Turkish Session Diary 13: Thou Shalt Mumble

I'd got funny looks when I demonstrated the sign for TQ Mumble with another group, so with this group I had so far shied away from explicitly suggesting it, although I had hinted at it in principle. However, the wiki article about it is quite right when it says:

Perfection is the enemy of accelerated learning. “Close enough” must be good enough. A lack of mistakes or awkwardness indicates a lack of improvement. Where there is action, there is exploration (and thus the discovery of some dead ends). 

I experienced this personally before with an audio course called Say Something in Welsh. As is usual with such audio courses it tests you by giving you an English word then waiting a few seconds for you to attempt it in Welsh before providing the correct equivalent. The most effective part of it was that the narrator made you promise to try something, anything, even if you knew full well it was wrong, as part of the learning process.

Why it works

This all comes back to language as a reflex and not knowledge. When you think too hard to try to dredge up knowledge you're not building a language skill at all, and there's the added downside that you're so emotionally invested in your attempt that being corrected feels like being told you're a failure.

But when you test a reflex, you don't think at all, you just say the first thing that comes into your head. Then when you're corrected it's not the end of the world, and more to the point what happens is that you compare what just came out of your mouth (however that happened) with the correct form. Before long it's coming out right.

How it worked for us

Now that we've got into the flow of role-playing setups, it occurred to me to work on this on our last session. I knew my learners were "thinking" too much, not least because in past weeks their continued frustration with Turkish conjugations had led them to nickname our WAYK sessions "the bloody endings lesson".

So although I avoided actually using the Mumble sign (there's a fine line between fun/innovative and infantile) and instead just explained that they should say the first thing that comes into their heads.

The first thing I noticed was that each round of play started to go much, much faster. Instead of me asking a question followed by 3 seconds of harrowed silence, a stilted response and a frustrated sigh when I corrected them, I would ask a question, they would respond almost immediately, I would correct them, they would go "Oh right OK", and we would move on. And it worked a charm for acquisition. Each round got faster and faster of its own accord.

Thou Shalt

Sometimes I see people ask what are the most fundamental techniques of WAYK. I've been told that when the new website is up and running the sprawling techniques wiki will be whittled down to the essentials. Aside from the obvious TQ Setup, TQ Obvious and so on, I'm fairly confident that TQ Mumble will make the cut. It really is a vital piece of the puzzle.

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...

Turkish Session Diary 3: Settling on session patterns

Well, 5 weeks in and my new bunch are still with me.

I've duplicated the Fethiye WAYK Turkish Curriculum on the official wiki over onto fethiyewayk.wikia.com. I won't be creating many new pages as I go forward, so I'll be able to update the official wiki now and again.

A lot of the material is now different after having undergone a number of tweaks. For now I'm just going to go through the pattern I've established that seems to be working well and update the material as I find the time.

When starting, I labour the concept of TQ Copycatting. It very quickly becomes necessary to point out that only people who aren't in the conversation copycat. So when you're the one being asked a question you don't copycat the person asking the question.

TQ How Fascinating is a toughie. Saying, "When we make a mistake we all throw up our arms and say 'How Fascinating'", is a bit counterproductive with retiree Brits. But I still think I'm honouring the spirit by calling "How Fascinating" all the time without calling it that. Lots of TQ Pull You Though It, lots of "No, that was fine!" and lots of laughs, backed up with a pep talk now and then that we're playing a game and having fun, not "learning" or sitting an exam. In the sense of keeping it light and fun, How Fascinating is certainly up there with TQ Signing as one of the absolutely indispensable concepts of the method.

Getting them to avoid speaking English during the lesson is next to impossible sometimes. "Oh what was it, bu, er, siyat kalem, oh no, sorry, siyah kalem, yeah see I keep getting that wrong, was that right, siyah kalem?" etc. Now and again I remind them to make the "timeout" sign if they want to ask something in English, and then just make the sign sometimes when they forget. But I find it's not worth making a big thing of it if it will break the mood, especially when you've barely got them to stop thinking of it as a lesson.

I've also gotten my head around the fact that TQ Killing Faeries is of course good and necessary, but this does not extend to explaining game mechanics. The difference between "I'm going to say what is this, and you're going to say 'It's a...'" and "We're going to say it twice this time round."

Now to the pattern

For each bitesize chunk, I'm following this procedure:

1. Select chunk Although a "Ride" in the Universal Speed Curriculum can be around a dozen lines long, I've discovered the hard way that the ideal size for a bitesize chunk is 4 lines, you-me-you-me. Anything longer is just too much, no matter how familiar the material.

So the ideal chunk is 4 lines long, containing mostly familiar material and focusing on just one new "thing" (TQ Limit). So, for instance, if they already know "What is this?/This is a black pen." (Bu ne?/Bu siyah kalem.) then I might introduce "Whose is this black pen?/This black pen is mine." (Bu siyah kalem kimin?/Bu siyah kalem benim.) OK so that's two new things but you get the idea.

