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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 178 ( 2015 ) 169 – 174
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect
1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Departamento de Lingüística Aplicada.
doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.03.175
15th International Conference of the Spanish Association of Language and Literature Education
19-21 November 2014, Valencia, Spain
Growing participator approach: our experience as Amharic students
and teachers of Spanish and Russian languages
*Roser Noguera Mas
a
, Gulnara Baiguatova
b
a
Language Training & Career Resource Center, UNECA/ German Embassy School, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
b
Lycee Français Gebre Maryam/ Conference Interpreter, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Abstract
In this paper we demonstrate the main components of Greg Thomson’s Growing Participator Approach through our experience of
this methodology in learning Amharic. We analyze the positive aspects of this approach as well as the challenges.
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Departamento de Lingüística Aplicada.
Keywords: Growing Participator Approach; Greg Thomson; Total Physical Response; Amharic; Methodology.
1. Introduction to the Growing Participator Approach (GPA)
Greg Thomson’s interest in linguistics was awakened when he first started learning Blackfoot. As a missionary in
different places, he was exposed to local cultures and languages that he acquired. He developed the Growing
Participator Approach after reflecting on his experiences with second language acquisition (SLA) and later
presented his PhD work on SLA at the University of Alberta, US (2000).
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +251 115445399.
E-mail: rnoguera@uneca.org
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Departamento de Lingüística Aplicada.
170 Roser Noguera Mas and Gulnara Baiguatova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 178 ( 2015 ) 169 – 174
1.1. Main components of GPA
Greg Thomson’s GPA for SLA can be considered as an approach and as a methodology. It is flexible and can be
applied in many different ways in regards to objectives, teacher-learner roles, techniques.
Greg Thomson favors S.D. Krashen’s Monitor Model (1982), where acquisition is an unconscious process that
occurs in spontaneous language contexts while learning is associated with a conscious knowledge of the rules of the
language derived from formal and traditional instruction of grammar. Thomson refers to the process of “language
learning” as “growing participation”, to the “learners” as “growing participators” (abbreviated GP) and to the
language resource person, teacher or tutor as “Nurturer”. We will respect Thomson’s terminology in this paper.
Thomson uses strategies that affect directly learning and mainly inductive inferencing as well as strategies that
contribute indirectly to learning such as communication strategies. According to Thomson, these strategies enable
learners to receive the maximum exposure and immersion with the target language, leaving written expression for
more advanced levels. Like the Communicative Approach, the GPA uses task-based resources and activities to
encourage social interaction, negotiations, and sharing of information in the target language. There are very limited
grammar explanations in the classroom, no repetitions of structures as such and no filling gaps exercises. In a
nutshell, his four most important pillars are: communing, understanding, talking and evolving (Thomson, 1992;
Thomson et al, 1999).
Thomson (2012) believes the sociocultural dimension of language-culture learning/growth is a fundamental one.
He relies on Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory and specifically on the concepts of mediation and growth zone (ZPD);
and understands language learning as requiring participation.
GPA program has been designed as a multi-year journey into ever fuller participation in the life of the host
community. The language learning activities are designed to facilitate growth in the learners’ relationships and in
their ability to look for further relationships.
GPA promotes an initial silent period until the GPs are able to express themselves in their own words. At first,
GPs need to focus mainly on listening and inductive inferencing. The ability to understand speech is, for Thomson,
the fundamental ability on which the other (reading, writing, speaking) are built. He designed activities and
vocabulary goals in six phases to continually increase GPs’ ability to understand speech until they can understand
almost everything they hear.
1.2. The Six Phases Program
• Phase 1. The Here-and-Now Phase. 100-120 Hours. GPs will learn to understand about 800 words and many
grammar structures through input flooding supported by pictures, objects and actions (A1 – CEFR).
• Phase 2. Story-Building Phase. 150 Hours. Using wordless picture stories GPs greatly increase their ability to
talk and understand the ability to “narrate” (A2- CEFR).
