Turkish Session Diary 12: Full circle

All the way back in July I posted about my first epiphany with WAYK where I broke the mould of session patterns and started with genuine role-playing games. After that point I started to achieve some genuine acquisition instead of merely giving my students some glorified mnemonics.

I dubbed that post "Songs and games" by way of analogy to repetitious session patterns (songs) and goal-based interaction (games). However it just so happened that last week we spontaneously came up with a real song, which we tentatively named Ode to a Pen. It seemed like a good way to cement in the mind some rather complicated syntax and suffixes (original Turkish in bold, gloss in italic, English translation in regular):

You can even sing along if you like:

Bu	bir	kalem.
This	a	pen.
This is a pen.

Bu	benim	kalem-im.
This	my	pen-my.
This is my pen.

Kalem-im-i	ban-a	ver.
Pen-my-[object]	me-to	give.
Give me my pen.

Bu	bir	kalem.
This	a	pen.
This is a pen.

Bu	onun	kalem-i.
This	his/her	pen-his/her.
This is his/her pen.

Kalem-i-ni	o-na	ver.
Pen-his/her-[object]	s/he-to	give.
Give him/her his/her pen.

Bu	bir	kalem.
This	a	pen.
This is a pen.

Bu	senin	kalem-in.
This	your	pen-your.
This is your pen.

Kalem-in-i	…	al!
Pen-your-[object]		take!
Take your pen!

Before a "performance" we would say "Person A is singing to Person B, and we're all singing with Person A", and then between each verse Person B would perform the action.

I think it did quite a bit of good because they tell me they were all practising at home, but it was still a song, a set repetition, a glorified mnemonic. So in the next session, after reviewing the song, we played a role-playing game. Once again we had come full circle: the real magic was in the role-play.

Goal-Oriented Setups

Ultimately I have concluded that a TQ Setup that only makes meaning (the "what") TQ Obvious is nowhere near as effective as one that has a defined purpose (the "why"). I see TQ Silly Conversation as a nod to this problem that only goes halfway to a solution. True, getting everybody used to having aimless conversations about the objects in front of them is a great stepping stone to hunting, but it's no substitute for an actual goal or purpose.

So in my opinion role-play, the "why", is fundamental to setups in their most effective form. Back in July I wrote about two role-playing setups, Liar and Boss/Employee/Shopkeeper, that really helped speed things up in terms of actual acquisition and actual fluency as opposed to familiarity with a script or a song. Most recently we've been playing Lost and Found: "I've just found a bunch of phones and wallets/purses and I want to return them to their rightful owners, but I'm a bit simple and I can't even recognise my own things!" etc.

But what about hunting?

Yeah, about that. Although I am convinced that a skilled, motivated hunter will acquire language quickly, I'm not sure that it's the be-all and end-all. When you're out to revitalise a language by galvanising a group of youngsters to tap grandma's brain, sure, hunting is vital. But in a formal language teaching setting, it's a very difficult skill to impart quickly enough to count within the few fleeting hours you have before the end of the course.

What I am doing, though, is implementing the technique which I think isolates the "active ingredient", as it were, of hunting as respects language acquisition: TQ Just in Time. This derives from the observation that "Information and ability is acquired most deeply and rapidly at the moment of its greatest relevance."

So here's my current how-to for lesson planning:

1. Decide what vocabulary/grammar you want to cover, while of course observing TQ Limit.
2. Devise a role-playing setup/scenario where the learners are bound to need said vocabulary/grammar.
3. Explain the game in the students' native language.
4. Make them try to say what they want to say in the target language, then correct them when they get it wrong.

I used this last time to teach "to put in the bag" (çantaya koymak). The game was Where To Put It? (on the table, on the tissue, or in the bag?) and it was amazing to see how they never even asked what it meant in English. They just attempted "Put the pen in the bag", I supplied them with the correct sentence, we went round the table practising it, and all four of them were fluent in that bitesize piece in the space of 10 minutes.

The great thing about this setup is it gives students scope to hunt as much or as little as they want. If you've done it properly they should "need" the language you want them to learn today anyway, but if they want to get creative within the context of the role-play, they can. It's just up to you to keep an eye on the TQ Limit and especially TQ Full.

In summary, I think I can see a way to codifying an effective WAYK-based curriculum for formal language teaching, oriented around role-playing setups. In other words, I feel like I've reached the crest of the learning curve. But it's going to be a long way down the hill...