2. Demonstrate I then use mostly TQ Invisible Friend to demonstrate each side of the conversation (ideally TQ Comedy Duo with my strongest student if I'm sure she'll know what to do), of course observing TQ In Threes and getting them to copycat. I will often interrupt to use TQ Sing-along Song for individual sentences or even words I can see them having trouble with. If they still haven't got it after the third demonstration I keep going until they're close enough (TQ Mumble).

3. Play I then start with the student who's next to me, or at least make sure it goes round so that the weakest student does it last. In the first round I repeat the conversation with her three times, and then signal that she should hold the same conversation with the person next to her. After it gets back round to me, we go around again but this time twice each. In the third round we just do the conversation once before moving on, and by this stage they've usually got it straight off the bat.

Then I move on to the next chunk, mixing and matching from material in the ride to get something with just one or two new things. Especially if the "new thing" from the previous chunk was a grammatical concept, I find it's good to cycle through the objects thus repeating that new concept four times until it sticks. This is especially important for suffixes.

I think next time I'm going to introduce a "free practice round", just have a round of asking anyone anything about what they have based on this week's material...

So that's where we're at so far.

WAYK applied to intermediate English tutoring

Yesterday evening my wife used a lesson plan we developed together using WAYK principles to help an intermediate high-school English student internalise some fine points of grammar. Although the student already “knew” the grammar points under discussion, the conversation techniques really helped them to “click” in her mind.

The specific topic the student needed to work on were conditionals, and so the lesson plan centred around Conditional Type 0 (“If you heat ice it melts”), Conditional Type 1 (“If I have enough money I will go to the cinema”), and Conditional Type 2 (“If I had lots of money I would…”).

We devised short conversations or stories that effectively establish an Obvious Set-up, enhanced by expressive gesturing and sign-language where needed. Then in comes the “Bite-sized Piece” in the form of the actual target sentence or question-and-answer.

So for example, to get up to “If you heat ice it melts”, Gözde’s Set-up sentences were, “What’s this? -This is ice. -What happens when you heat ice/when you hold ice for a long time? -It melts. -So, if you heat ice it melts.” The Set-up sentences, of course, must be Obvious and ideally should be formulated with words and structures the student already knows. Then they’re ready for the punch-line, the final one or two sentences containing the Bite-sized Piece of new vocabulary or, in this case, grammar.

After three different pre-prepared Set-ups for each conditional type, Gözde then had a strategy for coming up with three more Set-ups that this time would be personalised (cf. These Are a Few of My Favorite Things). For Type 0, she used “What do you do on weekends? Do you see your friends/do your homework/go swimming/etc.? -… -Do you see your friends/do your homework/go swimming/etc. if you have exams? -I don’t see my friends if I have exams.” Of course, any typical situation can be substituted for exams.

The trick for the personalised Set-ups is to try and predict the kinds of answers the student will give and frame your questions accordingly. For example, in Type 1 a target phrase is, “If X happens I will Y”. We need our student to tell us about a definite plan, and then something that plan is conditional on. So we start with “What will you do tomorrow?”, because everybody does something every day. An alternative could be “Where will you go tomorrow?” Then, “What will you need?” If the answer is “Nothing” then you come back with “What else will you do tomorrow?” until you get an answer for which something will be needed. Then you present the punch-line, “If I have money I will go to the cinema tomorrow”, for example. If prepared with this in mind, the set-piece Set-ups you start with before the personalised Set-ups stage can provide useful cues.

Gözde made only minimal use of sign language for new words and for Obviousness when needed. She also used a number of photographs as props. One of these was a picture of a small planet Earth surrounded by famous landmarks. So one conversation went like this: “What is this? -Big Ben. -Where is it? -It is in London. -Are you in London? -No I am not in London. -What could you do if you were in London? -If I were in London I could see Big Ben.” This went on for each landmark in the picture.

This just goes to show how versatile the Where Are Your Keys? suite of techniques is, and that its scope really is unlimited.

Frustratingly fascinating

After some much-appreciated feedback in the Google group from Arne Sostack and Ben Barrett, I have realised that as killing fairies goes, that video was a massacre. And from the guy who came up with this. How embarrassi... How Fascinating!

As most of you will know, "fairies" are the mythical creatures that make language "click" in our brains without needing it to be explained to us. It's really what WAYK is all about, when you think about it. The Obviously, the Set-ups, all that jazz.

Fairies are a bit like Goldilocks. If you make things too cold and dull, with stuff your brain already knows, or too hot, with too much new stuff for your brain to work out, the fairies don't come. But if it's just right, if you make everything obvious and known and put out just a tiny tidbit of new information, along comes the fairy and *poof*, it goes in the same way your mother tongue went in all those years ago.

