Not all of our Garbanzo stories are happy – and we believe that’s a good thing!
The main goal of language class is to learn how to communicate in another language - speaking, listening, and understanding in context. We do that by acquiring language.
But if we really want to learn how to communicate, we have to have all the tools available to us – language that accurately describes feelings, emotions, difficult situations, and more.
Read more about why it’s important to read texts that aren’t “happy” and what that means for language acquisition in this blog post.
Core Path Cleanup
One of the biggest changes we recently implemented at Garbanzo was our Core Path Cleanup.
It had been on the to-do list for awhile, but we knew that August 2024 was the time to make it happen, before our English lesson libraries for Multilingual learners grew too big – and before world language teachers got too into the thick of school.
What is a Core Path?
Real quick, in case you’re new to Garbanzo — all of our lessons are stored in Paths.
You can think of Paths like shelves in a library: every lesson is on a shelf! Some shelves, or Paths, contain lessons with a common topic: Athlete Biographies, Winter Holidays, Fairytales, etc.
Other Paths house lessons with a common set of vocabulary. Core Paths are like that!
Each Core Path contains lessons that use the same set of vocabulary words. The lessons are sequenced, and they introduce the set of vocabulary slowly; sequentially; from lesson to lesson.
Core Paths also build on each other. Core10 uses 10 core words, Core20 uses the 10 words from Core10 plus 10 new ones (20 total), Core30 uses the 20 from Core20 plus 10 new ones… you get the picture.
If students start with our first Core Path and then continue in sequence to the next and the next, they’ll slowly be exposed to new vocabulary over time, allowing them to understand new words in context as they see them.
Why our Core Paths needed a cleanup
In essence, we started paring down our Core Paths to reduce the number of lessons in each (some previous core paths had upwards of 200 lessons!). We also added a new kind of path, called Core Playgrounds.
Each Core Path now has a matching Core Playground. (The playgrounds are still technically paths because paths are our bookshelves, but the title of the path is Playground. Clear as mud?). As we trimmed down each Core Path to a shorter length, we pulled all of those extra lessons into the corresponding Playground.
We also encourage teachers to assign Core Paths using the Path Assignment feature, which is available to Premium subscribers. With a single click, Garbanzo will automate the next assignment as students complete a lesson in the path. It saves teachers tons of time and keeps students with a fresh flow of lessons, no matter how quickly they work!
However, with over 1 million Garbanzo users, there is a huge range in what lessons they consider “school appropriate.” Some schools want their students to learn about faith-based cultural traditions; others don’t. Some schools are okay with characters such as zombies and mummies, others aren’t.
We wanted to make sure that the Core Paths were extra-super-G-rated so that any teacher could assign the full path as a one-click assignment. All those lessons we pulled from the Core Paths went to the Playgrounds.
What happened after the Core Path Cleanup
After the cleanup, we noticed an interesting question coming up repeatedly: why aren’t ALL the lessons in Core Paths and Playgrounds “appropriate” for schools, especially ones with a more conservative view on educational materials? Wouldn’t it make sense for Garbanzo to ONLY have super “clean” content, since it’s used in schools?
First, it’s super important to point out that we would never add a lesson to Garbanzo that isn’t school-appropriate. However, what’s appropriate in one school won’t be appropriate elsewhere.
Garbanzo is not an elementary specific application (although we have hundreds of lessons in our ‘elementary’ tag!). Garbanzo is not designed for any single context; it is designed to be used in any context, to support language teachers in reaching any content goals they might have for their students. For that reason, we advise teachers to read through every lesson they assign. What’s appropriate for most schools may not be appropriate for your school, for a myriad of reasons!
Language class is more than “learning a language.”
But there’s a wider conversation to be had around what’s “appropriate,” especially when considering the overall goal and purpose of language class.
Many people think that the benefit of Spanish class is just being able to speak and understand Spanish. This isn’t untrue – this is absolutely the goal – but ultimately the benefits of acquiring language are so much more than that!
Language helps us communicate with others – to connect, listen, take in meaning, and regulate and express emotions in all kinds of situations.
But in order to do that, we need to have the language readily available.
You need language to communicate how you’re feeling
Think of small children, who feel so much and so deeply, but usually express those big emotions in combative ways – tantrums, misbehaving, etc, because they haven’t learned to regulate their emotions yet. Part of their journey of regulating emotions is learning how to EXPRESS what they’re feeling.
To do that, they need to have acquired language they understand and can use in context to say things like, “I’m sad because I didn’t want to share.” Or, “I’m hurt because I fell.”
According to language acquisition theory, reading and listening to stories is one of the best input methods for language.
As Stephen Krashen puts it, “We acquire language when we understand messages, when we understand what people tell us and when we understand what we read.”
“We acquire language when we understand messages, when we understand what people tell us and when we understand what we read.”
Stories make us feel things.
Not only do students experience the characters' emotions, but they can learn to differentiate how they’re feeling within the story – happy, scared, nervous – by examining and discussing the story afterwards.
Furthermore, anyone who communicates in a language will have to communicate about problems. Whether they are listening to someone else recount something that has happened to them or asking for help for a tough situation in which they have found themselves, they need the words to do so. Garbanzo is filled with stories about wonderful, amazing, inspiring things. It also has tragic stories, true stories that will make you mad, and stories about real people who have endured terrible things. Sometimes, those stories have happy endings, and sometimes they don’t.
Stories – fictitious and true – help us learn, grow, and become who we are going to be.
What that means for language classes
While our students can’t consciously influence their internal linguistic systems (those systems are unconscious, after all), we can help their systems develop further by providing an acquisition-friendly environment: texts that expose students to a wide range of language while ensuring that language is comprehensible and review activities that keep the comprehensible input going.
Will your students' capacity to acquire language suffer if they only read “happy” Garbanzo stories?
It’s hard to say – every person’s internal linguistic system is unique. Even if a student did acquire the language they’d need to express more complex emotions, they may not be mature enough to do so.
Ultimately, as the teacher, you have to take into account student and parent preferences as well as academic guidelines. If those don’t allow for what we call “spicier” Garbanzo stories, we understand – but they’re still waiting for you inside Garbanzo, just in case!
