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Growing Participator Approach (GPA) | ||
Tags: Natural method | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4925 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes  Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 1 of 11 01 February 2015 at 4:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The so-called Growing Participator Approach (GPA) is an alternative approach to language learning which is completely textbook-free, memorization-free, and can be made dictionary-free and largely analysis-free if one wishes so. GPA relies entirely on very well-structured fun interaction with native speakers. GPA is all about seeing language as social interaction and not as an intellectual or purely mental activity. GPA starts with an initial silent phase of about 30 hours, but then incorporates lots of speaking.
GPA is not for the typical HTLAL-er who is “studying” 7 languages “Teach Yourself XXX”-style alone at his desk. It’s rather for those people who want to develop a deep understanding of one culture at a time, according to the motto “It's not a language to be learned but a life to be lived”. Done properly, it’s pretty much a full-time activity, always involves native speakers and is as much about culture as it is about language. Greg Thomson has written very detailed manuals, structuring GPA into six phases (1500+ hours). It basically starts with toys, pictures, objects etc. and TPR-like activities to get some basics (here-and-now-phase). Then there are various story-telling phases, starting with wordless picture storybooks (still in the here-and-now), moving on to stories familiar to both the learner and the native speaker (branching out from the here and now), and finally to native speaker stories. There are other important activities like script of life activities, life stories and social situation descriptions. For the initial phase, GPA relies mainly on TPR-style interaction. Early speaking activities are based on ‘information gap activities’. Later, a key technique is meaning negotiation, used in particular in ‘massaging recordings’ (going through a native speaker recording with the native speaker, negotiating meaning until a good level of comprehension is achieved). I recommend anybody who is interested to read Thomson’s manual; it’s choke-full of great language learning ideas and techniques, and his perspective of language as social interaction is very valuable. Here’s a summary of many (but not all) techniques Thomson suggests, mostly in the order they are introduced in the manuals. This summary is not meant as a substitute for reading the GPA manuals. I’ve actually written it for myself to have a more accessible summary of his techniques at hand. For ease of reading, in deviation from GPA terminology, I use the following terms: native speaker - nurturer; learner - growing participator. Before I start with the techniques, here are a few quotes from his manuals which I found worth thinking about: - “Virtual all learning-related activities should be participative, interactive and relational (whether or not the learners have started speaking the language).” - “The basic idea of comprehension-led learning is that the learners goal is to become extremely familiar with the new language and that this wide-ranging familiarity will provide a basis for growth in speaking ability.” - Iceberg principle: don’t aim for complete mastery, aim for familiarity, and let the words get strengthened through each encounter in new contexts - The ability to hear accurately is the basis for accurate pronunciation; resorting to looking at the written form of the words will actually complicate the development of the ability to hear accurately; one learns to hear better through listening more; remember to base your pronunciation on what you hear, not on what you see written - Accurate hearing develops through the ears, not through the eyes! - Remember that language learning is a gradual process. Mastery is not expected the moment that something is introduced. All that is aimed for initially is initial awareness. [...] Progress happens. Perfection is not the starting point. Techniques: Lexicarry - book with story strips similar to comic strips, about three frames per story, word bubbles are left empty - the stories illustrate many common language functions and communication situations - during the first month, while concentrating on learning to understand, one can use the story strips this way: the native speaker begins by telling the learner what each person might be saying in the stories and then asks questions like “Who is saying, ‘May I help you?’; who is saying ‘I’m sorry’?”; the learner responds by pointing, not by speaking - at later stages, the Lexicarry can be used to discuss various options associated with the cartoon bubbles - Lexicarry activities can be acted out with puppets or toy animals, the learner is asked “who says this” and “who says that”, and responds by pointing Create your own Lexicarry-like drawings Dirty Dozen - take about a dozen objects (real objects, dolls or pictures; real objects preferred) - goal is not total mastery, but familiarity - start with two items, the native speaker says a few times “This is A. This is B.”; then the native speaker asks “Where is A? Where is B?”; the learner responds by pointing, not speaking; when the learner feels ready, a third item is added; randomize the questions; add only one word at a time; always respond by pointing, not speaking TPR - key technique, see in the manual