To put it another way, it's the reason why jokes aren't funny when you have to explain them.

There are two morals to this story.

Firstly, this concept is so fundamental to WAYK that what I did in that video almost doesn't qualify as WAYK. If you're interested in getting started with WAYK, you simply cannot let yourself be put off by the silly name and disregard what is being called "fairies". After all, what's in a name? This phenomenon is real, and it's the whole point.

Why did anybody ever feel the need to theorise that there's a Universal Grammar inside all our heads? Because our brains just take on too much information too quickly for it to be raw brain power alone. We don't talk because we're clever, just ask any idiot. We talk because we're hardwired for it, and we still don't quite know how.

Secondly, it's important to get your head around how you're going to introduce new material during a session. Being familiar with the material itself as at least as important as being familiar with how you're going to weave it in.

Something I didn't do before I got started was actually play with a practitioner to see how it works. I thought I'd be fine just watching the demonstration videos, but there's often a lot of explaining in those. What I didn't have clear enough in my head is that talking about the method before and after, debriefs and so on, are fine, but talking about the language itself is banned. It doesn't matter if you're translating individual words or sentences, don't. The less you have to explain, the more you're doing it right.

There are two things to do for this: Firstly, read up on the top 20 techniques, particularly Obviously!, Set-up, Just In Time and Bize-sized Pieces, and all the others on the wiki that there's a write-up for, especially Invisible Friend. Secondly, play at least one session with a practitioner. Skype is good enough for play-testing WAYK, and ready and willing practitioners are easily reachable through the Google group. You have to do this if you want to make sure you're doing it right. Failing that, film your mistakes and let 'em have at it.

Fethiye WAYK Curriculum takes shape

I am proud to announce that the infrastructure of the Fethiye WAYK Turkish Curriculum over on the wiki is complete and ready for expansion.

At the moment only the first three parts of Ride 1 are complete, but the point is, they are complete. From now on the underlying structure is ready to be expanded with the material as we add it.

So, how would you like a tour?

Rides

Everything, of course, revolves around the "Ride" pages. Ride pages first specify the Set-up used throughout the ride, and then at the beginning of each Part, the new Craig's Lists (CL) and Fairies' Lists (FL) introduced are listed with clickable links to each CL and FL. Next to each of these CL and FL links is a list of the specific vocabulary and grammar elements that are used from them. Each element is also clickable, and links to that element's entry in the Vocabulary or Grammar Master List.  

Then the Ride details the Conversation that the group is to work towards. Conversation Links are small chunks of dialogue, to be strung together into Conversation Chains. Conversation Chains are there as a suggestion for teachers, helping them to systematically mix and match the Links in a logical progression as the game proceeds.

Set-ups

While the table-and-objects set-up will suffice for much of the course, as we progress there may be a need for more imaginative "set-ups" which will still be as "obvious" and uncluttered as possible, but will expand the game. "The Walk" is one; as we get to more advanced stages, our scenarios may come to resemble amateur dramatics as much a games. Unleash your imagination!

Craig's Lists and Fairies' Lists

Craig's Lists (CL) are small, logical groups of vocabulary. These may be put together because they are introduced together in the same session, or they may represent a category of words that are added to as the course progresses. 

The original idea behind Craig's Lists was that a list of words may be repeated together during a session, almost like a song or mantra, to fix them in the brain as a memorable sequence, rather like the ABC song children sing in English. This may not work for all the Craig's Lists in our curriculum, because they now also perform an additional role: Ensuring that all the vocabulary in the Vocabulary Master List is covered. Every single word in the Vocabulary Master List is to be organised into categories and worked into Rides via Craig's Lists.

Fairies' Lists (FL) are the sister of Craig's Lists, but for grammar. In the same way as every entry in the Vocabulary Master List is to be worked into a Craig's List, so too all elements in the Grammar Master List are to be worked into Fairies' Lists. The main difference between a Fairies' List and a Craig's List is that a Fairies' List is never to be explicitly introduced or repeated during a lesson, quite the opposite: The Set-up is to be so carefully crafted that the elements on the Fairies' List simply "click" in the minds of the students automatically, almost as if fairies did it!

Vocabulary and Grammar Master Lists

These are essentially databases of vocabulary and grammar elements that occur in the curriculum. The order in which entries are added does not matter, because they are organised in the Craig's and Fairies' Lists. What matters is that each entry is recorded, and that each occurs only once. The same element may, on the other hand, appear in more than one Craig's or Fairies' List.

The Vocabulary Master List in particular will also serve as a dictionary, making it theoretically possible for a group with no native Turkish speaker to use the curriculum out-of-the-box; one of the group could study and master all the elements of a Ride beforehand, and share them with the group in a WAYK session.

