The listening input we provide for our students is not a set of activities but rather a process based on a template (we call it the first two steps of TPRS). In the same way, the reading input that we provide for our students is not a series of activities but rather a process that we can say is based on the template that we call the third step of TPRS and also on one that we call Read and Discuss.
Too many activities confuse us. We collect so many of them and forget them. Activities are not just bad because they don’t work, they also require planning, we are never sure if they are going to “work”, and they are also fatiguing to all involved. Thus I suggest that we look at our instruction using TPRS/CI in terms of process/templates instead.
Can instruction in writing in comprehension based classes also be described as a process, in the same way that we do with the first two steps for auditory input and the third step and R and D for reading? Could we create a writing template for our CI classes?
In most non-CI classes writing is nothing more than a series of boring activities connected to a textbook involving the conscious analytical faculty with very little true gains, except by four percenters who can manipulate real L2 writing but cannot duplicate it.
What might such a writing template look like? The existing model, the only thing we really have so far, is the freewrite. We use only it in our first and second year classes to teach writing. It is an effective tool, but can we add one here?
Below is a suggested CI writing template to add to free writes:
1. Students write 4 to 6 sentences – or any number you want – from a prompt: in the first step of this template we give a prompt – an image – to the students in paper form (we need the LCD for the second step so for this step the images must be copied and distributed but 35 copies can be used for all our classes) and ask them to write just 4 to 6 sentences in the present tense about the image. I allow them to refer to various writing charts around the room*. We just get them trying to write, answering individual questions they may have in this quiet process to start class which lasts about ten minutes.
2. Use R and D to talk about the image in L2: in the second step of this suggested CI writing template,which lasts about five minutes, we just use R and D to talk about the image with the kids. They have their own sentences in front of them as something to offer to the growing group discussion about the image. In the R and D about the picture, we just make stuff up. An idea for a group story often begins to form in this step, during this R and D. We ask the kids to name the characters – all stories, no matter how simple, must have characters in them and it is a lot easier for the students to write if they have named the people in the image.
3. Creation of the written group story: next, we just create the group story together on the LCD in a Word file. We go sentence by sentence. A student throws out a sentence in L1 or L2, and we write it out. First come first served. The story builds.
In this way, using a static image, we begin to teach our students how to write a story by themselves, which is what we in Denver Public Schools now require our second year students to do for their summative (end of year) assessments.
I postulate that if a kid can start to describe a static (one frame) image, she can learn to write a story. If I am right, a static picture of a kid eating a meal with his family could then become a story in the Step 3 L2 discussion with the class in this way, with the instructor writing each sentence that is offered by the class into the projected Word file, highlighting all verbs in red or some other color. Possible story:
- Class, Johnny sits down.
- He takes an apple.
- He eats.
- He talks to his brother.
- His mother gives him a hamburger.
- Johnny sees an eyeball in his hamburger.
- He says, Ugh! I don’t want to see an eyeball in my hamburger!
- Johnny runs to the bathroom.
- His brother laughs.
- His mom is not happy.
Notice how making up simple sentences in the first five sentences leads to a jump off point (a twist, something interesting) for a story in the sixth sentence. We in DPS require that the students, when writing to communicate, never repeat verbs and that they use only words in the target language, and our assessment instrument to measure proficiency is based on 12 sentences – more on that later – so we ask our students to write twelve sentences. The short sample text above has eleven sentences in it – good writing for a level two student. I have noticed that six “set up” sentences often set the stage for a story. They describe the image, and then six more “story” sentences can be added to create an actual twelve sentence story, which gives the class a feeling of having really accomplished something at the end of that class.
4. Grammar focus on verbs: we rewrite the story in the past, changing the verbs in red to their past forms.
5. Textivate: we textivate the lines we wrote by easily pasting the Word file into the textivate box on that site, playing around with the Textivate options for awhile.
This kind of writing template could easily take up an entire block class. I don’t know what I will call it, maybe ben’s Writing Template – bWT. It’s kind of like aWI but Andrew’s process is based on setting up reading a passage in a novel.
The idea is that we ask the kids to first write six or however many sentences to describe the image in general terms and then to shift to writing six additional sentences that connect to a specific story that they create, naming characters and such. This action of writing half their sentences in an effort to simply describe what they see in the picture and then writing the second half by creating a story seems to give the kids a kind of formula to hang their writing on.
