What does it mean when we say we focus on meaning in our comprehension based instruction? And how does that question impact our work with verbs as described in the previous eight articles here on using Look and Discuss to teach verbs?
In my opinion, the term “focusing on meaning” means focusing on a big chunk of words, entire sentences, so that our students are not at all aware of the individual words. Like, not at all, not even a little bit. This, to me, is CI and what Krashen meant in order for the acquisition to become as happens with small children, who are not focused on anything at all but what the sounds mean.
So in this final article on this topic, I wish to direct the attention of those teachers who plan on using this verb acquisition strategy in the fall to the inherent risks in it. The biggest risk is to turn it into a vocabulary lesson in which the students end up focusing on the verb in a conscious way instead of hearing it and understanding it without knowing why or focusing on it in any way.
In the conscious way the students focus on the word, which we don’t want, and in the unconscious way they focus on the meaning, which we want. Why? Because we can’t be in two minds at the same time. Classrooms (not the choir room or the gym, where joy can happen) have become places of analysis and that can paralyze a language classroom. We have to be brave if we accept and embrace what Krashen says, and teach to the unconscious faculties of our students. We just have to or it won’t work.
Whatever you do, teach those verbs in the unconscious way using PQA, etc., as described in detail in the previous eight articles. Of course, go ahead and teach in the conscious way when you establish meaning at the start of class. When you briefly tell your students what the word means in English it is conscious and that is fine. But that teaching lasts under two minutes.
The transition into unconscious teaching begins when you ask for a gesture. Why? Because when you ask for a gesture you cleverly begin the transition away from their thinking about the word and start (without them being aware of it) to put it into their bodies and deeper minds via larger contextual chunks, and it is in their bodies and deeper minds where languages really exist and so it is the place where the language can be acquired.
And the gesturing, that transition phase into their unconscious minds, should only last a minute, since in this strategy we are only trying to teach one verb. So it is a short elevator ride via the gesture into their unconscious minds where real things happen in language acquisition.
When we start doing PQA the elevator ride is over and we begin to mine the gold. We begin working with the verb amidst larger nuggets of language, gold all around, and then we are doing the real TPRS/CI deal because it is unconscious. When the verb is buried in other words, then the conscious mind cannot ruin the work that the unconscious mind is trying to do, if we would only let it, and then the magic happens, as Krashen has shown us.
I had this happen with Susie visiting my classroom in around 2002 where she called me on my refusal to grow into PQA. I was doing something very similar to conscious analysis and she bashed me on it. I didn’t trust PQA, didn’t really know what it was, and so my instruction was directed at my students’ conscious minds. I am glad she called me on that, because it pissed me off and I had to really go and figure out what PQA was, how scary it felt, embrace it anyway, and even write a book about it so I could understand it. Susie said it is by far my best book.
We are always on the PQA precipice, afraid to jump in, but we must. At some point we must stop clutching to the old ways of keeping our isntruction conscious or half conscious. We need to fully dive off the cliff and do real PQA.
When we teach verbs using this L and D technique in the fall, those of us who plan on doing it, we must get our students to where they are focused only on meaning, then continue it with each question we ask, making sure we include the target verb in each question. Teaching to the conscious minds of our students will have no place in the language classrooms of the future.