Learning a language can be a choice for some students. They can see the importance of being multilingual. But, on the other hand, for others, it can be just one more subject to learn in school, a parent‘s choice, or only a requirement for graduation.
How to make the learning of a language meaningful for all? How to engage the students using a holistic approach to teaching?
A holistic approach would focus on everything the learner needs to know to communicate effectively. (Penman, 2005). I make a cross-disciplinary integration available to my students. I integrate areas into my not conventional lessons, like music, arts and crafts, storytelling, culinary, fashion, culture, real-life situations, science, social-emotional learning, and more.
According to the paper A Holistic View of Language by Roger W. Shuy (1981), the holistic approach to language skills is equated with a constructivist position, specifying linguistic, environment, and social content.
The aim of teaching a foreign language means acquiring communication skills and forming cultural and linguistic personality. Socio-cultural competence includes knowledge about values, beliefs, behavior patterns, customs, traditions, language, and cultural achievements peculiar to society. This competence occurs in the framework of socio-cultural education and training, i.e., personalizing the culture and national traditions of the studied language country. (Guryanov, I. O., Rakhimova, A. E., & Guzman, M. C., 2019)
Resources and Ideas in Action
SOCIAl-EMOTIONAL LEARNING
Social, emotional, and academic/cognitive functions are all integrated and interdependent in learning in the brain. Researchers and scientists across education, neuroscience, medicine, psychology, and economics concur: students’ sense of social belonging and emotional safety profoundly influence their ability to learn and achieve academically.
(n.d.). https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/2017/09/SEAD-ResearchBrief-11.1.17.pdf 2 Ibid.
My students start their day with social-emotional learning.
Every week, I add a new module for them in Canvas, the ELS platform I use in my school, and they will discuss, reflect, and watch inspirational videos about a different topic. Sometimes, I create my material, like the module below:
Please see the sample below, from Ava D. talking about her goals in Flipgrid.
And I also use Rethink Ed and Actively Learn to assign my students SEL lessons.
A separate 2015 study by the American Journal of Public Health determined that implementing social-emotional learning curricula at the kindergarten level was connected to favorable outcomes in young adulthood, including lessened criminal activity, educational achievement, employability, and good mental health.
Learning Culture: with Arts and Crafts, Creating a Travel Website or a Blog
Foreign language learning is comprised of several components, including grammatical competence, communicative competence, language proficiency, as well as a change in attitudes towards one’s own or another culture. For scholars and laymen alike, cultural competence, i.e., the knowledge of the conventions, customs, beliefs, and systems of meaning of another country, is indisputably an integral part of foreign language learning, and many teachers have seen it as their goal to incorporate the teaching of culture into the foreign language curriculum.
For every country we learn, I create a particular activity to teach them about the culture.
Please, look at this website to enjoy the pictures and explanation of each project:
SPEAKING USING FLIPGRID
To be fluent in a language, the student is required to master the areas of listening, writing, reading, and speaking. Every week, my students will have an assignment called: hablar, leer, escribir y escuchar - the translation in Spanish of the four areas of learning.
I use a google slide to explain to them what to do, and with the activities for each area and the instruction to record their answer in Flipgrid.
See the Google Slide below:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1iTROEXctkj7cfnrGgfe3UM4OQ4IAD0M2cVJKjmckz0s/edit?usp=sharing
And how the student responds to the questions using Flipgrid:
WRITING USING STORY JUMPER
To showcase the Culture of Puerto Rico, my students are currently creating a children's book in Spanish called: LA CULTURA DE PUERTO RICO. The characters in the book are going to talk about Puerto Rico's cultural facts.
See some examples:
Conclusion
I truly believe that my holistic approach to teaching not only offers to my students the content they need to learn, but most important offers experiences. Many of them had no exposure to crafts before doing a doll or a bracelet in my class. Many of them did not know how to create a website or write on a blog. Many of them had no believes they could speak Spanish before.