If the kids are stumped about what to write, I ask them to simply look at the list of question words that is always on the wall and use those question words to add any information that they feel is missing from the picture. So they just answer questions like: Where is the couple? What are they doing? How many people are there? When did this happen? etc.
Besides the question words, we can also teach the kids how to just ask themselves everyday questions about the image: What does the boy look like? What color is the guitar? Do they like each other? Is the boy’s hair long? All they have to do is think about what else they can say about what they see: How long does the couple dance? Are they happy? etc.
*With a group of about five “charts to help with writing” all around the room, all the kids need do is look around the room and pull information from the charts into what they were writing. One butcher block chart is full of conjunctions/connecting words (absolutely key in writing stories), one was full of prepositions, there is one that tells what happens when a preposition runs into an article (link below), there is of course the Word Wall full of nice plump verbs, and there is one with the subject pronouns on them (we can’t assume anything), and I think that’s it. Here is the prepostion/articles chart (also found on this site on the posters page under TPRS Resources): https://benslavic.com/Posters/prepositions-articles-contractions.pdf
[Note 1: I want to be clear that when we teach writing to our CI students, it has to be a conscious analytical process. Writing as output must be “thought about” by the conscious mind. Information in the deeper mind that has been placed there over hundreds of hours of listening to stories and reading is now ready to be brought into the conscious mind and so all the input can now, after months (one and a half years in my case) produce some output. I am only now half way through level 2 doing this kind of dredging up of unconscious material from my students deepr minds. I have waited a long time to train my kids in writing but the results so far – I have only been experimenting with this template for a week – are extremely encouraging. Nothing good happens fast. Input precedes output. It takes a long time for a flower to grow and it can’t be forced. I have convinced my students to wait a year and a half before they began to write (except for free writes and I never did many of those), and now both me and my students can see that the wait was worth it!]
[Note 2: Another point is that writing as output is a tremendous way to get reticent left hemisphere dominant students involved. BUT, they can only write well if they have a tremendous pool of input, as stated in the above paragraph, as many hours as possible, of auditory and reading input to base their writing on. All the same, the suggested TPRS/CI writing offered here can be a tremendous boon to the teacher who is weary of constantly providing necessary listening and reading input to kids who might themselves need a break from the rigor involved especially in listening to stories. This writing template offers a tremendous confidence boost to some kids, as well, and represents a peace offering to some of our more stubborn and often bitchy left brain dominant kids**. When they see what they can write after months and months of input, they are often shocked and often a lot of their ire and oppositional behavior disappears. This is especially important for us now at this time of year, as some of us crawl up to the winter break needing a break but having to teach a few more weeks before we get to rest.]
**Case in point: in one story this week, using this template, guess who three of the most involved voices in the the creation of the class story were? Right, my three Smart Fellows Who Feel Smart – the boys who just two weeks ago spent two days happily doing grammar in revolt of having to read a novel and show up as human beings in class bc they are so smellily smart. The same boys who have been functioning as psychic black holes all year up until doing this writing process. Their level of writing and overall involvement as I went through developing this writing template this week would make one think that they were different boys.
To pick up on the point made above about activities, I think that I never developed a writing template because of old thinking that I had to develop “activities” to teach writing. I think this thing about thinking in terms of activities is a very difficult thing for teachers who have shifted from the book to CI to deal with. In all of my work with comprehensible input, I finally see that I don’t need to think in terms of activities, but in terms of process, and in that interest I have described the three templates above. The overall foundation that we call comprehensible input is so strong and bouncy that we don’t need to plan. All we have to do is follow a process, one that we can bring into clear vision using a template. In stories, I rarely pick a story more than five minutes before class starts, to keep it totally fresh and interesting to me, and then I begin the three step process that has been described over the years here in such detail, and when I go throught the steps in that way the story really gets wings because the three steps are not boring mental tedious things but vital and alive steps that function much like the floor of one of those bounce castles kids jump inside at parties – you never know what direction the kid will bounce in but it is always fun and you always bounce pretty high if you are willing to put yourself in the position of taking a risk.
One more point here: I’ve noticed this week that this template eats up gobs of time, so people struggling with CI input as stories and R and D reading can just get some soft circling practice with the text the class creates while safely keeping most of the class in the realm of the conscious analysis of language, which writing necessarily is. Doing this can be a boon to those in TPRS pain.