The Smartest Giant in Town

From Reading Pictures to Understanding a Story in the Foreign Language 
by Annet Kaminski

• Theoretical background: 

This reading is about a research done on a 24-student Primary class whose main objective was to prove the impact that pictures have on children’s understanding of a story during their first encounter with the picturebook The Smartest Giant in Town.

While observing pupils’ behaviour along all the storytelling sessions, it was found some influential factors that promote children’s English language learning and, above all, foster their speaking skills development:

- The frequency of occurrence of the word in the story.

- The helpfulness of the context.
- The frequency of occurrence of the word in pictorial representation.

At the end of such research (12 months later), students were interviewed in a comfortable atmosphere so that they could express themselves confidently in English. These interviews consisted of displaying some cards with the parts of the story and the characters. Children had to speak about these cards and say what aspects of the storytelling activity they liked or disliked. 

The main objective of this research was to prove that students remembered the story despite children had just been told it just once in class. Then, it was proved that 12 months after the first encounter with the book, children partially remembered the story. So, we can consider that picturebooks work as scaffoldings to a better understanding of the story.

• Activities: 

If we had to implement The Smartest Giant in Town in class, we would do in a 4th-grade Primary class (9-10 years old). We would take advantage of such picturebook in order to work some visual aspects which are not taken into account durint the above research. 

- During the story: 

Realia activity.

While telling the story, it would be a great idea to bring some realia in order to introduce new vocabulary. For instance, there are a lot of words related to clothes which may be worked by bringing real material: a shirt, a tie, trousers... The objective is to get children totally involved in the story. 

Let's work emotions.

Feelings and emotions are an important aspect when telling stories, since it is relevant that children develop their empathy. That's why we will give some small banners showing happy, sad or worried faces. We will ask them in every story scene how the characters may feel so that they raise their banners according to what expressions or gestures are displayed by the characters. Children will also have to justify why they consider that the characters feel like that. 

- At the end of the story: 

Match the giant's clothes with the animals. 

First of all, we will prove if students have understood the story when it comes to vocabulary. That's why, they will be given some cards displaying the giant's clothes which appeared in the book. Pupils will have to classify such cards by sticking them on a worksheet which will show the different animals the giant helps during the story. 

Let's work the story backgrounds. 

Due to the fact that picturebooks contains a lot of details such as beautiful backgrounds and characters, it may be interesting to workd them. For this reason, an outstanding activity would be to work on some details that appear in the book (the colour of the different houses, some tiny objects, the weather...).

Pupils in pairs will be given some pictures taken from the book; they will have to find them in the picturebook (like Where is Willy?). We should highlight that children will have the PDF version of the story so that all of them can succesfully complete the activity . 

Let's work values. 

Like emotions, values are also important to work in class, since students must learn to live together with other people which may be different to them. The last page of The Smartest Giant in Town shows how all the animal the giant has helped thank him his kindness. It is here where we would like to work values by asking students some questions like the following: 

Why do the animals give the giant a box? 

Why does the giant want to change his appearance with new clothes?

Can animals, giants and people live together in the same city? 

It is quite probable that students answer some question in Spanish/Catalan or speaking just a few English words. However, the aim is to engage them to express themselves independently their difficulties, since what we want to achieve firstly is students to get rid of their shyness and unconfidence.

My educative experience as a reader

As a child, I don't remember to have read any English book or story at school, which is a pity because storytelling would have been a good way of engaging children to love reading. In my case, I have always loved reading thanks to my parents' positive attitude towards books. However, I started to read short stories at Secondary School. Specifically, some of the books I remember are "Frankenstein" and  "Scarlet". I must highlight that I had no guidance when reading such books or stories, since I had to read them at home in order to pass an exam; my reading comprehension is the unique point which was tested by my teachers. Therefore, I couldn't find the meaning or sense of reading English stories. Indeed, it was a challenge for me in terms of learning new vocabulary and understanding the plot, but it was not useful at all, educatively talking. 