• Phase 3: Shared-Story Phase. 250 hours. At this stage GPs become more and more proficient to understand and
discuss “world stories”, engaging in shared experiences with nurturer(s) (CEFR – B1).
• Phase 4: Deep-Life Sharing Phase. 500 hours. At this stage GPs can engage in life-story interviewing, walk-of-
life interviewing, interviewing about detailed observations of local social situations (CEFR – B2).
• Phase 5: Native-to-Native Discourses Phase. 500 hours. GPs process a large volume of native-to-native speech.
The strategy is to have deep relationships and to participate in host communities being taken more or less as “one
of us” (CEFR – B2/ C1).
• Phase 6: Self-sustaining growth. This phase can be defined by “We can’t stop growing as long as we are involved
with people” (Thomson, 2012).
At the end of each phase GPs should demonstrate their readiness for the next level. There are exams and make
-up
sessions to reach the goals of every phase.
1.3. The relationship between nurturers and GPs
Learning a language has been defined by Thomson as languacultural and as growth in participation in an ethno-
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linguistic community. Nurturers are the key for GPs to grow and use “the mediational means -story constructing
pieces- in the way that they are used in the lived story of host people” (2012). He explains the sociocultural
competence as going beyond how words sound and uttered. For example, the word “coffee/bunna” has semiotic
meaning beyond the semantic one. Drinking coffee by Ethiopians is very different experience from having coffee in
a Spanish bar.
It is important to point that for Thomson, the Nurturer does not necessarily have to be a trained teacher. Nurturers
should be as a parent to develop an evolving relationship with the GPs, since they represent the whole “community
of practice” in which GPs would like to take an active part (2012). Nurturers can help GPs to build their social
network through introduction to other members of community. These further relationships will provide additional
nurturing.
For Thomson, a good Nurturer should understand the Time Dimension (building gradually on vocabulary), the
Sociocultural Dimension (through games) and the Cognitive Dimension (understanding basic grammar concepts and
structures that GPs should extrapolate themselves from the use of the language).
1.4. Typical activities and techniques in GPA
In phase 1A, the main goal is to listen to the vocabulary and understand the words when hearing them, not to
reproduce or master them completely. GPs start with an average of twenty new vocabulary words per hour of
session. GPs should listen to audio-recordings as homework.
The way to familiarize with the vocabulary is through the activity called “Quick and Dirty Dozen Vocabulary”. If
the GPs are learning the names of fruits, they might use a picture that contains 9-12 small pictures with different
fruits. Nurturers would tell GPs a few times: “This is an apple. This is an orange”. Then the Nurturer asks: “Where
is the apple?” GPs respond by pointing, not speaking. Every time the GPs feel ready, a new word is added.
Words climb the iceberg when they gain in strength (see Fig. 1). Words that are completely mastered are at the
top of the iceberg; words that are barely familiar are very low in the iceberg but rise higher with repeated encounters
in new contexts. At the end of every phase the Nurturer checks up on the GP’s progress with the studied list of
words. The Nurturer pronounces words from the list and the GP places the words in the iceberg layers.
Fig.1. The Iceberg Principle
“Total Physical Response” activities are used to carry out commands given by the Nurturer, for example “Peel
the banana” (playing with toys or real objects). Only one command should be added at a time.
To recognize “survival” expressions, there is a collection of small dialogues called “lexicarry”. These drawings
are similar to comic strips but the bubbles are left empty. During phase 1, the Nurturer begins asking GPs questions,
using the same pointing technique as with the vocabulary. Later, when GPs have assimilated the new expressions, a
role play is added.
