24min chapter

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Full S2x03 Teaching Grammar VS Teaching with Comprehensible Input - with Bryan (Zamani Zulu)

Language Input Podcast

CHAPTER

Teaching Zulu: Grammar vs Comprehensible Input

The speaker discusses their experiences learning and teaching Zulu, comparing the traditional grammar approach to the comprehensible input method. They share how learning Zulu through grammar affected their pronunciation and ability to have conversations, and highlight the benefits of incorporating interactive activities into language lessons. The chapter also explores the importance of paying attention when learning a language and the challenges of teaching in an industry focused on teacher talk time rather than student interaction.

00:00
Speaker 1
Yeah, right, so yeah
Speaker 2
like I said first of all welcome and it's a real pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 1
Thank you.
Speaker 2
And yeah so tell us like first of all tell us a little bit about your background, like I said especially when it comes to languages.
Speaker 1
Oh yeah well I think I sort of fell into the language thing by mistake I learned this is at university. My dad said you are going to university whether you like it or not you're going to get a degree. Fine, so just sort of okay if I know do psychology sounds fun and then we were at you know first year orientation that everybody's going through their subjects or you know come and do because I only knew I really was like a girl do psychology I should choose three other subjects. So the mountains come in front of this auditorium full of first years or 300 400 first years and the mountains come and try and explain it and try and say you know come do accounting and then boring everybody one plus one or whatever and the drama people come in the front and like come and do drama and then this older white guy big big big guy who the socks pulled up and he's wearing khaki comes to the front of the stage and he says yes and one and an anon kenen jahani is his own deep farm is his own and everybody in the auditoriums just went mad like this guy speaks such beautiful Zulu so then I was like yeah yeah I want to be like this guy so so yeah so study Zulu at Basti learned Zulu through setting grammar rules and stuff but most of my acquired through just conversations with people I'd take whatever we learned in the day and just went and broke it on whoever I could find it like just said stuff with them and then they'd speak back and I picked up most of my Zulu that way yeah and then I taught Zulu for a while also teaching like the grammar way and the one day I had a class the next day the next morning and I was checking out just looking at language things and I came across crashing online
Speaker 2
and I
Speaker 1
watched this thing and something like dropped just like we don't like we don't learn languages the way I'm teaching
Speaker 2
them
Speaker 1
I've got a class tomorrow and I'm what I'm doing is not helpful freaking out like I can't teach like this now I can't do this I can't this is against my you know when he speaks crashing speaks in German he said if you understood what I just said I've done everything necessary to teach you German watching more question videos come question that's it now how almost I do this and came across TBRS and Ben Slavik's channel especially and Ben Slavik very kindly invited me to France in what was that 2016
Speaker 2
yeah
Speaker 1
yeah so went to the TBRS which language conference in France and met me due there a lot of yeah and there's since since then I like started implementing TBRS stuff before then but the conference was just amazing just learning all these different languages and finding out all these very cool ways of providing comprehensible input to to students so yeah I've been having fun with with that in my Zulu teaching just trying to find materials and give them to students in a way that's that they understand and just trust that in the in the comprehensible input sort of thinking that if you understand it it comes in it's acquired by the language acquisition device subconsciously there's some magic that happens you don't need to learn the stuff anymore just have fun yeah and that's that's been my Zulu journey and it's very cool it's been very fun so
Speaker 2
yeah so you mentioned that you you started teaching Zulu with the traditional approach first and then you have the aha moment right yes Karima Karima Karima yeah yeah so did you feel the difference I mean in your in your students experience right away like could you see that right away like they were having so much fun as opposed to previously and the amount of sort of they were acquiring
Speaker 1
yeah well I mean just my my own experience through learning Zulu through grammar was I could I could sort of speak Zulu at the end of three years of varsity but a dear friend of mine said to me once he's like you know Brian you speak Zulu well but you sound like a machine gun all this English is all on the beat but it's Zulu was kulumarangi to put over this song and a flow to it so my pronunciation was way off because I read it you know and it's just everything is Zulu grammar is quite it's very nice for learning through grammar learning because it's it's very modular you just you stick things onto each other and there's very little that changes so this is what does in my brain this plus this plus this and this is what I'd be doing when trying to have conversations with people because I'd say hello and then not listen to what they're saying because no no no I haven't now got to put a k recent past compound tense plus the object plus the verb okay and I can say my sentence being give food that is all I was studying yesterday but I haven't listened to what they've just been telling me and I say I was studying yesterday if you were like okay nothing to do with what I
Speaker 2
was
Speaker 1
saying great and then you know say something else and but I'm not listening again okay to just plus this so so that was my experience and luckily I didn't teach very long with with the grammar away but you're the first lesson I remember the first lesson I thought that next day I was talking about that I just took a clip from Lion King Zazu was the character and we just spoke about Zazu and just acted it out and it was chaos but okay
Speaker 2
it was
Speaker 1
a good chaos I hope yeah so yeah so definitely like yeah as you say like the change I mean the one thing from expressions I think questions quote as well was a bad CR class is always better than a good grammar class all right which is very cool yeah
