For our last podcast of the year (and the decade!) we interview prolific TEFL author Mario Rinvolucri. “Most of the vocabulary teaching that gets done is based on texts, written, audio, or video. The problem with this kind of text-based teaching is that everything is external to the learner: the text hits him or her from outside. It makes much better motivational sense to have the new words rise from a situation that is internal to the students, where they create the situation that ushers in the need for new words.” Today we explore this idea with Mario Rinvolucri, author of “Vocabulary” and “Humanizing Your Coursebook”, how teachers can make vocabulary teaching more student-centered.
Student Centered Vocabulary Teaching (with Mario Rinvolucri) - Transcription
Ross Thorburn: Hi, everyone. This week our guest is Mario Rinvolucri. We're going to be asking Mario about humanistic vocabulary teaching. All this comes from an article that Mario wrote, I think way back in the early 1980s about some of the problems in vocabulary teaching.
Here's a little quote. Mario says, "In my experience, most of the vocabulary teaching that gets done is based on texts, be they written, audio, or video. The problem with this kind of text‑based teaching is that everything is external to the learner. The text hits him or her from the outside."
He goes on to say, "It makes much better motivational sense to have new words rise from a situation that is internal to the students, where they create a situation that ushers in the need for new words." In this episode, I ask Mario about how to do that in class, how to make vocabulary teaching internal to the student.
Mario, if you're not familiar with him, is a teacher and a teacher trainer at Pilgrims in Canterbury in the UK. He's also an author of dozens and dozens of wonderful teachers' books like "Grammar Games Once Upon a Time, Using Stories in the Language Classroom," "Humanising Your Course Book and Vocabulary." I can think of few people better placed to talk about this subject than Mario. I hope you enjoy the interview.
Mario Rinvolucri: Hello, Ross.
Ross: Hi, Mario. Thanks for joining us.
Mario: OK.
Ross: Mario, how do you want to start today?
Mario: I'd like to start off with a little exercise which I would do if I was working with a group and do it with you. Can you see these utensils?
Ross: Yes, I can.
Mario: Spoon and a fork. Which would you prefer to be?
Ross: I'll be the spoon, please, Mario. [laughs]
Mario: You prefer to be a spoon. OK.
Ross: Yeah.
Mario: In a group, of course, different people would make their different decisions and then would pair off with other people. We're a forced pair. I'm going to be a fork. Yes, as a fork, I think of you as a bit passive. I actually hold the meat in place, which my owner can use his left hand holding. Then he can cut, and cut, and cut, etc., etc.
Ross: I suppose this is true but I think as a spoon we're more flexible than forks, aren't we, in that you can use us with soup.
Mario: That's true. I do think of myself as being overly choleric and aggressive as a fork. I realize that that can be a good thing, as I suggested at the beginning. It can also be a defect. You are inevitably condemned to a fairly aggressive, angry role, while a spoon is quite different. The other thing I think about you guys is that you spoons are completely universal.
Ross: I wouldn't say completely universal. We definitely exist, at least in my experience, in Asia, as well as Europe, and in North America. Don't beat yourself up too bad about being aggressive. At least you're not a knife, are you? That would be the most aggressive role, wouldn't it?
Mario: Yes, of course. I didn't choose a knife for that reason. It's automatically aggressive. Therefore, there's no such choice for people to do the role‑play. I wanted to start off with that exercise which comes from the work of Bernard Dufeu, the creator of "Linguistic Psychodramaturgy." I'm sorry for that horrible, long title that he gives it in French.
It uses drama methods but with the aim of teaching language and not with the aim of making you a better personal or less lunatic. This exercise, if it works reasonably well and takes off, ought to allow you sitting in the middle of a room of which there will be maybe 10, to reach five or six different interlocutors and see yourself and the other people from different angles.
What I wanted to do is to introduce at the very beginning the idea of imaginative role‑play. Hopefully, it may be something which is new to you. It has freshness. One of the problems of second‑language teaching is that we have to do again what we've already mastered brilliantly in one language, our mother tongue.
Ross: You're saying there, Mario, that you don't always want what students do in the L2 to be what they can already do in their L1.
Mario: Absolutely not. Also, to do what they already do in their first language but also to have a fresh aspect to the learning, fresh in terms of content and feeling.
Ross: As I mentioned at the beginning of the show, obviously, one of the points of an exercise like this is that the students have a need for vocabulary. As a teacher, then, what are you doing while the students are doing this activity? Are you going around and correcting errors? Are you writing useful words on the board? How are you using this as an opportunity to help the students develop their vocabulary?
Mario: Obviously, they need all sorts of vocabulary they don't have. This is a marvelous time for trying to teach them that. What I do do in those situations is I ask them to put a little piece of paper on the table in front of them. It either says, "Piss off," or it says, "Come when I call you," or it says, "You are free to look over my shoulder."
It's very interesting when you do that with a class you would teach on a permanent basis. It's not always the same people who say, "Piss off." It depends on mood. It depends on the task.
It's saying, especially, to teenage students, "Listen, guys, you know what you need. I'm not God. I can't see into your head and whether you want to be helped this morning or not. So, just tell me." If they, halfway through, decide to change what's on the label, that's fine too.
Ross: Mario, that previous exercise you mentioned was from Bernard Dufeu. Do you have any other examples in a similar vein that you think help with students' vocabulary development?
Mario: An exercise that he does a lot at the beginning of, especially, working with a big group, is what he calls a group mirroring exercise. I can try to do this with you. Est‑ce‑que vous parlez français?
Ross: Je ne comprends pas.
