Is Circling/Asking Processing Questions Communicative?

This is a continuation in my series on purposeful communication.

So maybe you have been following my series about purposeful communication and are saying to yourself, "I implement Comprehensible Input (CI)/Acquisition Drive Instruction (ADI) in my classroom, so I am facilitating purposeful communication, right?" The answer is, "Well...it depends." CI/ADI in and of itself is not purposeful communication, nor is purposeful communication in and of itself CI/ADI. One can implement CI/ADI but not engage in purposeful communication, and one can facilitate purposeful communication but not implement CI/ADI.

What about circling/asking processing questions? Is that a form of purposeful communication? In circling/asking processing questions, am I not communicating with students?

As a backdrop, allow me again to quote Bill Van Patten's definition of communication and my previous explanation in an earlier blog post:

"Communication is the interpretation, expression, and/or negotiation of meaning for a purpose, in a given context." Based on that definition, Van Patten continues that our purpose should be that we wish to discover and learn information about each other, ourselves, and the world around us through communication, text, and input. In addition, in his book Van Patten adds that another purpose of communication is to entertain: "When we tell a joke or write a story...our purpose is to entertain in some way."

In his book, While We're On the Topic: BVP on Language, Acquisition, and Classroom Practice, Van Patten discusses that when we ask students questions, there are two types: display and context-embedded. Asking display questions IS NOT the same thing as being communicative. Here are examples of display questions:

• Circling/asking processing questions - The purpose of this is not to learn anything new about someone or something. When circling/asking processing questions, one is purely verifying information which has been presented or the answer is obvious. This is NOT to say that circling/asking processing questions does not have its place in the classroom - Circling/asking processing questions helps determine comprehension while also allowing for more exposure to targeted vocabulary, but in and of itself, circling/asking processing questions is not being communicative. 

• Asking questions for which one already knows the answer  - if I ask a student what color something is for which we can already see or know the answer, the very fact that it is obvious (such as the color of somebody's shirt, the color of something in a picture, the color of the sky), again asking that question is solely to verify information. As a class, we are not learning anything new about ourselves, each other, or the world. 

While display questions do have their place in a classroom, in general they do NOT equate to being communicative. Van Patten refers to this type of questioning simply as a way to "practice the language:"

Display questions are designed to elicit a specific response in order to demonstrate that the responder understands something and can respond with the (one and only one) correct answer.

I love this Bill Van Patten quote: "Just because mouths are moving does not mean a classroom event is communicative."

However, the opposite type of questions is context-embedded questions, those which are "designed to get information about a topic." Any time when you are asking students a question where you yourself do not know the answer by nature is a truly communicative event, since as a result, that response is teaching us "about ourselves, each other, or the world." In addition, a question where you need student response and input to help "create and to entertain in the language" is a communicative question. Examples of these types of questions are Personalized Questions and Answers (PQAs), StoryAsking questions, One Word Image questions, and opinion questions. 

The skill then lies in knowing how to incorporate both display questions and context-embedded questions, since they are both necessary and important in their own ways for language acquisition and communication. Here are some ways which I am learning to do this (emphasis on "learning"):

• Circling/asking processing questions leading into a PQA - when circling/asking processing questions, can it seamlessly lead into a PQA? Example from a Clip Chat:
• "The woman is eating dinner. What is the woman eating? (dinner). Yes, the woman is eating dinner. Is the woman making dinner or eating dinner? (eating dinner). Carol, what did you eat for dinner yesterday? Manny, what did you eat for dinner?"

• Circling/asking processing questions leading into an opinion question - when circling/asking processing questions, can it seamlessly lead into an opinion question? Example from a Clip Chat (same scenario from above):

•  "The woman is eating dinner. What is the woman eating? (dinner). Yes, the woman is eating dinner. Is the woman making dinner or eating dinner? (eating dinner). Class, in your opinion, is it a good dinner? (NOTE - she is eating pasta). Carol, in your opinion, is pasta a good dinner? Carol, in your opinion, what is a good dinner? In my opinion, a good dinner is _________." 

• Circling/asking processing questions leading into a world fact of some kind - when circling/asking processing questions, can it seamlessly lead into a world fact which you can tie into the discussion? Example from a Clip Chat (same scenario from above):
• "The woman is eating dinner. What is the woman eating? (dinner). Yes, the woman is eating dinner. Is the woman making dinner or eating dinner? (eating dinner). 80% of the world have rice or beans for dinner. Therefore, class, 80% of you should have eaten rice or beans for dinner yesterday. How many of you ate rice or beans for dinner yesterday?"

Again, I am stil learning how to do this. What has your experience been in springboarding into communicative-type questions from circling/asking processing questions?

Teaching Culture in a Purposefully Communicative Manner

This is part of a series on purposeful communication.

This past summer, I had the wonderful experience of observing Skip Crosby teach a middle school Spanish language lab at the CI Summit in Philadelphia. I ALWAYS enjoy observing Skip, because he is a master CI/ADI teacher with middle school students, plus I know little-to-no Spanish, so I love how he makes the language comprehensible. However, more importantly, I got to see Skip present a cultural lesson on vitilla (a sport in the Dominican Republic which is similar to baseball to a degree) in the Spanish language - what I loved most about it (other than just learning about this sport which I had never heard about before, its cultural connection to life in the Dominican Republic, and its possible correlation to why the Dominican Republic has the second largest representation of players in the MLB after America) was that although it was presented in Spanish (and I know very little Spanish), it was 100% comprehensible to me!