Speaker 2
it's way closer to real life faculties you know the language right
Speaker 1
exactly yeah yeah
Speaker 2
yeah yeah I was when you were talking about your experience went solo that you know you really say somebody and while they were speaking you were trying to constantly think about what you want to say next and you're not paying attention to what they're saying I mean it's not the point
Speaker 1
of yeah it
Speaker 2
sounds crazy but that's pretty much what made after grammar classes right yes
Speaker 1
yes yes yeah surprisingly now we didn't
Speaker 2
understand what the other person was saying because we weren't paying attention at
Speaker 1
all exactly yeah we didn't have the the listening practice or the listening getting used to that first from the inputs and yeah exactly I was just not paying attention so it's crazy yeah so now since after the Zulu thing I've been in Vietnam now for two years teaching English and teaching back to not quite grammar but now we teach like you know classrooms full of kids so it's more it's so now it's just it's been it's fine in the in the beginning because they teach you like a okay there's two options of what the vocab word is and is it A or B and the kids choose and you press a button it makes a nice noise yes it's the right one you know in the beginning you're getting used to the method or whatever and you're getting used to kids so it's fine it's a challenge it's a new challenge to do something else but or very quickly my soul started crumbling and withering no you know stories coming out and it's just been a been a it's just such a crazy it's a massive industry here in Vietnam this you know it's English learn English and it's all this teacher talking term is the buzzword more student you know sort of getting students to come up with a language and talk to each other and that you know that's that that is the definition of a pigeon language this is not a acquiring a real language this is Tarzan me Jane you overall are me eat banana or whatever it's just right right the definition of the wrong way to learn a language right and there's been there's been a big like confidence knock because there's this massive industry and they're all saying no they still talk time in this I've been feeling like what do I really have the you know the the what's the word the call to be like no this your way is not quite helpful you know so and there's been just very interesting to see this way of of doing languages and I think there's a big gap for for you know spreading the word of this this natural more vital and more human way to learn languages is just be if you know if more teachers taught this way here you know jobs would be a lot more a lot more job satisfaction and you know kids will just learn better so yeah I see a big I want to start teaching people this technique I need to just practice it's a more with the kids because I've been out of practice like I've been doing with Dr. Sulu but teaching adults is easy everybody's there because they want to be there and we just you check out interesting newspaper articles or whatever just make it comprehensible with embedded readings and you know look looks and we do very nice very narrow listening with the with my Zulu students and I think with classrooms and kids especially now I'm really checking out Ben Slavic stuff I've subscribed to his patreon he sort of got like a discussion board going there it used to be on his website but now with patreon it's it's it's nice because as soon as he posts something you get a notification you can go and check it out and just be part of a of a discussion which is always very useful to just see what people are saying on topics so yes I've got is this new ultimate CR book which is fantastic for just a system just a whole system for what to do in class I'll be checking that out I'll be that it'll be my new be my new religion I'll be like okay what are we doing in class because it was you know teaching English yeah lesson plans and stuff we need to have a whole bunch of things set up you know and it's just oh this is crazy to see that other teachers killing themselves doing these lesson plans and you know making power points and content for each lesson you know you think you got an hour and a half lesson and you spend an hour planning each lesson it's just you know rather plan the technique and the understanding you plan that properly and then you know what to do in the lesson so I'm really not playing at all like a store plan that make materials and stuff that you can use again and again with with again with these movie talks and very narrow listings and embedded readings that you can use at different levels so if you have an embedded reading of or they say a very narrow listening of a scene from Iron Man this is what what I'd like to do is just have that making an embedded reading of a document summarize it and stuff and then use that for all the levels and obviously with the younger guys just simple questions with the older guys you just discuss more in in detail so yeah so that's my my dream for for teachers is to learn the method and enjoy the class rather yeah and then if you
Speaker 2
if you teach a teacher how to teach you're gonna be healthy we're gonna be helping more students and then
Speaker 1
I like that and to fish exactly I like that I wanted to steal it I
Speaker 2
was yeah I was thinking about your your experience in Vietnam that you talked about and I think that the idea of of having kids communicating the language as soon as possible it's well first of all it's a crazy idea because that's not how the language works have the language mechanism works at the end yeah right it is again you just have to look at kids and the native language they just listen to the language for a long time right but I think because of the traditional grammar approach we think we need to practice in order to acquire I mean in order to learn the language right in order to get better in order to improve so that's why we're trying to communicate we're trying to produce apple from pre-master one which is we are not it's impossible so that's why you get that machine machine gun espuse that as you were
Speaker 1
talking about yeah you're treating language like a sport you just need to kick goals all the time this is not yeah but anyway and another quote what did I hear I think from Vince Lovex book he's saying teaching language through grammar is like learning football without the ball I like that one learning grammar without the whole picture I mean you just you got you got your football a little about football but not know the yeah anyway yeah
