The second to last session that I attended at ACTFL 2015 was with Amy Lenord. Amy has written fairly extensively on her blog about why and how she has moved away from giving traditional vocabulary lists to her students. As I was busy covering the session on Twitter (search Twitter for #unlistvocab #actfl15 for my tweets at that session), a conversation sprung up about the idea that language or vocabulary “chunks” are harder to put on a list than are vocabulary words; but that chunks of language are better to target in class than are words. One fellow tweeter asked, “Where can we learn more about language chunking?” On request, my good buddy The Great Boulanger (Minnesota’s 2016 Language Teacher of the Year and labeled as a “heavy hitter” in our profession by Dr. Stephen Krashen himself!) shared several possible resources to learn more on the subject:
I need to spend some time digging into his suggested resources, but I think it would be helpful to create a working definition of a “language chunk”. First of all, I think that you will more often hear TPRS®/CI teachers refer to “language chunks” as “target structures”. The two terms are interchangeable. Since teachers that teach with comprehensible input talk about target structures constantly, you’d think that they would be clearly defined in some blog post, somewhere. But for the life of me I can’t find one. (Maybe someone else can share a link?) So…here’s my answer to the language chunking question:
What is a target structure?
A target structure is a usable piece of language. It could be a single word, or it could be a string of words. It’s just…language! But since that’s about as clear as mud, perhaps we should just look at some examples of structures that I’ve targeted in the past:
- durante la noche / during the night
- de repente / suddenly
- ¿quieres salir conmigo? / do you want to go out with me?
- la mujer bonita / the pretty woman
- el hombre piensa que / the man thinks that
- trabaja en / he works at
- eres / you are
Each of these target structures is useable. Single words are usable, sure, but only two of the target structures that I listed are single words in either Spanish or English. All of the structures are ready to be “plugged and played”: they are ready to be used to communicate a message.
Let’s imagine that you want to tell a story about pirates playing soccer at night (por la noche, los piratas juegan al fútbol). You could prepare students by giving students a vocabulary list (on the left) or by establishing meaning for target structures (on the right):
Which list would you rather teach? The one that requires your students to learn how to combine and manipulate the words in a separate step, or the one that contains chunks of language that students can use now? There is nothing wrong with using single words at target structures…even single words that haven’t been manipulated…but those should be the minority. Here’s why:
Chunking vocabulary promotes language acquisition instead of language learning
When we chunk vocabulary, students don’t have to learn the “rules” of language. When we start with individual words, students have to learn how to combine them in order to communicate meaningful messages. We have to define the term to our students, and we have to explain what needs to be done with it in order to use it to communicate a message. When we start with chunks in which the words have already been combined, they don’t have to learn how to put words together because they have already seen them in context. Instead of teaching the word for “thinks” and then teaching students that in order to say “thinks about”, you have to add the preposition “en” (in/on), I could simply combine the two words into one target structure and teach “piensa en” = thinks about. Taking apart a puzzle is much easier than putting it together: breaking apart a target structure to determine the meaning of each individual piece is much easier than starting with the pieces and trying to put them together correctly. Students can easily parse the structure and determine that “piensa” means “thinks” and that “en” can mean “about”. Another example of a target structure is “Do you want to go out with me?” (¿Quieres salir conmigo?). By combining “you want” and “to go”, you avoid the common problem of students adding the preposition “to” (a) in between the two words. And you don’t have to teach the verb “to want” (querer) and then teach its conjugation; you give the students the conjugated form. You don’t have to explicitly teach word order because students only ever see words in the correct order and acquire word order implicitly. By introducing [prepositions, articles, pronouns, etc.] to students in context, you will find that students don’t have to work to acquire them…and you don’t have to work to teach it them. They don’t have to study and memorize them and learn about how they must be used in sentences because students have only ever seen them in context; they’ve only ever seen them in use!
Chunking vocabulary shifts the focus from form to meaning
When we give a list of isolated words, we have to manipulate the form of those words first, before we can communicate a meaningful message. We force students to focus on form first before they can focus on the meaning of the message. We will almost always need to manipulate the form of the word (make a singular noun plural, conjugate the infinitive of a verb, learn where in the sentence the word must be placed, etc.) before we can use it to communicate a message. When we give them a chunk of language that doesn’t need to be manipulated in order to be used, students are able to focus on the meaning of the message first, and they focus on the form later, only after they have seen a slightly different version of that same chunk of language (ex: I eat pizza vs. she eats pizza (como pizza vs. come pizza).
Chunking vocabulary sends the message that language is art, not math
You see, language is not composed of a system of rules. It is not composed of isolated chunks of meaning that can be combined with complicated formulas. By teaching students vocabulary (single words in their most basic form), we communicate the message that language can be created by combining ingredients as you follow a recipe. But language is art! We have unlimited mediums and materials that can be combined in an infinite number of ways. When the starting point for a new structure is a conjugated verb or a combination of words, we communicate the message to students that language is a creative process. When the starting point for a new structure is a single vocabulary word, always given in the same form (article + noun “el circo”, infinitive “beber”), we communicate the message that language is a mathematical equation.
The bottom line
My point is…well…language chunks are just…language. Language that you can use. They are whatever you want them to be; whatever makes sense for you to communicate your message to your students. Realizing that you have the freedom to determine how to present language to your students will help your students see that they have the freedom to create with the language, too.
