When teachers encounter one or more students who essentially don’t want to learn Spanish it can jeopardize the activities and class dynamics. Sometimes, teachers feel that they need to go back to the drawing board and re-think everything that they had planned.
Fourteen speakers from the Spanish Teacher Success Academy online conference gave us some tips on what to do tackle this problem.
What do you do if you have a class that just “doesn’t want to acquire” a new language?
This is a summary of their answers from the Mastermind Q&A sessions.
Jodi Stokdyk
“If you use your relationship as a foundational base, they will start to buy in.”
“If you can get them to see its use and its reality, and that it’s fun, and that you care about them and you want them to have this benefit, they will usually start to believe in you a little bit.”
Allison Wienhold (Mis Clases Locas)
“Find out what they are interested in… and steer your curriculum around that.”
“You can have them sneakily acquire language by talking about the basketball game.”
Bethanie Drew
“You just keep trying.”
“I tried to address any underlying issues, whether it be getting help from mental health professionals.”
“I try to pull in students that are making little steps and continue to encourage them.”
“I work with students to identify what their goals are and try to merge their goals with the class goals. Sometimes Mom and Dad need to be part of that conversation.”
Emilie del Risco (Island Teacher)
“You’ve got to help them see how it is relevant to their lives.”
“I like to open up and share how I became interested in the language because I was one time in their shoes.”
Laurie Clarcq
“There are two things going on here: one is their attitude towards acquiring the language, the other is what the topics of conversation are during the class. If I’m clever and what we are talking about in class is more interesting than their reluctance to acquire a language, then they’re in.”
Erin Gilreath Carlson
“That’s when I would always reach for authentic resources that tap into something they are interested in.”
Meredith White
“You can’t see your reflection in boiling water. I think when the water settles, and you can reflect, and if you have those feelings like ‘you know what, 3rd period just doesn’t want to… whatever, whatever, I think we have to look [closely] because rarely is it the whole 3rd period.”
“Is the class huge? And is it just six kids and really, thirty are on board? Those are super-good odds.”
“You have got to figure out what makes sense to them, why they are this way–[is class] way too hard? Or way too easy?”
“Figure out a way to have some really honest conversations. Ask them: what is it about me? What are we not connecting? What can I do better?”
“Keep the onus on you.”
Jen López
“Do more cultural activities, focus more on the culture of the target language, and also try to make it as fun as possible.”
Albert Fernández
“I would keep trying to do different activities and find the ones that engage them the best. Keep it kinetic and don’t take it personally.”
“It’s easy to internalize their lack of interest, but 99% of the time, it’s not the teacher’s fault they don’t want to learn.”
Kristin Montgomery
“I would try to do activities that are motivating. If they’re not motivated, it’s true that they won’t acquire.”
“It is okay to throw out or completely change whatever you had planned because if your students aren’t motivated, they won’t learn.”
Jeremy Jordan (Señor Jordan)
“I trick them into acquiring the language. You don’t acquire through the conscious, grammatical things… to acquire, you just have to find things that they want to talk about.”
“In level 1, level 2, they want to talk about themselves.”
Michaela McCoughey
Understand “the psychological things behind it.”
“Vulnerability can be uncomfortable, and it translates as resistance.”
“Mostly we work on building community or whatever will get them engaged, and I just have to sacrifice actual language learning.”
Tina Hargaden
Steve Krashen says that “students don’t actually have to be motivated to learn the language.”
“They will acquire the language in an unconscious or subconscious way, given the proper environment. And the proper environment would be exchanging messages that mean something to the students.”
“What we have to have are ways to engage students in things that they value… everybody wants to be part of a fun community, everybody wants to have a good time, everybody wants to be famous for something amongst their peers. Finding activities that engage students in ways that are meaningful to them, to me, is the real work of a proficiency-based teacher.”
Sam Finneseth
“I ask them why and then we start with cultural concepts.”
“Then I throw in some cool slang words that I hear in the hallway that are mostly appropriate.”
“When they realize that the kids in the hallway can understand what they’re saying, they slowly start buying in…sometimes”
Learn more about the Spanish Teacher Success Academy online professional development sessions that brings together 25 world-class experts who will share with you the best strategies for teaching Spanish.