Coming Soon: 

• Sign language demos Links in the Master Lists to specific points in Youtube videos where hand signs are demonstrated.
• Ride Chains Groupings of rides into a "big picture", gradually taking the group to fluency.

Turkish USC

So, a couple more links are finished on the chain on the wiki, simultaneously laying the groundwork for the Fethiye WAYK Turkish Curriculum while also making a start on entering our first Ride, which is our version of the Universal Speed Curriculum.

I have worked out a format that I hope any teacher will be able to use "out of the box" as it were. It starts by declaring the Set-up (which I am also going to index), and the Craig's Lists and Fairies' Lists used. You'll notice that each item in the list links to its entry in the Vocabulary Master List.

Then the Conversation is broken down into "links" which are then put back together again in the form of "chains". I was finding that I had to stop and think about which bits we would do next in mid-session, so the Conversation Chains are to save me that hassle.

More of the USC has been playtested than I have entered; we finished Part 2 just this weekend with our students. We have the rest planned, but I want to playtest it and then enter it onto the wiki. If there's a need I will also release it in PDF format.

Curriculum page created

OK, so I've created a "Fethiye WAYK Turkish Curriculum" page over on the official WAYK wiki, which the administrator was kind enough to give me access too. Little did he know...

Once I've got my head back round about how wikis work I'm going to be structuring the information as follows:

• Vocabulary Master List (V)
• Craig's Lists (CL)
• Grammar Master List (G)
• Fairies' Lists (FL)
• Rides (R)
• Ride Chains (RC)
• Ride Map (RM)
• Set-ups (S)

This is going to be quite detailed, so you can skip to the bottom line if you like.

I'm going to be basing the Vocabulary Master List on the list of 1,200 most commonly used words in Turkish, to which I will add any other words that we use that aren't on it. This is the only thing that will be anywhere near finished as we start. Each entry will refer to videos of the signs that we will use. To make things simple, I'm going to take videos of myself or Gözde signing several words together, and then the links will be to the point in the video where that word is being signed. The Vocabulary Master List will be a single wiki page, likely a table.

The Grammar Master List will include not only particles, suffixes, and so on, but also "concepts" and specific sentence constructions, basically any "new" element that the setup will be designed to help "click" in players' minds. 

Now with Craig's Lists... I know that I'm deviating slightly from orthodoxy here, but I want to take Craig's Lists beyond a memory/repetition tool that you use only for some words, and even then only when needed to jog the memory, and use this concept to organise and categorise the entire Vocabulary. These CLs will still be designed such that they could be used in-session (actually, I think they may work well for refreshers), but this will be up to the teacher. Much of the time they will simply be words that are introduced and/or used together and/or in the same context, put together in a group that's easier to categorise and track. Each Craig's List will be a separate wiki page, likely a table.

Fairies' Lists are basically Craig's Lists, just applied to the Grammar Master List. Of course, at no point in the session will we be reviewing lists of suffixes. Again, this will be a device more geared to helping us teachers develop sessions.

Rides will each be individual pages, almost like recipes, listing the a Set-up and a Script together with the Craig's Lists and Fairies' Lists used. Ride Chains will be still other pages listing sequences of interconnected Rides. The Ride Map will be a single page organising all Ride Chains into a network that will enable teachers to see the big picture and follow students' progress. Teachers will be able to pick and choose Rides and Ride Chains for each session depending on the class. 

The Set-ups used in Rides will also be documented and tracked on separate pages. I anticipate that coming up with new, TQ Obvious Set-ups will be the toughest challenge we face, especially as we progress to more complex grammar and extended vocabulary.

All of the above elements will have a reference code. Each word will be "V 123" or some such, Craig's Lists will be "CL 1", "CL 2" and so on, with each entry in the list given a number, "1.1, 1.2" etc. The same sort of thing will go for Rides and Ride Chains; variants of Set-ups will also be numbered in this way. This will mean that the Vocabulary Master List, say, will have links after each word to each Craig's List and Ride it appears in. Everything will be cross-referenced as much possible.

----

The bottom line: Apart from the Vocabulary Master List and maybe some of the Grammar Master List, everything else will be built up week by week as we go along. Once we've finished, we will have a well-rounded package so we can go up to anyone and say "I can get you from nothing to intermediate in [however many weeks]." Other teachers will be able to simply use the Rides, Craig's Lists and Ride Map out-of-the-box to plan sessions, while using the Vocabulary Master List as a dictionary, particularly to learn the signs. The rest of the behind-the-scenes infrastructure will serve as a template to fellow WAYK practitioners in adapting it to their own languages. Particularly in the area of Set-ups will we be able to swap ideas.

This has been good to get my ideas down in writing, so now I'm going to go off and develop some of it so there's something to look at. Meanwhile, any thoughts, suggestions, corrections and reactions will be most welcome.