Communicating Purposefully

The following post is courtesy of Keith Toda. You can find the original post by Keith Toda’s here. It is re-posted here with his permission. Note: I also saw Keith give a presentation about this topic at the Comprehensible Iowa Conference (CIIA) in 2024.

A Few Thoughts

Before you read Keith’s blog, please allow me to share a few thoughts. I’ll begin by saying that I enjoy going to in-person conferences. I am excited to learn new things, meet new people, and catch up with familiar faces. I am always excited about the lineup and who I get to see present. The vast majority of the time, I am not disappointed; I always take away ideas, thoughts, resources, and activities that help me grow as an educator.

However, I also find that many times when I attend a conference, something “unexpected” sticks. It is usually something that I heard, saw or experienced that I was not necessarily expecting or anticipating. Many times, this “unexpected” really sticks with me, and I find myself deeply thinking about it for a long period of time.

Keith’s presentation about purposeful communication was my latest “unexpected”. He gave a wonderful presentation and it hit hard for me. Keith made me deeply consider the role of communication in the classroom and how I deliver content. (Here is an extra “sticky” thought that also stuck with me:)

“Language use without purpose is not communication.” (Bill Van Patten)

Keith helped me realize that I need to rethink how I engage with my students and how I need to make sure that the communication in my classroom is purposeful. Otherwise, it may not really be taking place!

I reflected on this idea for most of my summer break. It will change the way I communicate in class and how I approach (some) activities. Like Keith, I am excited to lesson plan now, and I will strive to communicate in a way that allows me and my students:

• to learn about each other and ourselves
• to learn about the world around us
• to entertain/create with language in fun, engaging ways

Enjoy Keith’s blog below and I truly hope that it also has a profound, postive effect on you!

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My Professional Learning Goal for the Year – Being Purposefully Communicative

I have been teaching students for over two weeks already, and I feel like I am back in the swing of things, i.e., I have accepted that my summer break is over and that this is my life now for the next ten months (haha). I am back to lesson planning, and honestly, I am very excited about my professional learning goal for this school year: being purposefully communicative.

I have written a few posts on this blog about purposeful communication, but I feel like this past summer, I had the chance to interact with this concept continuously and have gained a whole new and expanded perspective on the topic. Purposeful communication is based on Bill Van Patten’s definition of communication (if you have ever heard him talk on this topic, this is the definition which he always gives). In this book, While We’re On the Topic: BVP on Language, Acquisition, and Classroom Practice he writes: 

“Communication is the interpretation, expression, and/or negotiation of meaning for a purpose, in a given context.” 

Based on that definition, Van Patten continues that our purpose should be that we wish to discover and learn information about each other, ourselves, and the world around us through communication, text, and input. In addition, in his book Van Patten adds that another purpose of communication is to entertain: “When we tell a joke or write a story…our purpose is to entertain in some way.”

This summer at Comprehensible Iowa, I gave a presentation on this topic called “Communicating Purposefully,” where I demonstrated many ways in which we can be purposefully communicative in our classroom activities. However, earlier in April, a Coaching Summit was held prior to Mitten CI, where the coaching/skills lab model was overhauled to reflect an emphasis on this topic. This summer at Acquisition Academy, Fluency Matters Conference, and CI Summit where I served as a coach/trainer, this new model was implemented in the each of the coaching/skills lab. As a result of facilitating and interacting with this new model in the coaching/skills labs, my understanding of purposeful communication was greatly deepened and expanded.

As language teachers, our goals should be to deliver and to engage in purposeful communication with our students. We need to be incredibly mindful though that purposeful communication does not necessarily equate to full immersion, because while I can create a full immersive environment in the target language, if it is not understandable, no matter how purposeful our intentions are, that communication is a waste of time and just noise to students. And in addition while I can be 100% comprehensible to students in the target language, I could be completely missing the mark if that communication is not purposeful in nature. Van Patten states, “Language use without purpose is not communication.”

So based on the above definition of purposeful communication, here are ways in which I plan to address its various components in Latin (both spoken and in readings). In many ways, I was already implementing many of these, but they were random and never intentional in purpose. This will be my guide and lens in lesson planning for this school year:

• to learn about each other and ourselves: 

1. Personalized Questions and Answers (PQAs) 
2. polling students in the target language
3. connecting with students and their interests through questioning in the target language
4. completion of communicative tasks 
5. SEL partner reading (although this activity is not really done in the target language, it can still lead to learning about each other).

• to learn about the world around us: 

1. teaching cultural topics and other content in understandable target language through readings and presentations
2. purposefully embedding cultural topics and facts into circling.

• to entertain/create with language in fun, engaging ways: 

1. TPRS/StoryAsking
2. One Word Image
3. the use of rejoinders in class.

Now not every activity which I will implement in class is going to incorporate purposeful communication primarily due to the nature of the activity, but I can strive to “communicatify” existing activities:

• GimKit/Blooket – when using these for vocabulary review, instead of showing isolated words, put those words in their original context from a reading.
• Grudgeball/Word Chunk Game/Trashketball – before a student shoots a basket, ask class in the target language for their opinion if they think that the student will make the basket; teach students to use rejoinders as cheers during the game,
• BINGO – instead of playing the traditional vocabulary BINGO, facilitate a game of Quick Grid BINGO.
• Sex Game – instead of the traditional Sex Game, instead play Sex Game 2.0.

I am actually looking forward to lesson planning now that I have this goal in mind! What are some ways in which you plan to be deliver purposeful communication in your classroom?

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More from Keith

Keith teaches Latin at Parkview High School, a public school in Lilburn, GA. He teaches with four other Latin teachers in one of the largest Latin programs in the nation (USA). I highly recommend that you bookmark his blog and come back to it. There is truly so much great information and so many ideas there! (And it is applicable to all languages!)