Totally agree Martina! I would love to find a list of high frequency language chunks (not just high frequency words). And even further divide those chunks to which are the most useful for a novice-low, novice-mid,novice-high, intermediate -low, etc. a kind of generic list that doesn’t matter if you use a specific novel or not or don’t use novels at all. I’ve been searching for such a list: any out there?
I’ve only ever seen high frequency WORD lists, sorry to not be of help!
Yes my google searches are coming up empty. I’d love to see functional chunk lists with the frequency of expressions like “no me lo creo” etc
PLEASE let us know if you find or create one!!! This would be extremely helpful and facilitate the process of moving from a grammar and word based curriculum to a High Frequency Structured one.
I love Beth’s idea for high frequency chunks lists!
Just wanted to add from a Japanese perspective: I used to teach the rules of when to use what particle (grammatical postpositions) — students used to get them wrong CONSTANTLY, and would stress over it whenever trying to create with language. The last two years, I haven’t taught about particles at all — just point out their meaning in target structures for 2 seconds if appropriate — and students just go with what sounds right in their head. Overall, accuracy with the particles is MUCH improved over previous years!
The other day after Spanish 3 I forgot to erase “if you could go anywhere, where would you go?” (In Spanish) from the board. My new-to-ci colleague entered with his Spanish 2 class and was stunned at how quickly many of the students decoded the meaning. A quick q & a followed. He is still amazed to see kids unafraid of so-called “hard” language. These words chunks remove fear and enable kids to communicate concepts they want to share. So fun!
I love this post and I think it is an awesome, easy way to start transitioning if one currently teaches with vocabulary lists. However, let´s not refer to structures as “word chunks”, please? Not only is it unappetizing (yuck!), the idea of “structures” retains the notion that we are trying to lay down a paradigm of how a language functions, whereas “word chunks” could just be a way to teach vocabulary.
One approach values limiting vocabulary (i.e. after teaching “wants to go” the teacher may choose to include “wanted to go”) whereas the other seeks to effectively jam more vocabulary into the curriculum. A level 1 curriculum focusing heavily on structures drawn from the sweet 16 verb list might be a more powerful foundation than a “word chunk” list drawn broadly. Just my two centavos…
Um, totally agree about the word chunks term. It is gross! And yes, your 2 centavos about the message that the term communicates makes sense to me. So, would you say that the two terms are NOT interchangeable? In the Twitter conversation, I think that the teachers using the term “word chunks” or “language chunking” were talking about what we call target structures. But perhaps they really are a different thing?
The functional chunks concept is widely used by Helena Curtain. See: http://helenacurtainswiki.wikispaces.com/
Thanks Mira!
I wonder if all TPRS teachers are on board with the extreme limiting of vocabulary that I perceive when I (and many others) talk about “structures”. You have read Terry Waltz´s book… it seems to me if someone would make the argument that we do not choose target structures to teach vocabulary, it would be Terry. Am I mistaken? Given the limited amount of class hours that we have with learners, we have to choose target structures that will establish as complete as a paradigm of the language as possible within, say, 500 class hours. That is similar, but not quite the same as choosing high-frequency words or even high-frequency word chunks.
The way I have been reconciling this in my own practice is that I have structures that come largely from the sweet sixteen verb list, but I have been also doing a lot of untargeted CI relating to the telenovela that I watch with my classes. The untargeted CI is, perhaps, made up of “chunks” that the students & teacher identify in the moment as language that they are interested in acquiring, but I only teach it to be comprehensible at the moment, for that one conversation. If the chunks keep coming up in class (what an awful phrase!), that is awesome, but it is my target structures that I recycle constantly.
If that makes sense, then I think both concepts are valuable, but they should be kept separate.
Oh gosh, I am going to need to re-read this and think over it tomorrow when I am more awake.
It’s been a year and a half since your initial post on target structures. Our awesome Language PLC is considering ditching “the list” and adopting target structures. Very excited! In the last 18 months have you come across a “top target structure list?” Thanks for your continue thought and leadership on L2!!
One attempt at a definition of chunks is that they are fairly complete notions in and of themselves immediately useful in language comprehension and expression. Your example of “eres” would be more complete with an adjective or noun (eres alto, eres carpintero). “está” could be complete in itself with the meaning “she’s here” but it could be used a chunk with other words (está en el parque–she’s in the park, “está triste”–she’s sad). I got my start thinking about this after my first workshop with Blaine Ray. The implication for this with verbs is that verbs generally have objects and should be used/presented with an object. That was the beginning of the end for the weird textbook lessons on object pronouns. Weird because they are easily memorized for quizzes and quickly forgotten. Weird because they are not independent. They are always used in chunks. Weird because they not only rely on their immediate context chunk, but also on the previous use of a noun that they refer back to. Once we are in natural language, they are naturally moored to their governing verb and referring to genuine objects of natural communication.
Great post. Even when one is moving to non-targetted language the notion of chunking is still there. And if “chunk” is distasteful (even chunks of chocolate?) something like Units of Meaning might better express the idea than structures. UMs sound yummier, focus on meaning, and express the idea that the unit is composed of parts necessary for the desired meaning. Leaving one out will be sensed by the listener (I think I’ll have.-Have what?). It’s like taking the family picture while son Bob is off to college.