V is for Volume

 This is the first of five in the series Giving students VOICE.

¿Donde es la biblioteca?  Many of you can relate.  You took a year or two of Spanish or another language in high school or college, but you were at a loss when it came to speaking the language when the class was over, and you definitely can’t do much with it now.  You’ve got some verbs and nouns you remember, and after you order your margarita, you’re literally at a loss for Spanish words. ¿Dónde está la biblioteca? is what you meant to say, but you remember that ser and estar are both be verbs, and you confuse them because your class was full of teacher explanations and rules, not functional practice. 

You got an A or B, though, in your classes, which gave a nice boost to the ol’ GPA.  The class was a requirement, so who cares?  You weren’t planning on living in Mexico and you didn’t have to learn the language.  Yet now if you paid the same amount of money that you did for your college tuition for those classes, which could easily be over $5,000, let’s say the Yelp reviews wouldn’t be too starry for that school.

Think back. Every class – how many sentences did you speak in the target language? And if it was ten, how many of those were related to your life as opposed to just answering the question from the book that the teacher asked? 

¿Dónde está la biblioteca?  Pablo.

Uh… la biblioteca es….esta..uh.. Cerca de la parque.

“El Parque. No es ‘la parque’.”

“Cerca del parque.”

“Bueno.”

Got it.  Actually, no I never got it.  No bueno.  And that’s just one student (me) getting one rep in.

On a base level, it’s a numbers game.  In giving students VOICE, the V stands for Volume.   I can’t understate this.  In a 3-4 hour class, how much time do your students actually spend speaking the language that they came to learn?

In November I presented at the New York TESOL Conference, with Turn Up the Volume! The Need for More Deliberate Practice.   (I plead guilty to corny titling. Early warning: there’s more where that came from.)  In that presentation and others, I identify the persistent problem that prevents students from mastering what we might call “the basics” in language, and leave the question:

What is the sheer amount of output that your students get in class?

In a 3-hour class I dedicate at least half of the time to functional speaking exercises.   Some of that time, especially for lower levels, requires writing their answers first, which necessarily takes up some time.  My goal for an intermediate or higher class is that every student will have spoken 50-80 full sentences and asked 50-80 full questions.   Combined total, it’s rarely less than 100.   And that’s in the first half of class.  If that sounds like a lot, break it down and it’s not some wild number.  In 90 minutes, if each student asks and answers one question a minute, each student will reach 180.

If we took the median amount of full spoken sentences and questions in the target language for each student in the average adult education, high school, or college language class,  I’d put money that it would be 10-15.   The idea that a student that comes to class to learn how to speak English only says 10-15 sentences out loud (which might only be in chorus with other students) is expected to approve, is absurd.  In five days, that student–Student A–will have said 75 sentences, which were likely unmonitored. In 40 weeks of class in a year, that’s at most 3,000 sentences in English.   Our new frenemy AI tells me that you and I say 400-500 a day, which in one week puts us not too far from Student A’s total for the year.

In a class with an experienced language trainer, Student B will have spoken 500 meaningful accurate sentences after five classes, and with 750 sentences a week will be at 30,000 in a year. The sheer volume is ten times as much.   If you have your language client say 10-15 sentences in your 90-minute session, I promise you’ll have a former client quickly.  Yet somehow the same low volume per student in a 20-person class appears to be acceptable.  Based on my experience observing and evaluating, it’s probably the norm in many schools.  Many instructors wonder why students in their advanced class make basic errors.  I don’t wonder why–it’s very clear.  

Step numero uno is to recognize the fundamental issue: a lack of volume of output. Giving your students the volume of speaking that they need to improve their accuracy and confidence isn’t an easy overnight change, but it’s definitely worth the effort.