Sometimes it feels like pulling teeth to get students to talk in class; they are afraid to make mistakes and embarrass themselves. It is important to remind them that you are all learning together and that language learning is full of mistakes and that is okay. Acquisition-driven instruction is about communication, not perfection. With that in mind, prioritize building your world language curriculum around meaningful discussions and hand-on activities, rather than rote memorization of grammar rules and vocabulary lists.
If you are new to acquisition-driven instruction within a world language curriculum, check out this set of books that further explain the research behind this technique and offer copious amounts of strategies to implement in your classroom, to get your students communicating in the target language right away.
In a novice level class, communication will be mostly centered around interpretation. To this end, use your class time to encourage interpretive communication and meet students where they are at. Use a variety of activities like storytelling, personalized questions and answers (PQA), total physical response (TPR), MovieTalks, and listen and draw activities. PQAs strengthen comprehension by making language relevant to students’ lives. Even when students respond with simple gestures, yes/no signals, or one-word answers, they are actively engaging in communication and processing language in context. TPR pairs language with movement, giving students a concrete way to demonstrate understanding without speaking. Actions reduce anxiety, increase engagement, and reinforce meaning. MovieTalks provide compelling input by combining visuals with teacher narration. Listen and draw activities encourage careful listening and interpretation in a low-stress way.
Interpretive activities do not always need to look the same, even within one category like storytelling. You can prompt students with an image, have them write or talk about it, tell them a short phrase and have them decide if it goes with the picture, piece a story together one student at a time, and so much more. This story builder resource will help you discover over fifteen creative ways to use storytelling in your world language curriculum to engage students and create routine, while still changing things up and making class interesting from day to day.
Picture talk and movietalk are other great ways to incorporate acquisition-driven instruction into your classroom. Use preselected pictures with a teacher’s guide to take the prep and guesswork out of Picture Talk. You can also find your own pictures on the internet, use stills from videos from YouTube, or even have students bring in or draw their own pictures to talk about and personalize this activity even further.
Acquisition-driven instruction does not mean zero memorization. Some memorization can be helpful, such as high-frequency words, common phrases, and familiar patterns. The difference is why students memorize. In a communicative classroom, memorization supports communication, not the other way around. A modern world language curriculum should prepare students for real-world uses, not just academic success. When we prioritize communication, we empower students to interact, connect, and function in another language—long after the final exam is over.
