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!

Culture Lesson Plan - Roman Pets

As part of our Brandon Brown Canem Vult -1st Chapter Lesson Plan, Bob Patrick and I introduced animalia domestica Romana (Roman pets) as our culture topic. Since our goal was to introduce culture in the target language through a comprehensible reading (see here for a previous post on this topic), this is the lesson plan which we used. Bob wrote the original reading which we then embedded in different ways:

Day 1

1. Warm up - project ppt slide of various animals and ask questions in Latin about "which animal .....?" (powerpoint, script)
2. Dictatio - short version of the original passage (dictatio script, dictatio ppt to project)

Day 2

1. Complete dictatio as needed
2. Review dictatio passage through choral reading
3. Play multiple rounds of Socrative review (Space Race) of dictatio passage - directions:
   a) importing quiz into your own list of Socrative quizzes - the SOC code # is SOC-25027325
   b) starting Space Race
   c) student paced quiz directions

Day 3

1. Read/Draw/Discuss of the dictatio passage

Day 4

1. Complete Read/Draw/Discuss as needed
2. Timed write using Read/Draw

Day 5

1. Read full Animalia Domestica reading
2. Draw 1-2-3 of one paragraph from the full reading

Observations

1. I really liked this passage which Bob wrote, because it gave students an understanding of why particular pets were more favorable to the Romans than others.I actually learned a lot from the passage.
2. When doing the dictatio, due to the constant repetitions of phrases, I actually had students predicting aloud what the next words/phrases were going to be as I was reading it aloud. Yep, CI works!
3. By the time students got to the full reading, most found it to be quite easy to read due to having the foundation of the earlier embedded reading.

Learning to Introduce Culture in a CI Classroom

I have always enjoyed teaching Roman culture to students, because it is such a rich topic. In the past, I have had students who have absolutely hated reading Latin but when it came to culture, they enjoyed every moment of the discussion. Many Latin textbooks try to tie in their readings to a particular cultural topic, such as the baths, gladiatorial games, life in different parts of the Roman empire, etc. The problem though has been that so many times, the actual teaching of culture is relegated to an English section. While this does provide lots of useful information, as a language teacher, I want my students to learn about culture in the language itself, so that culture is not viewed as outside of the language but rather as part of the language. The other side of it though is that one can go overboard with too much vocabulary in a creating a culture-based reading in Latin so that it ends up becoming too incomprehensible and overwhelming for students to read.

At my former school, when I made the decision to do a hybrid textbook/CI approach, I loved the freedom to be able to teach the textbook in whatever way I wanted and in whatever order I wanted. The problem, though, was that I still had to cover the culture sections from the textbook, as that was on my instructional team's final exam. To teach the depth of the cultural material in a level-appropriate target language manner did not seem possible, so I would always have to take a full-day to cover the culture material in English through a lecture so that I could get it out of the way. 

At my new school, however, where I am one of five CI Latin teachers and where we all have completely "untextbooked," culture is introduced and taught through a level-appropriate reading. In other words, like any other reading passage, the cultural reading involves pre-reading, reading, and post-reading. Bob Patrick and I teach all of the Latin 1 sections (we have nine!), so last week, we decided that we wanted to introduce the Roman domus vs. insulae. As a result, Bob wrote up a reading passage in a level-appropriate, Latin 1 language which explained life in the Roman insula vs. domus, which also included an adapted version of Horace's "City Mouse and Country Mouse" story. While Bob wrote the passage, I was in charge of creating the lesson plans. For some reason, when given this task, I found myself struggling to do this, because it meant introducing lots of topic-specific words about the house - how could I introduce these words in a compelling way?

The following is my lesson plan for how Bob and I "taught" the Roman insula for Latin 1 (we just finished this yesterday!). The goal is to use the Horace story as a transition for another reading about the Roman house (this will be a later blog posting):

UBI ROMANI HABITAVERUNT

In Romā antiquā (ancient), multī hōminēs (people) in insulīs (apartment buildings) habitaverunt.  Frequenter, familia in unō conclavi (room) habitavit.  Aqua non in insulīs erat (there was). Latrina non in insulīs erat. Aqua publica erat. Latrina publica erat.  Culina non in insulīs erat. Cubiculum non in insulīs erat. unum conclave (room) erat (there was), et tota (entire) familia in conclavi (room)  habitavit. difficile erat (it was) in insulīs habitāre.

Day 1

1. Target vocabulary - culina, cubiculum, tablinum, latrina, coquit, dormit, scribit, dentes fricat. Preview target vocabulary by writing them on the board with their English meanings. Go over each word and their meaning. Ask English derivatives as a way for students to connect words with known vocabulary.
2. Rooms of the house PowerPoint with circling and PQAs - if you are familiar with stage 1 of CLC, you will recognize these types of sentences! Some great PQAs for this are "cui Kanye coquit? cur?", "cui Praeses Obama scribit? Donald Trumpo? Justin Biebero?", "mavis dormire in cubiculo an in culina?" "mavis dentes fricare in latrina an in culina? in cubiculo?"
3. Movie Talk - iPad vs. Paper

Day 2

1. Review rooms of the house ppt
2. Target vocabulary for Movie Talk - vir, cubiculum, latrina, intrat, abit, horologium, per scalas descendit, culina, domum, iterum. Preview target vocabulary by writing them on the board with their English meanings. Go over each word and their meaning. Ask English derivatives as a way for students to connect words with known vocabulary.
3. Movie Talk - Destiny

Day 3

1. mavis habitare ppt - this activity actually took MUCH longer than I thought it would, as students really wanted to discuss this!
2. Hand out reading for students to read silently
3. Review reading in order to establish meaning. 
4. Discuss culture in English to "fill in the gaps."

Day 4

1. Review reading if needed
2. Verum/Falsum de Insulis ppt - students wanted to use whiteboards to show me their answers
3. Products, Practices, and Perspectives handout - this helps students better understand the three P's but still use the passage. I was surprised at how QUICKLY students were able to complete this after only having gone through the reading the day before!

Observations

1. Although I felt like I struggled to create a lesson plan which surrounded a culture-based reading, I was pleased with the results.
2. Though the idea of a CI-based reading to introduce culture did not feel natural to me, students did not seem to think that it was any different from what we had been doing before. 
3. I love this approach! It is still going to take me time to learn how to do it better, but I am definitely on board with doing it this way!

I will blog in the future about how the rest of the culture-based reading on the Roman house and the adapted Horace story goes, as that is currently a work in progress - not ready for public viewing yet.