Dealing with emotional consequences of historical trauma in the language classroom

[Troike, Rudolph C - (rtroike)]

Some years ago I read that the Oneida had launched a (then-)successful campaign to revive the use of the language based on the need to have participants in certain ceremonies. This of course would not work as well in an urban setting, but embedding the language learning in a context of honoring and perpetuating significant aspects of historical culture might help motivationally, as conversely might applying it to modern technological use as a challenge (being able to share information within a knowledgeable peer group, so that the language is relevant, and not just a difficult learning exercise).



Methodologically, the teaching model we created for a course in Bolivian Quechua at the University of Texas some years ago might easily be adapted. By the middle of the second semester, students were able to communicate with a visiting student from Peru who spoke a radically different dialect (considered by some linguists to be a separate language), discussing differences in education in the U.S. and Peru. (Most modern language courses I know reach this level of proficiency after 4 semesters, rather than 1 1/2!) The textbook, by Garland Bills, Bernardo Vallejo, and myself, is available on the web, and I am told that the lab lessons are also.



The crucial aspect of the success of the model was in the lab lessons, which (at the outset) had students memorize conversations and practice sentences by listening to them being repeated 3 times before being provided a space to say them, then hearing another repetition followed by a space, and then hearing a final confirmation. After about the 5th lesson, memorizing a constructed conversation becomes burdensome, so we dropped that requirement in favor of using the patterns for expanded and innovative use in the classroom. But the key is building up hearing/listening (receptive) ability first.



In a heritage language setting like this, I would add engaging the students in the creation of novel conversations, jokes, playlets, etc., as soon as a minimally adequate level of competence had been reached. In many native communities, being able to turn a joke in the language is a socially desirable skill. Finding ways to engage learners in their own learning could be a key. Writing first and reading aloud rather than being forced into impromptu speaking can make things easier.



A great mistake in much of modern language teaching ideology is pressing students for informal conversational competence, without developing an adequate receptive foundation. I have queried college seniors who had taken a required 2 years (4 semesters) of Spanish, and found that they had already forgotten most of what they studied, thus almost totally wasting that much of their lives. (By contrast, from a reading/grammar-translation approach with no speaking whatsoever, I was successfully able to take graduate courses taught entirely in Spanish in Mexico.) Overemphasis on production without sufficient receptive hearing/listening development can be counterproductive. So one must be wary of what the "experts" in language teaching prescribe.



    Good luck,



    Rudy



    Rudy Troike

    University of Arizona

    Tucson, Arizona



________________________________
From: ilat-request at list.arizona.edu [ilat-request at list.arizona.edu] on behalf of Tanya Slavin [tanya.slavin at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, February 28, 2014 6:08 PM
To: ilat at list.arizona.edu
Subject: [ilat] Dealing with emotional consequences of historical trauma in the language classroom

Dear all,

We're having a local workshop on indigenous language teaching at the University of Toronto, an event organized for school and university language teachers to share ideas on some of the challenges specific to native language teaching in an urban setting. One of the topics that we hope to address in some way (perhaps as a roundtable discussion) is the question of how to deal with emotional consequences of historical trauma in the language classroom. One of the biggest obstacles for aboriginal students wishing to regain their language is the painful history of their relationship with it (e.g. their parents were forbidden to speak the language, they may have grown up discouraged speaking their language or feeling that their language was somehow inferior). All that baggage influences negatively their success in the classroom: they either reach a certain plateau or can hardly progress at all, or are unable to start speaking the language. As a result, the drop-out rate of native students in a university language classroom is much higher than that of non-native students wishing to learn a native language. I witnessed it myself when I was teaching Ojibwe in a university setting, and I'm seeing it now teaching it in a community setting. The question is how to deal with that and help these students succeed (also keeping in mind that they don't necessarily have the support of their community in an urban setting). Is it a good idea to actually raise this issue in the classroom, in order not to ignore the elephant in the room, so to speak? Would having separate classes for native and non-native students help the issue?
So I wanted to ask if anybody had any ideas about this they would be willing to share, or experiences they had, or any stories they have about students that were dealing with this obstacle. If that's ok, I'd love to share your ideas and experiences at the workshop (obviously, giving everybody credit for them), which would also hopefully generate a productive discussion. I would appreciate any ideas you might have, and thank you in advance!

Tanya
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