Language as Maths

Secondary
Maria Cruz Manchon Gutierrez, Leon, Spain

I teach English in a very small high school in the north of Spain, to students from 14 to 16. And in case you didn't know, this is one of the few jobs that takes you straight to heaven, that's why I'm still in it after 18 years!

Many of my students have a very poor command of English, they consider it quite a difficult subject. Some of them, after the first two months of school think learning English is impossible and the final goal of passing the course, unattainable.

Therefore, my challenge has always been how to help them see it differently, as easy, reachable and fun when you find the trick to decode it. I see so much potential in them that I hardly ever give up, until they see it too.

So, at the beginning of the school year, when my students come with a never- ending, threatening book, I start telling them not to worry, because the basis of the whole book could be written on only two pages of their notebook. We could put all the basic structures and grammar on a blank sheet of paper, and on the other one, all the most significant or important vocabulary. When I get to this point, I see their eyes open in disbelief. and their obvious question is "why so many pages then?". My answer is that in the same way they do in maths, that a formula is explained, and they do lots of exercises in order to learn to use it properly, we do it in English too. The language is a set of formulas or patterns that are repeated in some way with different elements, arranged and rearranged in all kinds of variations. That is what happens with letters, only 26 - 28 letters produce thousands of words, because of all the permutations we make. When my students realise that we can basically reduce the book to something short and simple, they start to see the light at the end of the tunnel and really want to see how it can be done effectively. So, all year long, we try to reduce the language to its basic elements and also try to see the variation of patterns, with different combinations/permutations as we go along the book. To illustrate the point, I will give you a real case that took place in one of my classes. Last school year, I had a class of 10 extremely low-level students. To give you an idea, in September, after two years of attending regular English classes at school, they didn't know basic structures such as: "I am / you are.." and so on. Most of them had a negative perception of English, and since they had nearly always failed, they saw it coming again.

So, first I focused on trying to change their beliefs with regard to English and the class and I asked them to forget the past. This was a fresh start from scratch and all their work and effort, not just their results, would be taken into consideration.

I must say, that it was extremely hard for many of them to do simple basic student tasks, organization, attention, concentration…,as if they had been "unlearning" all those skills for a long time. But after a while, they improved with little, easy tasks and lots of encouragement.

But after sometime, one of these students kept saying that "she was never going to pass her English course, because she wasn't good at it. What she was good at was maths". At that moment, I just reminded her that English is just a set of formulas, like in maths. So, all we do is to replace the elements of the formula for different ones, called words, according to the situation. And we started to concentrate on that.

At that point we were working on the Present Progressive or Continuous, affirmative form. I told my students to concentrate on the following task:

I wrote on the board the following formula and they had to write it in their notebooks:-

Pr C = be (am is are ) + -ing

Of course, they know that there is a subject starting the sentence from previous lessons. Now, all the students, following the formula, were going to replace the elements, after a couple of subjects given by the teacher that they would finish with their ideas. And I asked them to draw imaginary lines to see the pattern clearly.

Pr. C = to be ( am is are ) + -ing

After this, I said: "we could add as many subjects or sentences as you like, but all we did was apply a formula. Of course, we can add more pieces to the formula to enrich it, and that's what we do when we improve and make progress in learning the language". And that student, who had only seen words that seemed to have no structure in the way that they were just put one after the other, and she seemed to need to learn them all, saw, that she could finally decode the language.

Since then, she concentrated much better on the tasks and started to enjoy the class; what's more she could understand and answer or write faster and more efficiently than some other

students. Her performance improved by the day, and in June, she passed the course.

I was extremely happy to see her succeed. It makes a whole year of teaching worthwhile!!!

Please check the Teaching English Through Multiple Intelligences course at Pilgrims website.