and elsewhere on the web for a description - only add one item/activity/structure at a time - native speaker may need to use a puppet to demonstrate certain commands; the manuals give a pretty detailed and well thought through curriculum Here-and-now descriptions of us - the native speaker and the learner perform actions, and the native speaker (or later the learner) describes what is happening - option: act the actions out with puppets or toy animals - use various forms including I, you, he/she/it, we, they - stay in the here and now language-wise Pictures of here-and-now activities - take pictures of the learner and the native speaker in various combinations, carrying out various activities - “In which picture are you running?”, “In which picture am I eating?”, respond by pointing Reverse role-plays - example: set up a model of several city blocks and pretend the learner is the taxi driver and the native speaker is the customer giving him instructions; the learner wants to learn expressions a customer would use to talk to the taxi driver; he first needs to hear what local people say Phonetic learning - have the native speaker say words that sound extremely similar, and the learner attempt to point at a picture which goes with the word the native speaker says Structured input / input-based grammar activities - example: imagine someone learning English who is having trouble learning the principle of pronoun gender; place before him a set of pairs of pictures depicting the same situation, once with a male and once with a female actor; the native speaker makes a statement such as “she is swimming”; the learner must find the picture where a woman or girl is swimming; it is not necessary to explain that kind of activity to the learner, just show him what he is supposed to do; the point of such activities is to prompt the learner to stop filtering out certain grammar details; we recommend dealing with grammar issues as they come up and seem essential, many grammar details simply need to be ignored at the first stage Word log - have the native speaker maintain a word log of vocabulary items introduced during a session; can serve four purposes: keep track of how much vocabulary has been covered - for review - for focused phonetic training - for planning future sessions; general goal: to get acquainted with 7-10 new vocabulary items per hour of session Recordings - make recordings or videos of summaries of the activities, e.g., of the last few minutes of TPR or Dirty Dozen - review often Descriptions of drawings (or pictures) - listen, then point Object manipulation - native speaker or learner manipulates object, native speaker describes what is being done - do this to complement or prepare TPR and Dirty Dozen Kinship terms - Dirty Dozen with dolls or pictures - using pictures of the native speaker’s family - using pictures of the learner’s family Objects in locations - arrange a large number of already familiar objects in various positions relative to each other on a table; have the native speaker describe systematically the relative positions of the objects; record and take a picture of the set-up - add to this a true-and-false exercise: as before, but sometimes the native speaker says something wrong; the learners need to say “no”, then then native speaker agrees and says the negated description as well as the correct one; record and take a picture of the set-up Listening contrast activity - if the learner has difficulty hearing the phonetic distinction between two words, have the native speaker say those two words repeatedly in random order, and the learner point to the right object/picture Power tools (right before transitioning to beginning to speak) - Lexicarry-style (might have to make your own drawings) train the comprehension of sentences like “What is this?”, ”Please repeat!”, “What are they doing?”, “I don’t understand”, “I don’t know”, “Please speak more slowly” etc. Before transitioning to speak, have the learners learn to respond to yes-no questions; use that for activities involving ‘wanting’, ‘having’ and ‘seeing’: “Do you have X in your bag?” etc. Information gap activities - involve two learners or groups of learners on separate "teams"; the native speaker might be on one team, or might be a team all by herself, or might stand on the sidelines and coach one or both teams; each team has information the other doesn't have, and the teams are therefore forced to communicate with each other to solve the problem; for example, each team might have a picture; the pictures are partly similar and partly different; the teams must discover the similarities and differences entirely through conversation, since they cannot see each other's pictures; often information gap activities involve setting up a barrier on a table, with the two teams on opposite sides of the barrier, so that neither team can see what the other team sees, which might be, for example, a particular arrangement of toys Early speaking activities: - learner names his or some other person's body parts - learner shows family photos, telling the native speaker who is who - pictures of places and people carrying out actions (or other scenes, e.g., countryside), the learner describes the situations, the native speaker arranges the pictures accordingly - physical states / needs: native speaker says "I'm hungry", learner to respond by telling the native speaker to take the relevant object from the table - TPR power tools - learner performs an activity (or points to picture of himself performing an activity) and says what he