Does your languages program inspire greatness?
Involving your students in the great story of language and the evolution of global humanity is easier than you think.
2. Engaging the Child
• Not filling a bucket but lighting a flame
• Lofty ideals
• Heroes
• ....A role for the child in the drama
The Story of Language
3. • Humans around the world created languages
for their families and tribes.
• Some languages became national, and
international, by means that were not always
honorable and kind.
• Languages served unity and cooperation within
the group but also contributed to xenophobia.
• Esperanto is the language with no out-group. It
is designed for the convenience of all the
world’s people.
4. • Humans around the world created languages
for their families and tribes. Introduction
• Some languages became national, and
international, by means that were not always
honorable and kind. Crisis/Climax
• Languages served unity and cooperation within
the group but also contributed to xenophobia.
• Esperanto is the language with no out-group. It
is designed for the convenience of all the
world’s people. Resolution
5. Heroes
•Zamenhof designed a 2nd
language for all people.
•I’m learning it to make
friends everywhere in the
world.
7. about more than language
satisfactory solution!
anything
How we respond to challenge
8. about more than language
satisfactory solution!
anything
How we respond to challenge
9. about more than language
Submissive Accept Anything
Assertive Design a mutually
satisfactory solution!
Aggressive Impose
anything
How we respond to challenge
10. about more than language
Submissive Accept Anything
Assertive Design a mutually
satisfactory solution!
Aggressive Impose
anything
How we respond to challenge
11. about more than language
Submissive Accept Anything
Assertive Design a mutually
satisfactory solution!
Aggressive Impose
anything
How we respond to challenge
27. Language Apprenticeship
The 2-step process
enables many more
children to to
“a universal apprenticeship
master a target
in learning how to learn
language.
languages” in primary
school will allow students
to“successfully transfer such
skills to other
languages” (Prof. Joe Lo
Bianco, 2009)
28. Immersion LOTE for all
A first LOTE specifically
chosen to be accessible for
students offers the exciting
possibility of being
accessible to their normal
teachers too.
This provides continuity,
regular contact and
opportunities for integration
and immersion.
29. Montessori Everything
10%
20%
10%
English Arts
Science HSIE
10%
LOTE Maths
HDPE Tech 20%
10%
10%
10%
Even LOTE!
31. About the Author
Penelope Vos (BSc Dip Ed) is a teacher, author and CEO of
Mondeto Educational Resources.
She is a graduate of Murdoch University and the Montessori World Education
Institute, and has twenty years of teaching experience, in Science, Art and Esperanto,
as well as general Montessori teaching at Treetops Montessori, in Darlington, WA.
Her most recent books are "Australian LOTE: Achieving Broad and Deep
Competence in Languages at School" (2007) and "Talking to the Whole Wide
World" (2009), a stand-alone resource to equip primary school generalists to teach a
second language to fluency, in a context of global intercultural awareness, without
prior training. Montessori shelf materials are available to further integrate LOTE into
Montessori classrooms.
