How I Encourage Students to Produce More Language

Alexis Blum, OFLA Professional Development Chair 
Spanish Teacher, Wapakoneta High School

The end of the year is upon us! Finally, we have made it to May. Now is a great time to look back on what our students have accomplished this year. It is so rewarding as a teacher to look back and see how much progress we have made since September. For many teachers, now is the time of year that ties up units and prepares students for the next step. So, how are you encouraging your students to take the next big step in their proficiency?  

I’ve made a conscious effort this year to explain to my students how they can move up in proficiency. I show them the rubrics I use to score their writing, speaking, listening, and reading skills. We talk about what it looks like to be a Novice Mid versus a Novice High, or a Novice High versus an Intermediate Low, and so on. Often I see so many students who submit a writing or speaking assessment without understanding how to level up.  Like it or not, many of our students are motivated to get good grades and they want to please us. By showing them how to “level up”, many of my students are making the effort to do more with their output skills. 

For example, perhaps my level one students are going to retell a story using pictures from class. To encourage them to level up, I may put up transition words on the board and encourage them to use the words in their writing or speaking. These words (such as first, second, then/next, finally) are words I have used when providing the story in class. By offering these vocabulary words to students, I am taking the guesswork out of trying to level up. Then, students can focus on providing more information and stretching their proficiency. 

With my level three and four classes, I want to provide rich input that leads to quality output. My students have so many varied skills and words in their head, so I want to capitalize on what they can do while simultaneously pushing them to the next level. Recently in my level three and four class, we have started elaborating on their ideas and writing connected sentences. I’ve been able to squeeze more information out of my students by challenging them with the question “And then?”. The idea of asking “and” is from improv classes and is something I recently learned at the Mitten CI conference. Instead of asking questions with definite answers, try asking open-ended questions that allow our students the chance to be creative with language. By keeping the conversation going, we can provide richer and more meaningful input to our students while also challenging each other to grow. 

This semester, I started giving my students an example sentence from a reading or novel and asking them to expand on the sentence. We have done this in writing and speaking practice. The sentence doesn’t have to be short, but should be open ended. If we want them to be writing in connected sentences, we need to practice writing in connected sentences. We have to give them the input and the practice with these skills if we want to see them perform these skills. It is amazing to see what our students can do with a little time and encouragement! 

No matter where you are in your teaching journey, I hope that you have found success this year. Our students’ proficiency is something to be celebrated and something to be proud of!