In phase 2 we started describing children’s wordless picture books. The Nurturer asks one of the GPs to describe
the book cover with his/her own words, and then another student continues with the following page. While we were
trying to describe the pictures, the Nurturer took notes of the words, structures and situations that we had difficulty
with. Afterwards, the Nurturer would retell the same part of the story incorporating the elements we struggled with
and adding new words as sentence connectors. We recorded our Nurturer and listened at home. The next day, we
172 Roser Noguera Mas and Gulnara Baiguatova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 178 ( 2015 ) 169 – 174
would continue with the same story and we could add some of the new words we learned.
Stories exposed us to a large amount of speech as well as taught us to listen carefully to our classmates to build a
comprehensive story-line.
There are also books prepared by teachers showing them in normal everyday life settings and activities.
We found inductive inferencing activities extremely useful requiring us to communicate in Amharic to find a
missing element. For example, we had two identical sets of pictures for two groups: one chose a picture from the set
and the other group tried to guess which of the pictures they had selected.
Other typical activities were role-plays, role cards, input-based grammar highlighting activities for pronouns,
prepositions and quantity adverbs, description of busy-pictures, etc. (Thomson, 1993).
For many of the activities, real objects were used such as household items, food, water, toys such as rag dolls,
plastic animal toys, toy furniture, toy vegetables and fruits, candies in different colours, crayons, etc.
2. Our personal experiences
We started learning Amharic at Mekane Yesus Joint Language School (Addis Ababa). This school was founded
by Protestant missionaries to teach Amharic and other Ethiopian languages with GPA methodology. The school tries
to create a relaxed, family-like environment by organising everyday coffee/tea breaks in the garden, lectures about
Ethiopian culture and regular dinners and excursions. The student body is diverse and contains international students
as well as Ethiopians learning other languages of Ethiopia. The Nurturers go regularly to international training
sessions on GPA. We have studied in this school from phase 1 and we are currently in phase 3; therefore our
personal experiences with this methodology reflect mainly on phase 1 through 3.
Ethiopians’ English speaking ability and access to the community are major challenges to communicate with
natives in their language. In this context, to develop conversational ability, one should have effective strategies.
3. Advantages
• This method is very close to the child language acquisition process. The GPA sees the language not as a
collection of grammatical concepts, patterns and rules but as an environment to which the learner/participator
must be responsive in order to learn. As children need a nurturer/parent to guide them through the physical,
cultural and linguistic environment and to connect them to cultural and social aspects of life, so does the GPs
need a nurturer who can lead them through new language and facilitate later interaction with other native
speakers. As children acquire their mother tongues or other languages at a young age through listening and
associations, so does this method duplicate this process.
• Similar to interactions between parents and children, the parents initiate the first formation of speech by
pointing at objects first and uttering the way words should be pronounced and asking the children to follow
basic commands. The TPR is a dominant part of the beginning stage of the GPA and is an example of the
comprehensive approach to language teaching. At the first stage of GPA approach, the participant is not
required to learn thousands of new words by heart, but rather must pay attention to sound and “associated
meaning”, and the participator is not allowed to talk but just respond through physical reactions. The aim here is
twofold. First, the participator quickly recognizes the meaning of the word in the language being learned and
secondly, the participator passively learns the structure of the language itself and the proper intonation.
Therefore, grammar is not taught explicitly, but can be derived from the language input.
• In the early weeks of language learning with this method, the new GP naturally attaches his/her linguacultural
concepts to phonetics of the word and therefore creates new associations (phonetic and semantic ones). Over
time the new words are assimilated and understood more closely to the way native speakers do. The socio-
cultural dimension is very important as the meaning of words is linked to a specific context or situation.
• In the second stage of GPA, activities are progressing towards “the life-story interviewing” in which the
participant tries to use the passive vocabulary acquired in the active form by describing situations he/she
encountered in real life. Children’s stories were very helpful in this stage. Gradually, the level of activities
advanced towards more complex ones like discussions, learning how to write and read, and native-to-native
discourse.
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• This approach is also helpful in assimilating temporal or musical dimension of the language (speed, flow,
intonation), and at the cognitive stage it enables the participator to recognise words in the speech stream.