www.mondeto.com
Hinweis der Redaktion
Montessori Education is a world-wide movement reflecting her global vision of a better world through education. \nWe have a new opportunity to realize that vision more fully by embracing the beautiful innovation of one of her contemporaries.\n
As Tim Seldin reminded us yesterday, Montessori was very clear about the importance of inspiring the child to engage.\nOne of the great stories is the Story of Language.\n
The story of language in dot points...\nWhat do you know of language impositions, deprivations and injustice?\n(If you aren’t sure what it means for a language to be designed for convenience, my second presentation explores that idea.)\n
All engaging stories have a painful crisis and a satisfying resolution!\n
The media offers vacuous heroes and antiheroes but we can, and do, a lot better.\nIt is a great gift to give a child the sense of being part of the solution.\n
in the great tradition of inspiring stories- this one has a lot going for it: starting with a boy’s vision of a better world through communication, going on to involve perseverence, devotion, resilience and becoming a part of humanity’s great story.\n
The creation and adoption of Esperanto is living, breathing proof that humans have it in them to do better than cede to force.\n(LOTE education frequently models the exact opposite- $ win)\n
The creation and adoption of Esperanto is living, breathing proof that humans have it in them to do better than cede to force.\n(LOTE education frequently models the exact opposite- $ win)\n
The creation and adoption of Esperanto is living, breathing proof that humans have it in them to do better than cede to force.\n(LOTE education frequently models the exact opposite- $ win)\n
The creation and adoption of Esperanto is living, breathing proof that humans have it in them to do better than cede to force.\n(LOTE education frequently models the exact opposite- $ win)\n
The fact that not everyone “gets it” yet, is actually an advantage in engaging young idealists. Choosing Esperanto, ahead of the pack, models acceptance based on reason and empathy, rather than mindless following, which is , itself, a very worthwhile lesson on bases for action.\n
In the next presentation, I’ll introduce you to some of the classes of children in dozens of really diverse countries who are learning Esperanto as their first foreign language.\n
Esperanto has been called a “linguistic handshake” because both participants step forward and extend a hand, on an equal basis. \n
This image expresses another analogy- Esperanto as a catalyst for intercultural communication. (A catalyst is a compound which speeds up a reaction)\nCertainly our world has enough global issues to talk about, and urgently. If we wouldn’t like to do it in Hungarian or Mandarin, is it fair to expect others, especially poorer others, to do it in English?\n
If not- we’ll go on to look at the implications for implementation.\n
You may wonder if this is too idealistic to be practical. I’d like to show you that it is not.\nWhile I was deputy at The Foothills School we conducted a review of our LOTE program\n which involved rethinking its purpose and exploring, with open minds, what various strategies could contribute to fulfillment of that purpose.\n
We thought through the questions with unusual seriousness and practicality in that we factored in the time available. (I don’t know why this is so rare!)\nWe made a list:\n
It is so important not to confuse English-language fluency with intelligence!\nFor students to properly experience the experience of having something to say and struggling to find the words to say it, they need to get further immersed in the learning (and using) process than is usually the case.\n\n
Bilingualism builds brains.\n100 hours of a 600-hour language does not make the same change in brain function that mastery and use of a 100-hour language does.\n
What does it mean to be a global citizen?\nOne foreign-culture friend is better than none. But a mixed dozen is better still.\nEsperanto provides the most cultural diversity in the least time.\n
Learning a second language illuminates your first.\nEspecially Esperanto because of transparent grammar: nouns ending in -o, regular tenses, constant affixes, that sort of thing. \n
Being bilingual is a big deal in Australia and in many other English-speaking countries. Early experience of success in anything inspires more investment.\n
A third language is easier to learn- whenever the need arises.\nIf we think about it, we know that we can’t predict which languages will matter for each child, over their life-span but we can equip them with transferable skills, general understandings about languages, learning techniques, thinking habits rich in analysis and synthesis, and confidence in both their ability to learn, and the need for other languages in the world.\n
After six years at Foothills I moved to Treetops Montessori and we set up an Esperanto program which thrived for many years, after a long series of disappointments in other LOTEs. \n
Primary children would not have time to learn (in school) a different LOTE, to the standard needed to do this.\n
On moving to NSW, I taught Esperanto in a state school for three years. The results were great again. Participation was voluntary, non-participants could go to another room and read or do homework. A couple of kids went for a week or two but they came back and joined in happily. Children with spelling issues enjoyed being able to spell and the academically gifted ones asked for extra homework so they could communicate faster and better with pen pals. The children went off to three local high schools where they learned German, Italian or French, all of them did much better than would be expected from the Candelo P.S feeder school.\n
What we were seeing at Candelo is an illustration of the latest thinking, that the best start is to choose a first language that children can learn thoroughly, and then transfer those skills to languages chosen when the child is old enough to make a choice.\n
It also provides a model of a relevant adult valuing language learning enough to engage in it.\n
Esperanto is easy enough to offer success to every teacher and child in primary school which means that LOTE no longer needs to interrupt the smooth functioning of the Montessori classroom.\n\n
“Talking to the Whole Wide World” comes with Montessori materials which are here to be explored and discussed.\n\n