Tonight during our weekly #langchat on Twitter, we talked about how to recycle vocabulary in the World Language classroom. Lots of great ideas were shared but John Cadena won my personal “take-away” of the night by mentioning the Super Seven.
The blog post he is referring to has since been removed. For another blog post on Super Seven, click here.
If you are unfamiliar with the “Super Seven”, I am going to quote Terry Waltz, Chinese teacher and TPRS guru, who framed this important tool: “I got to thinking that in writing simple readers, quite often complex actions got broken down to a subset of very basic concepts, too. So I tried to make a list, and came up with the Super Seven.”
- Location (to be at a place): est (is)
- Existence (to exist somewhere, “there is”): il y a (there is, there are)
- Identity (to be something or someone): est (is)
- Possession (to have something): a (has)
- Preference (to like or dislike something): aime (likes)
- Motion (to go someplace): va (goes)
- Volition (to want or feel like doing something): veut (wants)
In a nutshell, these are the basic structures you want to recycle over and over in your input to novice students, which will eventually become their output. I translated these into French using the conjugated “il/elle” form because that is how they often appear in my Novice stories but you can add/adapt other forms/tenses as you go.
For those of you who noticed that in French, 1. location = 3. identity = est (whereas in Spanish location = està but identity = es), I did too and had a fun chat with Terry about it. Her answer was and I quote again:
Her point is that we need to focus on a few basic but compelling structures. But if you must have an exact seven, then I would recommend: Making/doing: Fait (does/makes) which is such a high frequency verb in French.
In conclusion, my fellow teachers, let’s…
- Let’s be like John and make a poster of these structures to hang in our classrooms
- Let’s make sure we use these a lot with our Novice students whether we are selecting an authentic resource or a reader, talking to our students or telling a story
- Let’s make sure our students get exposed to these in the first weeks of the school year (not when the textbook says it is time)!
Thank you so much for this post! I hoped to do exactly what you’ve done here, but wasn’t sure when I’d get to it. You’re a lifesaver!
Another awesome article! Thank you so much!
This is a great post. Now we need a graphic designer to make us a nice-looking poster…
Kristy Placido made them in Spanish, maybe we can just re-apply 🙂 https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Spanish-Super-7-Verb-Posters-Present-Tense-Singular-forms-2413753
Thanks so much for sharing! I wasn’t aware of the background info on the Super 7; it makes so much sense now!
Thank you for this! I think these are exactly the ones we guessed at for our presentation at SCOLT! I also made posters of how to use the verbs in context for my room!
[…] about using few particular verbs that get the most mileage out of stories and personalizing (re: Terry Waltz’ Super Seven). In a list with so many specific verbs, I can’t help but think that some Latin teachers are […]
Hello! I am so irritated that I cannot find Kristy Placido’s Super Seven stuff or La Profesora Frida’s EDITABLE PP version of these verbs! Does anyone have a French version that he/she could quickly direct me to and/or share with me? I have an insane schedule this year and I hate wasting time looking for things! MERCI!!!!
I searched on TPT and found this (not sure about quality but a starting point): https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Super-7-for-Conversation-3228270
The “Here” and “Terry Waltz” links no longer work. If you have any idea where Terry disappeared to, please let me know!
Thank you! I fixed the links.
[…] and focus to the verbs most used for communication. For great lists of such verbs, see here where Cecile shares Terry Waltz’s Super Seven, and here where Mike Peto expands them to the Sweet […]
[…] French 4 […]
[…] with the super 7 (coined by terry Waltz) and sweet 16 (Mike Peto) – check out this blog post HERE from Cécile Lainé on the super 7 for French class and some free super 7 pages HERE to print as […]
[…] classroom, and once I put my usually stuff on the walls, there was A LOT of space left. What to do? “Super Seven”, “Sweet Sixteen”, rejoinders, etc.? I honestly was worried it would be too overwhelming […]
[…] and “Who are the speakers of the TL?”) and a list of high-frequency verbs called the Super Seven (and, once students have mastered those, the Sweet Sixteen. That’s […]
[…] and once I put my usual minimum stuff on the walls, there was A LOT of space left. What to do? “Super Seven”, “Sweet Sixteen”, rejoinders, cultural posters, etc.? I honestly was worried it would […]