have to teach two different courses in one room at the same time. Combining HL and SL in one class works, but combining Language A, Language B and/or Language Ab Initio can not work and should never happen. I am keen to find out whether any readers have (had) experience with this kind of situation. We spend a considerable amount of time in each one of our workshops discussing the target audience of the Ab Initio / Language B course and the arrangements that schools have to make in order to give the students and the teachers a fair deal. We'd love to hear from you - personal experiences (no need to name schools), agreements or disagreement with what is written above, and any advice for teachers and/or administrators who have to deal with this issue. Thank you and have a great week ahead ! Anyone who has either read the new Language Ab Initio or Language B guide, or who has already attended a Subject-Specific Seminar on the new courses, will have learned that the Written Assignment is on its way out of the courses as a discreet assessment. A variety of reasons have been given for the decision to remove it from the course. These reasons include issues of Academic Honesty, the apparent inconsistency in how the Written Assignment is introduced and supervised in schools, and the discrepancy between the marks in the Written Assignment and the other written assessments. Whatever the reason(s) may be, and it is probably a combination of the above, we'd like to suggest that the essence of the Written Assignment still has a place in the Group 2 courses. There are a number of features that definitely lend themselves to in-class or after-class research, study and follow-up. The description of a cultural aspect in one of the target language cultures, the comparison between this target language culture and another culture of the students' choice, the research skills involved, the drafting and writing skills necessary to complete the task, the opportunity for students to pursue their personal interests or curiosity are, amongst other, sufficient reason to consider setting Written Assignment-type tasks in our classes. Maybe, by removing the 'achievement' pressure from the task, the students will revel in the process of developing a task of a cultural nature. We will continue to 'teach' such tasks and we will include them in our formative assessments. After all, international mindedness requires the exploration of the target language culture(s), and few activities will do it better than the soon-to-be-defunct Written Assignment. We'll call it something else but we'll keep all of its great features ! What are your thoughts on this type of task ? Add your comments in the space below ...
Thousands of Language Ab Initio teachers and Language B teachers are currently attending upskilling workshops (aka Subject-Specific Seminars) around the world. Are you able to attend one ? Do you have an opinion on the advantages and disadvantages of attending a face-to-face workshop versus taking an online workshop ? Let us know how you are upskilling yourself and what your thoughts are on the two types of workshop. Thanks !
Teachers of Language Ab Initio, Language B or MYP Language Acquisition : join our thriving Facebook groups where you will meet hundreds of passionate teachers from around the world !
Ab Initio : https://www.facebook.com/groups/1081827915163033/ Language B : https://www.facebook.com/groups/146542976060319/ MYP Language : https://www.facebook.com/groups/1610822875677874/ Everybody's invited ! Ronny Mintjens |
AuthorRonny Mintjens is a practising Language Ab Initio teacher, examiner and workshop leader for the International Baccalaureate. He is the author and publisher of the “Language Ab Initio Student Workbook” and the various Language Portfolios (for Ab Initio, B and MYP). He is also a language acquisition and mother tongue consultant, the Head of Languages at a world-renowned IB school and a tireless advocate for mother tongue entitlement in international education. Beyond his life as a linguist, Ronny is a world traveller, a published novelist and photographer, a former professional football coach, a serial writer and an avid reader. Archives
April 2019
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