Learn French without books and rules
Immersing children in a new language is more effective than starting with lines from a book. That is, if the teacher is able to avoid frustration and questioning faces in the classroom.
Picture: Fred van Diem
The seventh graders who enter the classroom of Madame Vis make one last Selfie. Then they put their phone in a backpack under their seat. Not only the mobile phone must remain in the bag, but also all books. They are not necessary for this class at the Amsterdam Cygnus Gymnasium. Anyone who steps over the threshold in this room is only allowed to speak French. Most of these 29 children had barely done that at the beginning of this school year, but now they have to get by.
"Kaja est absente?", teacher Pauline Vis asks Steef, a roguish kid with straight black hair and gray sneakers. He shakes his head. The place next to Steef is empty, but Kaja will be there in a minute.
“Non, un grand cercle, pas petit”Madame Vis says in elementary French. “Tu peux aller un peut comme ça?. ” She reinforces her words with wide arm gestures. The children understand that they have to make way for others until they are in a big 'U'. Their order corresponds to the first names on a map on the IWB. It is only their fifth French lesson.
Drowning
Immersing children in a language is nice, but they should not drown. "If the teacher speaks French over the heads of the children for an hour, you lose them," says Audrey Rousse-Malpat. Earlier this year, she obtained her PhD at the University of Groningen as an educational researcher on the effectiveness of two different variants of French lessons.
“If you switch to Dutch at the first questioning face, it is also not good,” says Rousse-Malpat. "Then you make it way too easy for them again."
It is not good if you switch to Dutch at the first questioning face
For her PhD research, Rousse-Malpat attended 229 secondary school students from their first French lessons for three years. 40 percent of the students worked with a traditional method, Grand Lignes of Okay, in which grammar is explained and in which students usually make many more written exercises.
The other 60 percent was taught by AIM, a method of Canadian origin used by Madame Vis and her colleagues. In addition to the many gestures, a limited vocabulary and fixed speaking patterns are characteristic of this approach. They must prevent children from drowning in an excess of incomprehensible language.
The analysis, the rules, it will all come later
The lower group immersed in French achieved 35 percent better grades for speaking and writing French after one year than the group with the traditional approach. In years 2 and 3 they expanded their lead a little further. Only on the part of vocabulary did Rousse-Malpat find no difference between the two groups.
According to Rousse-Malpat, the Canadian AIM method is inspired by an approach that the US military developed in World War II to quickly teach soldiers German and French. native speakers repeated understandable standard phrases over and over so that they stuck with the military. “If you want to learn a language quickly, you should speak 'about' the language as little as possible and 'in' that language as much as possible,” says Rousse-Malpat. “The analysis, the rules, it will all come later. By the time children at primary school start learning grammar rules for Dutch, they will have gained years of experience with that language. ”
Grips
It seems that students benefit from speaking a foreign language from the start, provided that teachers have sufficient tools to avoid misunderstanding. “If students don't understand what is being said, it is the problem of the teacher and not the students,” says Rousse-Malpat.
The class repeats phrases Madame Vis says over and over. "Bonjour la classe, comment ça va?" One by one she designates students. 'Moi, ça va très bien', Tessel, Stijn and Tom take turns answering.
Gesture: méchant = angry or mean. Picture: Fred van Diem
Madame Vis laughs and almost constantly demands full attention from all students. Rosa, a little girl in yellow, with black hair, sits on the edge of her chair and stares at Madame Fish intensely, with an eager fire in her eyes. A few yawns or slouches a bit, the class has just returned from school camp, but everyone is enthusiastically participating with the hand gestures.
"Super. Super", Madame Vis beams. “La classe est fantastique!” If the enthusiasm gets too great, a short will suffice shower: take it easy. Very occasionally, a student is addressed by name in a corrective tone. Sometimes it is necessary to translate a single word into Dutch. And that the children were late for class, Madame Vis only picks up once. She also articulates this premise in Dutch.
Spicy
The Cygnus Gymnasium, a school with more than XNUMX students in the Amsterdam Transvaalbuurt consists of four floors of concrete. From the outside, a colorful window is visible here and there. There is a fenced-in football field in the shadow of the building. There are mosaic benches in the schoolyard.
The classical languages section was inspired by the French section. There, too, an attempt is made to speak Latin with the children upon arrival
Children play table football or piano in the indoor break room a quarter mains. Many other children sit there with their laptops open. In the teachers' room on the first floor, teacher Eric Schneiders explains that the classical languages section was inspired by the French section. There, too, an attempt is made to speak Latin with the children upon arrival. “Yes,” says Schneiders, you can speak a dead language. "We can trace what Latin sounded like from written sources." Schneiders understands that the German and English sections on the Cygnus have not yet ventured into the approach. In these lessons the starting level is higher than for French or for classical languages.
She certainly doesn't want to go back to the time before she introduced the AIM method. “Now we are much more concerned with the return than with the exercises themselves.”
After her lesson, Pauline Vis puts the enthusiasm in her class into perspective. “First-class people always like French. After all, it is fun to learn a new language. ” She confirms that this way of teaching is also very strenuous. "Fortunately, I don't only have first classes."
She certainly wouldn't want to go back to the time twelve years ago, before she introduced the AIM method on the Cygnus. She recalls the lessons from that time: “Open your book,” I said at the start of the lesson. "We ended the previous lesson at exercise 10 and now we are beginning exercise 11." Now we are much more concerned with the efficiency than with the exercises themselves. ”
For a class that has just been going on for a month, French sometimes sounds quite tough. Physical actions also help the children to understand what is being said. A few students are sent out alternately. They step over the ligne magic, the magic line outside of which they are allowed to speak Dutch.
Before they are allowed in, Madame Vis asks the children to knock on the door. Again, appropriate sign language makes the commands understandable: marche a la porte (when going out), ouvre la porte, sors de la classe, frappe à la porte et entre dans la classe, thank you beaucoup.
When asked what they think of this approach, Luna, Nada and Yuna turn around at the same time towards the end of class. “Much better than sitting in class with your book,” says Luna. Yuna liked Madame Vis' lesson from two weeks ago even more than today's. "Then you were allowed to do more," she says. "You could even order each other." After the lesson, Pauline Vis tells that Yuna will get her money's worth later in the year. “Then the students can also order the teacher. And what could be more fun than giving your French teacher the order to get under the table? ”