is doing; extend to describing what other people are doing (here-and-now) Early speaking activities, information gap style: - two sets of 16 pictures; native speaker sits on one side of the barrier, leaner on the other; the task for the native speaker is to arrange the pictures in the same order as the learner; for this she will ask questions like "In your first picture, are there two hills or three?"; learner to respond in fairly complete sentences; compare - learners sit on two sides of the barrier; one learner cuts out faces etc., native speaker describes (he is cutting out the sad girl), other learner tries to do the same; at some point, learners begin to describe what they are doing (I am cutting out the sad girl); later other learner can respond by saying what first learner is doing (you are cutting out the sad girl, etc.); go on by placing the cut out faces somewhere in town; again, first the native speaker, than the active learner, then the second learner; if there is only one learner, native speaker takes the role of one of the learners - native speaker describes, learner draws (lines, shapes, objects; need to be TPR-ed first to be familiar, of course) at various locations of the slate/paper; native speaker describes where the drawings are made, other learners are to copy, can ask questions; record description of final drawing; native speaker corrects the second learner's drawing and tells them how to revise it; compare to the original Climbing the ladder of success ("pivotal activity" - intended to move words from comprehension to production) - game needs to move along quickly, set a time limit; lay everything out on one end of the table; divide the remainder of the table into four sections, marking it with string or tags to form a "ladder"; learners stand around the table and each, in turn, chooses an item, card etc. from the table and attempts to say the word; if it is close (native speaker judges that) they put it onto the first step; the aim is for the group to move as many objects, actions etc. as possible from the pile to the first section and then up the ladder; objects may be moved forward when a participant says something about an object in any section which is expanded from what was previously said about it (dog - brown dog - the brown dog is running (doing motion) etc.); if a clear correction is necessary, the object is put back on the table; repeat in various settings, e.g., countryside scene; at the end have the native speaker describe the whole scene (the sad girl is on top of the mountain etc.) and record for later listening/watching; use the resulting scene also for TPR-ing questions (who, what, where, what kind of, etc.) TPR with objects: see elsewhere on the internet for general TPR instructions; TPR with objects uses objects (e.g., a jar) to gain familiarity with typical actions performed with the object (open, close, drop, turn over etc.); the GPA manuals explain many useful TPR activities in detail Focus on specific sound: native speaker chooses a specific sound, then reads through the word log; learner to raise their hand when they hear the sound; if sound is not recognized, native speaker stops and helps the learner to focus on hearing that sound Minimal role-play: native speaker describes the role play, learner carry out (John, sell the book about horses to Suzy for 100 pesos); can be primarily a comprehension activity Word dictation, if the writing system is phonetic: native speaker dictates, learner attempts to write Use Lexicarry strips to make the distinction between direct and indirect speech (if present in the language) Narrate Lexicarry strips as simple stories as a preparation for the story telling phase Negation - listening: learner points at drawing and makes a false statement, native speaker negates the false statement and says the correct one (no, the boy is not running, he is swimming); do this many times to listen to negations and refresh basic actions Small talk (5-10 minutes per session) to deepen the relationship Wordless picture storybooks (1): describe what you see - describe everything you can, native speaker helps to smooth it out; always negotiate meanings in the target language, using power tools; if you fail to get your point across, let it go and move on; optional debriefing in bridge language (few minutes max); make a voice recording of the native speaker describing the picture in detail, using all the new words and expressions discussed earlier; listen and point or act out - native speaker uses the new words to describe part of the picture, learner points or acts out accordingly; once finished with the whole story, have the native speaker record the whole story (probably switching from here-and-now to the “story form”): first, go page by page, refresh most or all details, then record the page; second, have the native speaker record the story without pausing, but looking at the pictures; third, have the native speaker record the story just from memory Wordless picture storybooks (2): native speaker describes the picture (or several) of a new story, pointing at the parts of the picture that she is describing as she speaks, no interruptions; make a recording; “massage the recording” - learner listens to the recording together with the native speaker, negotiating meanings of new words and expressions in the target language, adding new words to the word log; “massaging the recording” will lead to lots of conversational interaction between the learner and the native speaker; listen and point or act out; once finished with the