When I was learning piano, there were several different skills that I needed to learn, but we never practiced them all together. As I was learning fingering and phrasing, the mantra was “SLOW”. Once the notes were in muscle memory, I could gradually begin to speed up – on that piece. I think it works that way in language learning: after structures have been “learned” SLOWli, we can speed up when dealing with them, but new things need to return to SLOW.
Occasionally a piece had a Cadenza – a section that was intended to allow the performer to show off his virtuosity through improvisation. There was always a written cadenza, and I had to “acquire” the written cadenza before I could begin to improvise. That, to me, parallels Point and Pause. When we Point and Pause the structures, we are acquiring the written cadenza. When we start adding words on the board, we are improvising. If we do it too soon, the result is less than satisfactory.
I also used to sit down at the piano with a hymnal and simply “play through the hymnal”. That was a Sight Reading exercise. It didn’t matter if I got everything right as long as I got most things right and kept going. For me, that’s like free writes and FVR – as long as you get most of it right and keep on going. BTW, the exercises in Sight Reading have stood me in good stead many times, partly because there are very few hymns that I haven’t already played and partly because of having learned that I don’t have to play every note (understand every word) for people to be able to “get it”.
I think there are several sources for our common failing. Knowing what they are can help us guard against continuing to make the same mistake and remind us to warn others.
1. Confusion about what Pause and Point really is and the purpose of the tool. Yes, it helps keep words in bounds, but it is really designed to keep the target structures in bounds, not the improvised “notes”. (See cadenza above.)
2. Overapplication of “add a detail”. In most training sessions, we are encouraged to “add a detail” when Circling starts to falter. Then we start adding details willy nilly and taking all sorts of suggestions from the class. Suddenly students are overwhelmed with the details, with all those non-written notes in the cadenza or all those pieces of shrapnel that they have to duck.
3. Boredom. We get bored with the discussion and project that onto our students, not realizing that the look on their faces is either lack of comprehension or effort to process. Because we think they are bored, we either pick up the pace or start adding new information, when what we really “should” (need to) do is slow down and stick with the structures.
4. Failure to strive for automaticity. Ever seen a pianist or organist who can keep right on playing while carrying on a conversation, singing a song or leading worship? The playing has become automatic because skills and the music have been acquired. That should be our goal with students. Usually we – and I definitely include myself here – are satisfied with recognition and (re)production without automaticity. There was a discussion about this some time ago.
I’m sure there are other causes, but those are four big ones I can identify.
I like Nathan’s analogy of making dinner with the ingredients on hand rather than going out to “buy” something else. My mother used to make delicious meals with rather limited resources. (She still makes delicious meals, but her resources are not as limited.)