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about my purposeful communicative goals for the school year. This goal was based on Bill Van Patten's definition of communication - here is my explanation of it from that earlier blog post:

"Communication is the interpretation, expression, and/or negotiation of meaning for a purpose, in a given context." Based on that definition, Van Patten continues that our purpose should be that we wish to discover and learn information about each other, ourselves, and the world around us through communication, text, and input. In addition, in his book Van Patten adds that another purpose of communication is to entertain: "When we tell a joke or write a story...our purpose is to entertain in some way."

In that same blog post where I listed ways in which I aim to embrace this in my classroom, I wrote: [here is how I will use purposeful communication] "to learn about the world around us: 

1. teaching cultural topics and other content in understandable target language through readings and presentations."

Therefore, as part of my effort to engage in more purposeful communication, I have indeed begun to teach cultural topics in understandable Latin.

HOWEVER, this is NOT as easy as it sounds though: Teaching a target-language-based presentation is still INPUT, and crafting a cultural presentation in the target language means that it still has to be 98%-100% comprehensible. So often, culture has very specific non-high-frequency words, which means that while I can gloss those particular cultural vocabulary words in the presentation, the remaining words must be known/acquired words and cognates. If there are more glossed words than actual known/acquired words, then the input is not comprehensible and can become overwhelming for students.

My goal for the actual presentation was just student understanding and demonstration of comprehension in English - VERY low level on Bloom's Taxonomy. If I were to want to have a further discussion or application in L2, that would require much more specialized output - I just wanted students to show me in L1 their understanding of that L2 communication. Because my goal was comprehension and understanding, to ask questions in L2 and for them to respond in L2 would not let me know what they initially understood.

In my Latin 2 Honors classes, we are starting Andrew Olimpi's novella Clodia. The first chapter takes place at a Roman dinner party, so I decided to do a short presentation about the Roman cena in Latin. There are a lot of cultural nuances surrounding the cena embedded in that chapter which one will not catch without this knowledge. First off, the Roman cena can be a BIG topic in English, and if my goal is being 98%-100% comprehensible in Latin, I big time needed to "shelter vocabulary" and create lots of exposure of cognates/known words to balance out any glossed words. Below is what I crafted (this is part 1 - the cena is a BIG topic):

NOTE - I know that recumbebant is the better word to use than reclinabant, but my goal was to be comprehensible, so I used the cognate instead.

I presented the above using Google Slides and had students answer the following questions in English during the presentation:

1. Explain the dining seating arrangement in a Roman cena and how it differs from a traditional Western meal seating.
2. Nine people could recline on couches in a Roman cena. Explain what happens if there were more than nine.
3. Explain how social rank could affect one’s seating and food offerings.
4. The triclinium was the most decorated room in a Roman house - explain what different things a Roman could see when dining in the triclinium.

Observations

1. I really like the idea of presenting cultural topics in Latin - this is a great example of purposeful communication! However, the key is that the presentation/reading must be 98%-100% comprehensible. I know that Oerberg presents cultural topics in Latin in his chapters, but many times, those readings are overly vocabulary-intensive and turns into a frustrating decoding activity.
2. If I want to get meaty with cultural topics, then I will have to use L1 for that due to complexity of language needed.
3. I am still learning how to teach culture in a purposeful communicative way, but I was very pleased with what I wrote. Again, my goal was to deliver a cultural topic in L2 using 98%-100% comprehensible language where students at the end could demonstrate understanding and comprehension of that L2 in English.
4. I did spend the next day having students interact with the presentation as a reading with some post-reading activities, but that was it. It was not necessary to spend more than a day on it as a reading, since the reading was quite comprehensible to them already.

I am going to continue to do this! My next cultural presentation will be on the Roman popina - wish me luck!

P.S. In the second week of school, I did a comprehensible Latin version of Skip's vitilla presentation, since the first week we had focused on PQAs involving sports. I do not know if my other Latin 2 colleagues understood why I did it or what vitilla had to do with Latin, but I LOVED that I was teaching students about the modern world IN THE LATIN LANGUAGE!

Using AI to Generate Graphics/Images

As I have posted earlier, this past summer at the American Classical League Summer Institute, I attended Stefanie Gigante's presentation "Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Latin Teachers." I have already addressed on this blog how she demonstrated using ChatGPT and Diffit to create texts but she also showed how Canva can be used to create AI-generated images and graphics.

I decided to try this out with a bellringer. Since it was the second week of school, I wanted to do some review of vocabulary words from last year with my Latin 2 students and to get them to write the words down with definitions, so in Magic Media, I typed in the following words in English as my parameters - I also set it to "graphics":

When I pushed "generate," after a few seconds, Magic Media gave me a number of possible graphics which included visual representations of the words. Not every graphic used every word, so I had it regenerate new graphics until I found one that I liked. Below is the image, along with how it was shown for that particular day's bellringer:

On the next day, I reused that graphic for a bellringer, but now the focus was on writing sentences in Latin about the picture. 

Observations

1. I love how I was able to use AI to create custom-made graphics. Instead of having to search for images/graphics which would fit what I want, I can have AI create them for me!
2. The more random the picture, the better I feel for an activity like this! 
3. Magic Media on Canva can create pictures and videos in addition to graphics.

What has been your experience in using AI to generate images/graphics?