Mario: Je vais vous parler d'une rose. I'm going to talk to you about a rose. You, all the big group of you who are sitting there at the other side of the world, I would like you to simply follow my voice and say the same things.
Ross: OK. If you're listening, you can join in.
Mario: Une rose.
Ross: Une rose.
Mario: Une rose.
Ross: Une rose.
Mario: Oh, une belle rose.
Ross: Oh, une belle rose.
Mario: Ah, cette rose est merveilleuse.
Ross: Ah, cette rose une belveilleuse.
Mario: [indecipherable 07:00] épatante.
Ross: Epatante.
Mario: Ah, quelle belle rose.
Ross: Quelle belle rose.
Mario: Quelle belle rose.
Ross: Quelle belle rose.
Mario: Je veux la cueillir. Cueillir means to pick. Je veux la cueillir.
Ross: Je veux la cueillir.
Mario: Ay!
Ross: Ay! [laughs]
Mario: Ça me fait mal!
Ross: Je me fais mal!
Mario: Ça me fait mal! It's hurting me. Ça me fait très mal!
Ross: Très mal.
Mario: Du sang!
Ross: Du sang.
Mario: Du sang.
Ross: Du sang.
Mario: Etc., OK?
Ross: [laughs]
Mario: We could go on. It's a bit artificial with just one very bright human being. It's much easier to do with a whole group. What I'm doing here is difficult. I'm concentrating on you and the difficulties you have or don't have. I'm also concentrating on the rose.
Ross: For people who can't see you, you're demonstrating the meaning through the actions here, aren't you?
Mario: Of course. Through the action, I want you to know what you're doing. I want you to feel my pain in my finger. Otherwise, it doesn't work linguistically. It has to work imaginatively before it works linguistically.
If it had been fully convincing to you, you would have disappeared into that dream of getting it pretty right. You already were getting it pretty right. Had you had people around you getting it righter, you know which people in your group have good pronunciation as a student.
Ross: I guess the students are learning from each other as well as from the monologue the teacher's giving.
Mario: Absolutely, yes. You can make a monologue into a dialogue if you so want. You can go one side and then the other.
Ross: Mario, I wanted to ask you, how do you think teachers can combine some of these humanistic ideas for teaching vocabulary with using a coursebook, where a lot of the language is already set for the teachers by the person that wrote the book?
Mario: I thought I might need to refresh my own memory of things. I brought along a book which is called "Humanizing Your Course Book." The concept came to me when I was wandering through a northern Italian town with a colleague, an Italian teacher. She said, "Mario, I've got a problem. I'm teaching the [indecipherable 09:16] book and I know that the listenings are good for my students.
I know that sometimes, they're not making mistakes I make because of listening to proper English. So, I'm totally in favor of the coursebook I'm using. But, listen, I've been through this book four times now and I know the teacher's book better probably than the authors and I'm bored. What can I do?"
I said, "Well, I don't know what you can do because you obviously respect the texts. You respect the presentation of grammar. You respect the phonological part. You're happy when it's for them but for them, it's first time except for the ones who have to do the year again, who are a minority."
I then said, "Well, would it help if a methodology person had a look at what the authors of the coursebook have presented to you and offered alternative ways of working that course material?" She said, "That would be really helpful."
Backed by her enthusiasm, I went to [indecipherable 10:26] and said, "Would you like me to write an alternative teacher's guide being very careful to acknowledge that you must use this book as the authors proposed first?" If you come to the third time through, how about looking at [indecipherable 10:43] your coursebook, which is what then was the substantiation of that idea. [indecipherable 10:49] told me to piss off in definite terms.
I then was asked to do exactly that by a German publisher called Klett. There, I had Green Line, which is their coursebook. I simply went through and thought, "Well, what humanistic ideas could be floated through without being too shocking for teachers?"
As [indecipherable 11:11] in Germany are pretty conservative. If you're not very careful, exercises like Spoon and Fork will be dismissed as [non‑English] , which means utter rubbish. Can I look through to the section on reading and simply read you...?
Ross: Of course.
Mario: They're very short these rubrics. This is called "Collective Picture." "Preparation, select a set of concrete nouns and verbs from the first three units of the coursebook." Going back to revise, not last week's work but six month ago's work, because a revision can't only be of yesterday's stuff. "Write about 30 of these words on slips of paper. Hand out one slip of paper to each student."
I'm thinking a class of 30 here, OK? "Explain that you are going to ask the class to draw a collective picture on the board. Ask each student to come to the board and draw the word from their slip of paper. The idea is to get all the items into a coherent picture. The picture for a verb will be the picture for the verb happening. Do the exercise without speaking.
Don't intervene. Let the students produce the collective picture they want. Then ask the class to name all the things in the picture and their parts." So, roots, for example, or leaves, or whatever. "Get students to write the words in. Individually, the students copy the drawing and the words."
Ross: So good to hear of an exercise that lets students review what they've already done but not just maybe from last week but maybe from the last two or three units of the book. I guess, also, you could do the opposite, as well and look forward to things that are going to happen in future chapters of the book.
So often we get obsessed with meeting the aim of this lesson rather than helping students consolidate and move things into their long‑term memory that they've already covered in class.
Mario: You want to visit a country. The coursebook is the country. If it's six weeks ago you went to Edinburgh, then it's quite reasonable to ask you to go back to Edinburgh in your head and be in that area of the country.
A lot of teachers think about now in the coursebook work, tomorrow in the coursebook work, and yesterday in the coursebook work. No, why don't you do an exercise which foresees something which will come up later? Who told you you have to use them in order?