"Dice" what?

When I first read about Piaget’s processes or “functions” called assimilation and accommodation I wondered how students learning a foreign language use these processes to learn.  However, I quickly realized that English cognates are one of the most powerful schemes students can access. Although this skill requires some literacy, even students in 2^nd grade can use assimilation to decode a word such as “carro”. Direct instruction isn’t even necessary to teach students this skill. I simply ask students to conference with each other to come up with an answer. Students can triple their vocabulary once they use assimilation to look for an English word inside a Spanish word.

“False” cognates cause disequilibrium and require students to use accommodation to re-wire their existing English scheme. For example, the word "dice" in Spanish means "he/she says" (its pronunciaton is "DEE-say"). This causes disequilibrium on two levels – one for its meaning and the other for the way that it is pronounced. In this case, I do not want students to use assimilation since this will negatively influence the Spanish word I want them to learn. If I call attention to the fact that it looks like the word for game playing cubes in English, students will have to hurdle over the English scheme to get to the Spanish meaning every time they encounter the word. Using visual aids help remind them of the meaning, and I must use a lot of repetition with these types of words in order to “replace” their existing scheme until they simply don’t see or hear the English word nor form a mental image of “dice” in English.

Yet, I sometimes make the mistake of using a cognate with the assumption that students already have schemes in place for that word. This can cause disequilibrium among some students.  For example, when presented with the word “burrito” most students exclaimed “Oh, a burrito!” But what of the students who didn’t have any mental image? When I think about the sentence from the perspective of one of these students, I get this: "He eats [a burr?, a burp?, a butterfly?]”. Even showing students a visual may not enable them to connect with this word if they don’t have a scheme in place. This lack of scheme both for the extracting the English cognate as well as lacking a mental model affects students’ comprehension, as well as their assessment. Importantly, unless I know that they are experiencing a disequilibrium for burrito, I won’t know the real reason for their low achievement. 

Disequilibrium and equilibrium feel like a pendulum between frustration and joy, something all people experience daily. Just today, I experienced disequilibrium when I came across this clue in the New York Times Sunday Crossword: “British terminals”. Airport terminals? Computer terminals? Batteries? Nope. Equiibrium (and delight) emerged when I discovered the answer to be…“zeds”.

References:

Ormrod, J. E. (2012). Human learning (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Britt, M, “The Psych Files” podcast, Retrieved from: www.thepsychfiles.com/2009/01/episode-84-how-to-make-learning-fun-again-part-1-piaget/