This morning I listened to one of my top five podcasts, “Conversations about Language Teaching” and it happened to touch on something that I’ve been thinking a lot about this academic year: the Silent Period.

If you are unfamiliar with the Silent Period, or often called the pre-production stage in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), I would highly suggest you listen first to the podcast episode by Dr. Diane Neubauer and Dr. Reed Riggs. Their show notes are also filled with links to helpful research, including this link to a presentation I found to be a quite helpful summary on ELL/SLA stages of acquisition.

What prompted me to write this blog post as commentary on this episode is two pronged: 1) the disconnect I’ve seen between ESL/EL teacher training and World Language (WL) training as Diane alludes to and 2) the disconnect between curricula/assessment in schools and the silent period.

Diane touches on the first point of how WIDA recognizes and gives guidance about the silent period to ESL/EL teachers. I, myself, am not a EL/ESL teacher here in the U.S., but strangely enough, I learned about the silent period in my EL/ESL endorsement courses-not from my SLA/methods courses. Furthermore, I would say I learned MORE about Second Language Acquisition (SLA) from my EL/ESL classes than I did from my method’s course or any other course I took for my master’s in teaching a world language. I find that disheartening, but also an excellent reflection of the state of EL/ESL courses and their understanding of SLA practice and theory. So, it leaves me with the question of why are we, in world language instruction, so reluctant to recognize what EL/ESL teachers everywhere are encouraged to embrace?

Maybe this has just been my experience and it not an accurate portrayal of the bigger WL community… or maybe it’s perfectly accurate? At times, WL teacher training feels like it may be light years behind. I say may be because my experience was just one experience. Maybe yours was entirely different? However for me, I had no discussion about the stages of acquisition or language order of acquisition in my education classes… I have learned this on my own by reading Krashen and others.

I link all this then to my second point: the disconnect between providing a silent period and actual language teaching/assessment practice. I think of ACTFL and their guidance regarding production of an additional language(s). For schools that use ACTFL as their direct source for how to teach (by this I mean high leverage teaching practices, for example) and what to achieve (proficiency and performance indicators), I wish WL teachers would receive information recognizing a silent period of all novice learners, regardless of age. Both Reed and Diane speak about how the silent period has been mostly studied in younger children, yet there are examples to be observed across all ages. I believe guidance to teachers would relieve the pressure that likely many schools/curriculum/departments can feel: Assess student speaking… because we must?!

In my personal teaching practice, I’ve experienced some very promising results by embracing a long silent period for novice learners. In a previous school setting, while using an ADI/TPRS focused curriculum and approach, I did not formally assess language production/speaking until the end of four semesters together (in this case, it was the end of Spanish 2). If you view this presentation, this timeline aligns well with the Silent Period and the Early Period. Additionally, my assessment was pitched as a “conversation” with me, their teacher. They would be in the driver’s seat for what they wanted to talk about and I told them the goal of the exam was really to get to know each other (even more). Students did not memorize, there was no need or pressure to talk about a specific theme (our units were not typically thematic anyways), etc. It was, truly, an interpersonal assessment about something that mattered to them (themselves!). The students left feeling accomplished, I was left observing some incredible strides in language acquisition.

I connect some of these strides directly back to the allowance of a silent period. Would those same “strides” be possible if I frequently did summative speaking assessments with my students, starting Q1 in Spanish 1? I’m not a researcher, so I can’t say no for sure, however, I do know that my students did not build up anxiety (or raise their affective filter in Krashen terms) towards speaking exams, which does absolutely happen if you assess frequently in high pressure situations. I also know that I worked hard for two years to create a classroom community that embraced errors as part of the acquisition process, which builds up both competence and relatedness (listen to Liam Printer’s podcast “The Motivated Classroom” regarding Self-Determination Theory). Additionally, I know that frequent (interpret frequent how you please) summative speaking assessments do not allow for adequate time to acquire new language for nearly all students, so they turn to memorization and explicit learning strategies, no matter what proficiency level.

I found a parent comment to me a once quite comical… At this point, I had taught his daughter for three consecutive years, but it was my first time meeting the parent at a school event. He came up to me and thanked me for teaching his daughter and that my class was different than others because, as he stated, “You make your students actual speak in Spanish.” I chuckled in response and I said something to the effect of, “It’s actually the opposite–I allowed space for them to speak when they were ready, but I’m glad you are observing the fruits of that!” Although the father may have been slightly confused at that initial response, I do believe that’s a reason why my teaching methods have proven effective in the past.

So why don’t more schools and curricula in WL reflect this permittance of a silent period? What’s the rush to have them produce (and assess it)? I believe Reed hits the nail on the head and refers to “the shaping belief systems from textbooks” and wow, is that a hard belief system to change. These systems pop up everywhere: from thematic units, to practiced, rehearsed speech and memorized vocab lists, all the way to types of assessments. I wish we would allow our students a little grace during that novice stage to allow them to acquire, reflect, grow (read: make “errors”) and then, produce. I’ve just never understood the rush?

All of said, I do want to clarify: this is not to say students don’t communicate in my classroom in the TL. This blog post is already too long, so I won’t start with that… but I needed to leave this note as a caveat! If you are a CI teacher, I think you know what I mean. If not, maybe one day I’ll write more on what communication looks like in a comprehension based classroom.

What do you think? Are you a language teacher that embraces the silent period? Are you a believer in having them “speak on day one” as Diane and Reed mention in the episode, and have seen it work in the long term? I’m curious what other experiences are… please share in the comments if you’d like to!