As an adult, I took up reading English books 4 years ago for pleasure. I thought I couldn't finish a book written in a foreign language, but one day I did! What's more, I learnt a lot of new expressions and cultural facts I had no idea by then. Some of such books are "The Giver" (Lois Lowry) and "Paper Towns" (John Green). 

As an English teacher at an academy, I have the same problem I had as a child: I have not chances of implementing reading as a pleasurable task in class, since every student has his/her "Oxford" or "Cambridge" workbooks. Such books have plenty of readings adapted to their English level or ages, but they are not  motivating enough for pupils, given that these are constantly testing students' reading skills. That's why I would like to incorporate storytelling in my classes, so I love stories for children. Actually, I consider that storytelling let teachers create a special atmosphere that other methodologies cannot. 

Doing research at university (last session), I found an interesting methodology I wouldn't hesitate to put into practice in the future: planning story based-lessons. This consists of planning a whole lesson based on a storybook or reading; for instance, it can be planned a CLIL lesson about the water cycle by using a story about a water drop that travels around the world as a starting point. Such methodology implies go from global contents to specific ones, which means retelling some parts of the story in a variety of ways. Here you may find lots of ideas to plan a story based-lesson: 

https://storyarts.org/lessonplans/index.html 

To sum up, I would absolutely like to implement more reading activities in my English classes in order to motivate children to learn and improve their English skills by reading. Moreover, I consider that emotions and culture are important when learning a new language; without them, we couldn't communicate meaningful ideas. So, storytelling and other reading methodologies should be implemented in class so as to avoid what happened to many children like me: growing up without having found a meaningful reason to read English stories. 

Talking about stereotypes

We are surrounded by stereotypes that set the way we behave according to our culture. In fact, stereotypes are a way of classifying or dividing people into many “categories” which may become denigrating. It is truth that many stereotypes does not always mean that people from a specific country or culture behave as we believe; however, some of such stereotypes represent to some extent how a country generally is seen from outside.

Spanish stereotypes

For example, in the reading “When cultures collide: leading across culture, third edition” written by Lewis Collin, they are described some Englishmen stereotypes we may hear in our day to day. As I could read, some of such stereotypes are not totally false if we make reference to British people. Otherwise, we would be classifying all English people such as Scottish or Welsh people in the same box where British are. Indeed, depending on the area of UK we may find different behaviours; that’s an example that Scottish people are ruder than Brits.

There are also Spanish stereotypes that define us as a culture. Actually, one of the most used statements to describe Spain is the next one: “Spain is different”. That’s why we have different costumes, beliefs and values in comparison to our Europe neighbourhoods and countries beyond the Atlantic Ocean. Doing some research, I found interesting points of view some foreigners have about Spain as a culture. (HuffingPost, 2015).

• ·     Some North Americans from U.S.A. consider that “Spanish people like parties, dancing and drinking. In general, they appreciate all of those pleasures such as eating, taking a nap…”

• ·     Germans hardly understand “why Spanish people talk so fast and loud. It sound as if they were talking making use of exclamations”.

• ·      Italians consider that Spanish people “know to find the balance between duty and pleasure.

• ·      French people state that “Spanish people are kind and friendly with everyone”.

• ·      Greeks say that “Spanish people is good at playing football”.

• ·      Koreans do not understand why Spanish people “cannot have dinner before eight o’clock”. They also state we are “too noisy and bad at speaking English”.

• ·      Canadians point out the “Spanish people tend to arrive late at our meetings”.

• ·     English people consider that “Spanish people sleep almost all the day and buy compulsively”.

General stereotypes around the world

To sum up, it was interesting to find what other countries think about our culture. Specifically, I couldn’t stop laughing at all their beliefs, since some of them are not true at all. For example, we don’t take a nap every day; in fact, there is a vast majority of people who do not have time to do that. Moreover, we have dinner later than other countries because we have more sunny hours, so we take advantage of that to spend more time doing other stuff. Our manner of speaking may be a little bit noisy, but Chinese and German people also make noise when speaking their languages; however, they do not realise about it. In any case, this research was essential to make a brief comparison betwwen how the rest of cultures see us and how we really are as a culture. 

Is it multilingualism a threat for our traditions?