Changing Nurturers every six weeks is another positive aspect of the approach as you adapt your ear to different
timbres and nuances of pronunciation of words, different speech tempo. Finally, it creates an opportunity to
experience different styles of teaching and enlarges your language community.
Learning the language in a group is also an advantage. Nurturer often engages GPs in a kind of competition to see
who can point faster. This provides a lot more repetition and concentration.
4. Challenges with the GPA
While learning Amharic with GPA, we have encountered some challenges. GP is forbidden to write anything in
the first phase, to pronounce anything in the new language or to have any translations of the word.
We question if this brings any additional advantage in a new language acquisition. Language students when
starting a new foreign language are already fluent in their mother tongue and perhaps other foreign languages on top
which serves to be instrumental in new language acquisition. It is like the foundation of the house: the broader and
stronger foundation allows one to build more storeys if desired. One cannot consider a language student as tabula
rasa, his/her background allows associations, understanding etymology and therefore memorizing words more
easily.
Also even babies gradually build their mother tongue skills: they first practise with different sounds; they train
their articulatory apparatus and they replace difficult sounds with easier ones until the stage when their articulatory
apparatus develops and they become capable of pronouncing them.
Naturally, when we encounter an unfamiliar word we immediately ask the question: “What does it mean?” With
the question we try to determine its use and application, the sphere of its functionality. This procedure of
establishing meanings of concrete words also prompts a general functional definition of the lexical meaning.
The process of taking notes stimulates the memory process through activation of the brain through fine motor
skills. It is important that the active verbal part comes also in the first stage. It is not surprising that some GPs
reaching the 3rd level cannot speak in the language.
Another drawback that we have seen during our Amharic class is that there is sometimes a lack of thematic link
among the new words. For instance, on a set of pictures one can see: a broom, a match, a sink, a lion, etc. It does not
create the “hooks” to memorize the words.
It is amusing to find images that are outside of Ethiopian culture: for example, the images of snow and “kisse” (a
Kazakh tea cup) that our Ethiopian Nurturers have difficulty to explain as they have never experienced these things
themselves.
Verbs and adjectives related to emotions were difficult to remember because the pictures were not clear or were
very similar. The Nurturers themselves had difficulties to interpret the images and applied different notions to the
same picture.
We found that there were not enough communicative situations and dialogues.
Thomson stresses that it is not necessary to memorise words; they will come naturally to you after listening to the
recordings several times. From our experience, those GPs who only listened to the recordings had difficulties
remembering the words. Everyone has his/her strategies in memorisation and it is known that the more you apply a
mental action around new words, the better you assimilate them.
5. How we teach Russian and Spanish
We have been trained as teachers with the communicative methodology. We work with task-based activities and
always try to present the grammar with functional criteria. We have incorporated some of the activities and materials
that have been useful for us as Amharic learners.
• We are using some of the pictures, dolls, real objects and plastic toys.
• At the beginning of the activity/ unit/ task where students need the specific vocabulary, we use the “Dirty Dozen”
technique.
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• Story building is a great tool. We can use description, narration in different tenses, narrative mode, vocabulary,
and imaginary dialogues among the characters, indirect speech and much more.
6. Conclusion
Our educational goal, as teachers of foreign languages, is that our students reach a full communicative
competence. It is very important to pay attention to our students’ needs, ways and styles of learning, motivation and
goals.
Acknowledgements
We thank Mekane Yesus Joint Language School and especially our Nurturers for their hard work and their
introduction to Ethiopian culture.
References
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.
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Thomson, G. & Thomson, A. (2009). First hundred hours. Available at http://growingparticipatorapproach.wordpress.com/first-hundred-hours-
2009/.
Thomsom, G. (2012). The Growing Participator Approach (GPA): A Brief State of the Art and Some Practical Illustrations. Available at
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