The study Exploring the Potential Benefits of Holistic Education: A Formative Analysis (Kay & Lauricella, 2011), from the University of Ontario, Canada, examines both if and why university students believe that increased exposure to holistic principles would have been beneficial to their success after finishing secondary education. The overwhelming majority—on average about 70%— of participants agreed that had they had more exposure to holistic principles (personal identity, meaning/purpose, connections to the community, connections to the natural world, and humanitarian values) while in the K-12 system, they would have been more successful in university.
REFERENCES:
(n.d.). https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/2017/09/SEAD-ResearchBrief-11.1.17.pdf 2 Ibid.
Guryanov, I. O., Rakhimova, A. E., & Guzman, M. C. (2019). Socio-Cultural Competence in Teaching Foreign Languages. International Journal of Higher Education, 8(7), 116–120.
Kay, R. H., & Lauricella, S. (2011). Exploring the benefits and challenges of using laptop computers in higher education classrooms: A formative analysis. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology / La revue canadienne de l’apprentissage et de la technologie, 37(1). https://doi.org/10.21432/t2s598
Shuy, R. (1981). A Holistic View of Language. Research in the Teaching of English,15(2), 101-111. Retrieved January 20, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40170919
Tahir, I. (2017). ENGLISH PEDAGOGY THROUGH HOLISTIC APPROACH FOR EFL STUDENTS’ ENGAGEMENT IN INDONESIA. PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences, 3(1), 273-287. https://doi.org/10.20319/pijss.2017.31.273287
The case study applies the holistic approach to motivation, defined as moving beyond isolated motivation traits and embracing a broader perspective integrating various motivational concepts. This perspective recognizes motivation's multi-faceted nature, influenced by curiosity, relevance, confidence, anticipated outcomes, and volitional strategies (Reiser and Dempsey, 2012). In this case, it integrates elements like cultural awareness, tangible items (e.g., dolls, bracelets) associated with the language, experiential learning feedback (videos), and traditional methods to create a richer learning experience.
This holistic approach to motivation aligns with another study on spirituality and learning (Gallagher, S. J., Rocco, T. S., & Landorf, H., 2007). Participants in this study, whose jobs involved using religious knowledge in decision-making, found that relying solely on religious beliefs for decisions…
1) Accessing Students’ Meaning-Making
According to Magolda (2000) (p. 93) , educators must be creative to access students’ meaning making such as their background, unique experiences, and development journeys in order to be effective in teaching and creating learning environments. Instructors who taught with a holistic approach got to know each student and learned how to integrate the language with culture, music, art, and storytelling, etc. It is not just about students who are curious to learn. The instructors was curious to learn about each student. According to Magolda (2000), educators who value and respect students’ experience and current development, students were able to move toward to self-authorship when they were validated as capable of knowing. It opened students’ eyes…
1) Curiosity
When learning another language, culture cannot be separated from the language. Therefore, including cultural competence as a part of the learning process is essential. The mechanics of foreign language learning can easily be seen as boring or uninteresting, but the exploration of a new culture can spark one’s curiosity. In this post, the educator goes one step further than the exploration of Spanish speaking cultures by having students transform the information that they learn from a website or blog into a tangible project. The example she cites is writing books showcasing the culture of Puerto Rico. In this way, students are not only learning information about Puerto Rico, but share this knowledge in a book that they write…
I am overjoyed about this post. This portion of your post summed up your entire post. “A holistic approach would focus on everything the learner needs to know to communicate effectively. I make a cross-disciplinary integration available to my students. I integrate areas into my not conventional lessons, like music, arts and crafts, storytelling, culinary, fashion, culture, real-life situations, science, social-emotional learning, and more.” This statement tells me that the needs of the students are discovered and being addressed. The modern student is totally different from the previous generation. Teachers should be as open to integrating more of these modules. I believe these small lessons will pave the way for a better world and society. This post needs to b…
I find it interesting that you have students create a travel website or blog in order to explore some of the culture related to the language they are trying to learn. While actually immsersing one’s self in the target culture by spending time in the country is always preferable, it’s not always practical. I imagine that ESL students that actually live in the United States are having trouble right now due to lockdown. It’s hard to immerse yourself in another culture when you’re stuck at home.
I agree that language learning is most effective when the instruction is holistic in nature. Language is often tied to culture, and words that exist in one language may not exist in another. Even…