whole story, native speaker tells the whole story, three recordings are made (see wordless pictures storybooks (1)); the whole method can transition to the story form after some time Telling stories from life with simple pictures: learner tells a story from their life, drawing key characters as they are introduced, and other pictures to symbolize key components of the story; once the story is finished, the native speakers retells the story naturally, a recording is made; massage the recording, if necessary; listen and point or act out; having done this a few times, native speaker can try to share stories from their life in a similar way Wordless picture storybooks (3): native speaker and learner build the stories together, each contributing to the story in a balanced, natural conversational manner Busy pictures - are pictures in which a large number of people or animals are involved in a large number of actions or situations; busy books are collections of busy pictures; describe busy pictures to add exposure to more vocabulary After having worked with wordless picture storybooks, move on to working with bridge stories (stories familiar to both the native speaker and the learner, i.e., not specific to the native speaker’s culture) - native speaker prepares the story and then tells it in her own words, this is recorded; massage the recording as before (play it sentence by sentence and negotiate meanings with the native speaker in the target language) until learner fully understands the story Story retelling: after having worked with stories, learner retells them, native speaker helps Script of life: have the native speaker explain a common, everyday activity (“washing hands”) in great detail; to get the required level of detail / train the native speaker, the activity can be actually performed together step by step (the GPA manual gives an example sequence for “washing hands” with 27 steps); discuss the individual steps, having the native speaker add detail wherever needed; record the native speaker telling the script of life; massage the recording; play back and act out; script of life is a first step towards a deep understanding of the target language culture Action cartoon activity (e.g., Tom and Jerry): learner watches the cartoon a few times before the session; learner can’t see the screen, native speaker tells the story as she is watching it, a recording is made; watch together, listening to the script; massage the recording; native speaker tells the story again without watching the cartoon, a recoding is made (resulting in a more natural version) Shared experience activity: share an experience with the native speaker (going to a coffee shop, work in the garden, etc.); interact naturally; makes some notes afterwards; at the beginning of the next session (after some small talk), native speaker tells the learner what they did, this is recorded (and massaged, if necessary) Familiar place description: native speaker describes a place well-known to the learner; recording is massages as usual Discuss a prop activity: learner and native speaker interact, trying to discuss an object from everyday life, such as a clock; try to discuss all the things people do with and to the object; make a sound recording Role play: start with reverse role play, later switch roles so that learner assumes role they have in real life Structured input - to notice aspects of grammar that can be tied to visual support: TPR-style, native speaker uses full sentences first, then reduces the commands so that only the difficult or overlooked grammatical form is used; example for learners who have difficulty with “to” and “from”: give a candy to / take a candy from the elephant etc. —> to / from the elephant Input flooding: using busy pictures or photographs; after having identified a certain construction, have the native speaker flood you with sentences employing that construction, use the visual support for better comprehension; only use with constructions learners needs to use in their own speech, not with arbitrary grammar patterns Output flooding: like input flooding, but this time the learner attempts to use the construction many, many times; only use with constructions learners needs to use in their own speech, not with arbitrary grammar patterns After working with bridge stories, move on to host stories from the target culture: if necessary, read a translation first; then apply the same steps as for bridge stories Life story activity: for details, see phase 4 manual; native speaker tells basic story of their life, recording is made and massaged; individual events are expanded, leading to more and more detailed stories; important step towards understanding the target culture (through the eyes of individual people) Ethnographic interviewing: native speaker talks about his daily life (typical day, typical shift on a job etc.); massage, expand, massage again Social situation descriptions: learner observes a situation very carefully, takes notes; describes the situation to a native speaker; meanings (including cultural interpretations) are negotiated; native speaker describes the scene back to the learner, a recording is made Native-to-native discourse (personal recordings, TV, radio etc.): massage recordings; make vocabulary recordings; expand on details (usually related to culture) the learner doesn’t understand Vocabulary recordings: phase 5 manual gives an example: The recording might go, “Whetstone. In the story, Jack sharpened his knife on a whetstone. Whetstones are usually rectangular, though sometimes they are round, made of black, course material—stone-like. They can be small enough to carry in your pocket - a small whetstone for sharpening a pocket knife - or too large to carry with you - a large whetstone for big knives. You put oil on the whetstone and rub the knife blade on it to sharpen it.”; make vocabulary recordings of new words Hole-finding activities (talking with a view to finding what you cannot say yet) - contrast some aspect of life at home with life in the host world; look at complex pictures and attempt to describe every detail; watch a cartoon or silent movie and discuss everything that happens and how you understand it. 