Globalisation is a widespread fact in our society we cannot avoid when teaching festivals and traditions. Halloween is not just celebrated in United States, but it is also around the world. For example, Spain has its own festivity the same day that Halloween is celebrated; however, more and more people is adopting such foreign tradition. Is it an advantage or a drawback?

Advantages and drawbacks

• Let's see the advantages that globalisation and multilingualism bring in our society:

- Society adopts an open mind towards other cultures. 

- It is easier to learn more about other cultures, beliefs, values...

- Cultures can express themselves with total freedom.

- It is easier to learn new languages and ways of communication.

• On the other hand, some drawbacks we may find are the following ones: 

- We may lose our traditions and our sense of belonging to a country, so if everything is globalised and celebrated everywhere, there is nothing special that make us different regarding our traditions and festivals. 

- We can have acces to culture whenever we want, so we may lose interest for it. In fact, when we have an excess of information, we tend to undervalue what we can get easily from Internet or wherever.

Conclusions

In short, despite all the positive and negative points multilingualism brings in our society, I consider that we teachers may make use of it to work festivals and traditions in class. However, we should take into account a relevant issue: the inability of many teachers to teach culture through language. That's why I would propose activities in which pupils can develop communication skills (oral and written).For instance, students can prepare presentations about the different festivals and traditions we may find around the world; thereby, pupils would be working culture while developing their English oral skills.

 

 Another alternative would be taking advantage of multilingualism in class to engage (not to force) students from other countries to tell their classmates more about their cultures. Actually, the great majority of times we have in class the resources necessary to work culture, but we do not realise about them; that's why we are always looking for innovation when, in fact, we do not need to implement new approaches to plan a fun and interesting class about culturals aspects. 

TRANSLANGUAGING EVERYWHERE

  
 What is translanguaging?

Translanguaging is considered an approach which consists of reading, listening, watching in one language and writing and speaking in another one. Both languages are equally integrated, so the aim of the translanguaging approach is to develop skills into a language (L2) by making a coherent use of both L1 and L2. In other words, translanguaging should not be used to avoid L2 use, but to foster speakers to develop their communication skills in L2 through their L1.

Personal experience

Personally, I can state I experienced the well-known translanguaging approach when I studied at my English academy. Specifically, my teacher used it for doing her classes. First of all, she explained all the English grammar in Spanish; then, we did and corrected the exercises in English, but our doubts were clarified in Spanish. Thereby, I could set links between English and Spanish grammar more easily than if all the theory would have been explained just in English. Actually, such approach was useful for me because I could link the similarities between English and Spanish language. Moreover, I go on using translanguaging to teach and learn  English grammar and vocabulary, since I have proved that it works. 

My research

Doing research on the translanguaging approach I could learn many things about it: 

•  “Translanguaging is about communication, not about language itself” (EAL Journal, 2016).

Many teachers concern about what to asses when applying a translanguaging approach, given that students are not making a complete use of a language; they are mixing both to communicate ideas. However, there is a clear solution for such worried teachers: they should learn to differentiate between language and communication skills when it comes to assess pupils. 

On the one hand, language skills make reference to all those aspect what take part of a language: grammar, vocabulary, idioms, etc. On the other hand, communication skills mean all related to oral and written skills, language strategies, etc. which allow us to express our ideas and understand the others. 

Teachers, therefore, should also consider translanguaging as a way of promoting students autonomy when communicating ideas in class.  If pupils are constantly interrupted by their teachers when they want to express something, they will lose their self-confidence when using their L2. Indeed, it is not as important the students’ language accuracy or fluency as their skills to use both languages are when it comes to building their own learning.  

• “Translanguaging pedagogy is about you and your students” (EAL Journal, 2016).

Nowadays, societies are more globalised than some years ago. As a consequence, multilingualism is rising up faster than we expect at schools. That’s why teachers should adjust their approaches to the real context of their classes. An alternative to that would be translanguaging. 

