A guy at my Tuesday session in Las Vegas asked me during a crucial point in the session, “Where are you going with this?” The underlying tone of the question was, “I don’t know what you are doing there – it looks stupid to me.”
I smiled and answered, “Mind meld!” Can you imagine how this person reacted to that term? And yet mind meld is the key to the entire thing of comprehensible input.
Mind meld is the myofascial tissue that connects word to word, word chunk to word chunk, sentence to sentence, and idea to idea in comprehension based instruction.
Mind meld means real commonality of purpose. When you look at the class and finally consent to agree with them that the guitar is blue and not red, and they relax, happy in the knowledge that their idea has been accepted, then you have mind meld.
Why is mind meld important? Because groups need a common purpose. They need to have a goal to work towards together. They need to agree on things. A class is not a collection of individuals.
A class is a group. That’s why they call it a group and not a collection of individuals. If your class is a collection of individuals, you may as well give up trying to teach them anything this year – it will be like herding cats. You need mind meld.
Mind meld drives commonality of purpose, and commonality of purpose drives language acquisition. We are not in there learning different languages. We are trying as best as we can as a group to get to the art of conversing using a common code.
When we use mind meld, we attempt to share that river of language that alone brings real acquisition, with a low affective filter and plenty of fun and negotiation of meaning, which is one definition of language. Mind meld brings group harmony.
Go out and get some mind meld today. Spray it around in your classes. Get to that invisible sharing with your students. Decide on things together. Make your class into a harmonious group that seeks to work with common purpose.
What is the result of using mind meld in your classes? For one thing, really high test scores. But, more importantly, everybody has fun and the time goes by quickly in the enjoyment of others.
[credit: John Piazza, for pointing the exchange with that guy out to me]