Op de moretprslist was de afgelopen dagen een interessante discussie over OWL = Organic World Language. Deze methode van taalverwerving is ontwikkeld door Darcy Rogers. Je kunt hier een Prezi vinden, waarin het principe van OLA uit wordt gelegd. Er is ook een community: OWL, Organic World Language.
Er zijn veel raakvlakken met TPRS, niet in het minst omdat ze hun ideeën baseren op Krashen, net als TPRS en omdat ze ook gebruik maken van TPR.
Wat ik erg leuk vond om in deze Prezi te horen, was dat ze werken zonder tafels en stoelen. Ze staan veel in een cirkel te praten. Ik heb op de Hotelschool al diverse keren gevraagd of we niet een lokaal kunnen krijgen zonder tafels, met alleen maar stoelen waar je eventueel een schrijfplankje op neer kunt klappen.
Engelstalige uitleg bij OWL: “Empowering and Student-Centered : We use our students as the curriculum. We do not come to class with prescribed content for the day. Instead we come with a structure in mind that allows us to create a space where our students get to be the driving force of instruction. Through unique questioning and scaffolding techniques, we wrap the language acquisition process around our students’ lives. When the class content comes from the students, students feel empowered with the language. They OWN the language because it is developed in real-life, real-interest situations and it is applicable to their life in their native language.
Focused on Communication Skills : To develop communication skills in a second language, the learning environment has to mimic that of the first language. This means there is no translation and that grammatical concepts are only addressed when there is a need to clarify something in context. Guided by the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Language (ACTFL) National Standards for Foreign Language Education, we strive to achieve 90+% target language in our classrooms, ensuring that the focus in our classrooms is not only on comprehension, but competency as well.”
Chris Stolz, en actieve TPRS docent op de moretprslist gaf dit commentaar:
I went to a brief workshop and I find TPRS superior, because
a) OWL doesn’t go for direct translation which can drive you bonkers if you miss something.
b) they want ouptut right away. Lots of kids hate this but it’s fine for the super comfortable ones.
c) there is no emphasis at all on reading so right there you’ve shot yourself in the foot.
d) the emphasis on output means there will a buttload of bad input. The sess I saw was people screwing up German. It looked a lot to me like a gimmicky communicative classroom. I don’t know how they expect people to aquire a language from other people learning it. It seemed like 85%+ of all talk in the OWL setup is student-generated.