There are many students who are still learning the official language from the country they are currently living. For this reason, they have some difficulties in expressing themselves, which makes pupils’ confidence go down. In order to foster it, teachers must allow them to use their L1 when necessary. What’s more, teachers can take advantage of that to share cultural aspects about the countries students come from. For instance, I watched a video where a teacher uses translanguaging in a multilingual class. He sometimes speaks in Spanish to correct Maths exercises and even he says some French expressions. Furthermore, such teacher sticks on the whiteboard some steps that children must follow to do their Maths exercises in Spanish. To some extent, this is a way of scaffolding their learning through the language. Below you can watch the video I am talking about:

Translanguaging is also present in many places around the world. It is curious to observe many billboards or banners where Spanish is mixed to English. In fact, I realized that the famous “Spanglish” is not more than a way of translanguaging among English and Spanish societies. The following video shows different examples of that:

REFERENCES: 

EAL Journal (2016). What is translanguaging?. EAL Journal. Avalaible [online] on:
https://ealjournal.org/2016/07/26/what-is-translanguaging/

CLIL Session 1

Hi my dear bookworms!! 

Last Friday, I started a new subject called CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning). Specifically, we were proposed to plan a CLIL lesson in groups. So, I will make use of my blog to show you our progress while planning our "Didactic Unit". 

Laura, Aroa and I are the ARTS AND CRAFTS team!! Therefore, we have to desing a CLIL lesson based on such subject contents. On Friday, we did a quick brainstorming at class and we had a great idea... Do you want to see our CLIL lesson draft? Here you are some ideas I picked from our brainstorming: 

CLIL lesson ideas (brainstorming)

Our initial idea is to work self-portraits in a 4th grade-Primary class. Through such topic, we may work description (parts of the face), feelings, complex colours (turquoise, mustard...) and some painters (briefly). Furthermore, we considered that using SCRAPBOOKS in order to introduce or review basic vocabulary and grammar would be fun for pupils. Who is who? game is another idea we had once students have finished their self-portraits. 

Well, there are just a few ideas about what we want to achieve. Yet, we will specify more about our ideas next Friday at university!! 

Task 3: Myths about how languages are learnt

Hello bookworms!

Once having analysed what parents, educators and old students of my context think about early foreign languages learning, I will describe and analyse their answers:

1. Young children learn languages as a game and they are more motivated than older learners in Primary.

English  language learning as a game

Educators, parents as well as old students think that kids are more motivated than older learners in Primary, because games are an essential part of the class during their first years at school.  Specifically, one of the parents I asked stated that young children learn languages because “they have fun and don’t see foreign language learning as a duty, but as a game”. What’s more, some parents also made reference to the fact that “older children have different motivations”, which is what Carmen Muñoz (2000) says in Bilingualism and Trilingualism in school students in Catalonia: “young people are also attracted to English because of its value as a lingua franca for use in travelling abroad and communicating with foreign people”. Older students agree with parents and their opinions are similar.

Regarding educators, they consider that games are a good strategy and resource to motivate younger children to learn a foreign language. However, we have to take into account “what type of games teachers carry out in class”, one of the educators expressed.

2. The earlier you start learning a foreign language, the better results in written language.

English language learning

This statements is a little bit controversial due to the different opinions I was given by educators and parents. Specifically, some parents think that “children have more abilities to develop writing skills since early ages”; they consider that the more inputs they receive, the more outputs there will be in the future. Nevertheless, other parents and also educators don’t agree this statement saying that younger children “don’t have enough resources to practice or develop their writing skills. For example, three year-old kids don’t know to write yet”.

Older students are more open-minded and consider that “since early ages pupils are exposed to foreign languages materials such as readings, songs, games, etc. that can develop indirectly their writing skills. If they are used to reading these kind of materials, they will assimilate some writing issues”. As far as I am concerned, it was interesting listening to such opinions, so most people are convinced that receiving inputs without producing immediate outputs doesn’t mean that children cannot do it in the future.

3. Children are like sponges because they have more resources to learn a new language.

All three educators, parents and old students agree this statement. Actually, their opinions express the same ideas: “the earlier kids are exposed to a new language, the more links they set in their brains. Therefore, they build a clearer structure than an adult”.