Speaker 2
I mean to me the craziest part is it's just like we're not kids so we don't have to talk to adults I mean if you're teaching adults I mean we're or even if they're kids they're not like babies I mean so if you're teaching kids or adults you don't need to talk to them as you would talk to a baby but it's a process that works hundred percent of the time you know I just I don't know why why I don't know when this whole idea started you know the whole idea of teaching linguistics which is what it is right
Speaker 1
it is it is crazy I think I think it makes like a logical sense it's a logical system and it makes logical sense that we've discovered that languages we can break languages into these parts and we can sort of make rules and it's like ah we've got these rules let's just learn the rules and we have the language easy right right um that's that's that's how um that's just my understanding of it and it's and it's a logical system for a logical thought for a logical system but doesn't work um and it's and it's it's it's it's it seems that it seems to work which is the um the danger we could
Speaker 2
you can measure it right you can it
Speaker 1
does and you you have no and it is it works just enough you know so you can you've learned this this rule okay I am and in the in rule or whatever and then you can tell this to indicate and say something in the eye god it's if it didn't work at all that would be best because we just forget about it but it works just enough it just it works um right that's what I've been enjoying you know um checking out other teachers speaking about this technique is it it gets back into the the soul part of of being human it gets back into the mystical and the magical because we don't really know how languages are learned or exactly what parts we have you chumps keep talking about their language acquisition device which is we we're not exactly the mechanisms of what happens and so just getting back into the the mystical and the just feed the language acquisition device with it's comparing comprehensive inputs and just have fun and then enjoy it as you know yeah
Speaker 2
yeah again which is the the way we all acquire native languages right and yeah and actually when when when we compare adults with babies I mean the way we will we acquire a native language versus the way we adults learn the second language I don't think there's there's a different I mean I don't think the problem is we learn languages differently I think the problem is when when we're adults we use we just have the ability to consciously control the process with messes up messes up messes up with our journey right so it's not that you can learn language after a specific age is that you learn to learn it the the wrong way right exactly it that makes sense yeah yeah
Speaker 1
this conscious mind gets in the way I like that's that that is exactly what I see was teaching older people and it just sticks too much in the conscious mind whereas teaching their kids like they they pick things up so quickly they're because they're just free they don't care they'll say whatever they don't care about if it's if it sounds right or not they've got no effect the filter is still low as a kitten you know they just want to just going for it exactly let me go for it adults who know we shine like I have to say it wrong yeah I
Speaker 2
agree we pay attention to specific birth endings to conjugations like we ask people what what what word do you use why do you use that word and I mean just I mean it's it's a mess but I mean the the good news is over time like I'm saying that in myself like right now when I'm watching the series or movie or whatever it is in in a foreign language I'm way more relaxed when it comes to what I was talking about like I'm watching the series and before you know like some couple years ago even even after being totally convinced by this idea I would watch a series or a movie or whatever I'm watching depending on my level and I was still paying conscious attention to the specific words if that makes them but now with time I've learned to relax more and focus totally on the message on communication which is the most important thing on understanding what's going on in the story in the series or whatever it is and I'm okay with not understanding specific words so yeah with not paying conscious attention so I I do think you know once you get used to it or with with time with practice quote unquote you get better at it and you kind of lower your effective filter like you said and and you kind of forget about the conscious part of it right kind of
Speaker 1
you know I just I struggle with that because I like having a brain workout when I learn languages so I tend to get stuck on those specifics and then like it's too much hard work it's just it's just watch or whatever but I know exactly what you're saying like as as you learn languages so everybody says to me are you good with languages and like it takes me a bit because everyone is good at languages this is what we do as humans is we acquire language and we take it for granted that you know everybody's first language is basically at the same level from a farmer to president and you might be some academic language or whatever but that's just that the basic language abilities are the same and so yeah so we're not we're not good at languages we might have we might be practiced in learning languages and we know what works for us and this is what another thing I love about the process there's the this the the see our way of thinking of things is that most CI teachers are language learners themselves right they
Speaker 2
they're
Speaker 1
learning and mostly to learn the technique to teach by so might check out someone else's class with teaching in in in Polish or whatever whatever and it's to learn the technique but the the technique is so effective that you learn the language as well right whereas you know yeah especially in Vietnam no one's learning other languages you know and if you were to try not to set up a challenge where teachers have a race or something to to proficiency or whatever I don't know you're like go over your output technique or whatever like and wordless and all of that and I'll go for my input technique and we'll just see who's what happens in the month or whatever I don't know um yeah
Speaker 2
I'm

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