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4925 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 2 of 11 01 February 2015 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Forgot to post the link to the GPA resources page.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6377 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 3 of 11 02 February 2015 at 9:44am | IP Logged | |||||
This is a bit too long for me to read, but I reacted to this:
This sounds to me a bit like a cop-out. It sounds to me like "This won't teach you the language as fast as other techniques, but it gives you these intangible and unquantifiable benefits instead". The approach of the "typical HTLAL-er" (if there is such a thing) probably includes a lot of movie watching and book reading, which gives you a lot of insight into the culture, and of course most people here would advocate lots of interaction with native speakers if there are any availible (not always the case). The quicker you learn the language, the faster you can really engage with the culture, no? Couldn't this be seen as an attempt to justify an inefficient technique on the basis of an unprovable benefit? 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4502 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 4 of 11 02 February 2015 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Too slow. In the beginning you should translate because it shortcuts a bunch of things.
But once you get to B1, you should stop. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4531 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 11 02 February 2015 at 8:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For anyone who can afford to have all of their studying time be with a tutor (and I'm
guessing with this method that 10 hours per week would be the minimum to maintain momentum) this seems like a highly valuable framework. But I'm certainly nowhere near that salary bracket. Given the intricate nature of these activities I'm guessing most tutors would charge at least US$20 per hour, and by the 1500th hour you're up to US$30,000. In a small group that might be cut in half, but still. There are certainly people out there for whom this would be a reasonable investment, but not a whole lot. And that's generously assuming that this method is, indeed, superior to other methods. I wonder if doing similar activities for the first 50 hours and then switching to a more economical system would provide significant advantages. My instinct is that it would, but even that would be quite pricey. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| victorhart Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States mandarinexperiment.o Joined 3502 days ago 66 posts - 155 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 11 02 February 2015 at 10:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Sounds like a great natural method!
I think such a detailed, prescriptive approach is particularly useful for less experienced or less creative/enthusiastic teachers and a good source of ideas for anyone. However, in my view any approach that includes a few fundamental principles--e.g. native, well-educated teacher interacting intensively with highly motivated student exclusively in L2, who does a lot of listening and reading, but also has ample opportunity to speak and write--will work well. Thus, the "ideal" method is much more flexible and is tailored to the students' specific interests. Maybe they'd rather talk politics or about their kids than do semi-scripted storytelling. Whatever truly engages their interest will be most effective. Edited by victorhart on 02 February 2015 at 10:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5002 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 11 03 February 2015 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It sounds like it would work quite well, just because it covers practically everything. Not so sure about the efficiency, but I imagine a good tutor would pick and choose from the big list of methods and tailor it to the student's goals and needs. If I had a ton of money and time I'd be tempted!
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6392 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 11 03 February 2015 at 2:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hm, my impression is that it's very much like LR - ideally you have to put your other languages on hold and study 8-12 hours per day. I expect the efficiency to be similar too, especially if you don't always work with the same native speaker. Also, don't forget that translation isn't always an option. And the tasks are generally simple enough that any native speaker could be your tutor. The main downside I see is that it would be very stressful for an introvert. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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