I consider that this statement may have been considered true by the majority of people because bilingualism in Catalonia is a fact, I mean all children are exposed to Catalan and Spanish since they born and they learn both languages without problems. That’s why some parents consider that a new language such as English will not be difficult for children who are used to using both Spanish and Catalan.

 4. Children cannot speak a foreign language while learning it but they can understand it.

This statement was also considered true by educators, parents and old students. However their opinions were different. For instance, some parents think that children “can understand general information given that they have developed basic listening skills in such foreign language”. Others say that children can understand a language without speaking it because “they have not enough confidence to speak a foreign language”.

Educators consider that children cannot speak a foreign language, but understand it because “their listening skills are more developed than speaking ones”. On the other hand, old learners believe that children “cannot difference language structures, but understand them. Yet, when they get older, they will be able to set links and apply all what they have learnt”.

5. Is the early introduction English going to affect the development of the other 2 languages?

Educators, parents and old students answered “no” to such question. They believe that “children cannot confuse all 3 languages when learning them, so they can learn more than one language at the same time”. Specifically, one of old learners state that “it (English) can actually make easier the learning of new foreign languages”.

Bilingualism in Catalonia

In any case, English doesn’t affect negatively to Spanish or Catalan development. Indeed, bilingualism in Catalonia is positive for introduction of other foreign languages at early ages. That’s why young children develop some metacognitive abilities that imply language transfer strategies and interlanguage dependence. Nevertheless, we may take into account that these cognitive benefits only take place if young pupils are exposed to massive inputs in formal or natural contexts (Cenoz, n.d.).

MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: 

Personally, I would like to tell my experience related to early foreign language learning, since I consider important my parents decision when I was just a child. My parents didn’t want to join me in an academy when I was 6 years old, my Primary teachers even insist on being enrolled in a language schools. However, my parents didn’t consider that it was necessary for me receiving extra classes of English until I was on Secondary schools.

Despite my parents didn’t want to join me in an academy, I insisted on going to one because I loved all what I did in my Primary English classes. Then, when I started secondary school, my parents gave me the opportunity to improve my English, but I refused it. It wasn’t until I was 16 years old that I ask my parents for enrolling an academy. My main motivation was my educational and professional future, not having fun as I expected when I was just a child.

It was frustrating observing how some of my classmates had more English skills than me. Here it was when I blame my parent for not having enjoined me in an academy when I was 6 years old. I thought that the sooner, the better. However, I could observe how in just 6 years I improved my English until getting an advanced level. It was thanks to lots of strategies I set to learn vocabulary, expressions, grammar and so on (some of them are the same ones I use for Catalan and Spanish); lot of practice during the week in the academy through role playing and communicative situations.

French language learning

I would also like to highlight that in 3^rd of secondary I chose French as 2^nd foreign language. It was fun observing that I mixed French and English because some words were similar in both languages. Later, I learnt to difference them by using some strategies. However, I didn’t consider it a negative fact; actually, mixing languages means that learners are building a strategies network and are transferring knowledge from one language to another. In such transfer, there may be mistakes related to foreign languages learning process.



CONCLUSION:

In conclusion, I strongly believe that most parents and educators are concerned about English early learning because they are influenced by society. I mean the more languages you master, the more professional prospects you will have. That’s why parents want their sons to learn it since they born.

What’s more, another issue for parents and educators is the insignificant number of hours schools teach studentsEnglish. Consequently, most parents think of enrolling their children to academies or language schools. However, schools are increasing English hours in class by applying CLIL approach. Thereby, pupils develop English language skills at the same time they learn Science, Maths or Geography contents, for instance. 

In the case of academies, I must highlight that a vast majority of them apply a communicative approach, which is meaningful for English learning. Nevertheless, pupils only go 2 days per week, which is few for developing proficiency skills. 

To sum up, Catalonia situation is absolutely advantageous for learning foreign languages, so bilingualism allow pupils to transfer their knowledge (from L1 and L2) to L3 acquisition; this transfer implies language interdependence and learning strategies. This process would be like learning to divide: if we know to add, substract or multiply, we will be able to do a division.