We talk about personalization, but do we really know what it is? In spite of knowing how important it is to our overall success with TPRS, do we consciously make efforts to convey our feelings of joy that we are with those certain kids that day in that moment?
We must absolutely choose discussion materials, whether it be PQA or scripts, with the idea in our minds that, whatever the materials are, they are only interesting to our kids to the extent that we make them related to the kids’ lives.
Should we even teach a class unless it’s about our students? PQA is always the best and most interesting aspect of TPRS that always brings the best gains, although stories are nice too.
Sometimes we do fake personalization. We may find out in class that Jennifer is afraid of spiders and we circle it and all that, but it falls flat. Why?
I think it is because we don’t really care if Jennifer is afraid of spiders. It is like when we do PQA we are fishing for stuff to spark some riffing into a little scene, or maybe that we can spin into a story (explained in PQA in a Wink!), but, in our hearts, we don’t really care about that fact and that kid. We act like we do but we don’t.
This is what has happened in our society, isn’t it? We act like we do but we don’t. We go through the motions. But whether our work with our students is effective or not depends on how much we convey to them that we care about them. We are not robots and we don’t teach math online.
We must know and care about our audience and we must go slowly enough so that they understand us. Those two requirements must precede anything we do in TPRS. We also must absolutely keep checking to see if our kids are with us.
What else must we do to guarantee a high level of engagement from the kids?
1. We mustn’t let the fast processors drive the discussion forward. That is like letting them commandeer the class.
2. We must convey a sense of confident relaxation and fun and “Isn’t this interesting?” in our TPRS style.
3. We must not let our students just sit there and watch us. If that happens, we must change to get them more involved. Play the Annoying Orange card if you need to.
That is why Circling with Balls works so well. It’s about them. They have their cards there, and we just talk about them. It’s then not about our trying to teach them, it’s about but them. When it’s about them their hearts open up. When we feel this, we open our hearts back. Now, why is this? Because it’s about the kids. So we must avoid faux personalization. Whatever we do, it has to be interesting to them.
And do love songs. Even the most bored kids respond to things having to do with love. Get a song about love. Once I broke down L’Amoureuse by Carla Bruni. I got as many and more reps on as many lines of that song as I could that week – all the lines were about love.
I did PQA with those lines. I wrote what I got up as little readings during the week we worked on the song, building towards one big reading and listening to the actual song at the end of that process. I wasn’t strict about how I did it. I just got reps, spun stuff out of it, wrote it, we read it together, spinning more language out of the reading, and on and on until I felt that they could handle the song.
So a structure from line 3 of the song was:
Il semble que mes bras soient devenus des ailes/It seems as if my arms have become wings.
I suppressed the desire to explain to my kids what the subjunctive mood is and how “il semble que” takes the subjunctive but “il me semble que” does not take the subjunctive (pour insister sur la réalite du fait).
Not only would that mean nothing to my kids, they don’t really give a rip about that. I just used that expression over and over and over and circled it and spent lots and lots of minutes working it. I pulled an image of a person with wings from the internet and asked them if they have ever felt like their arms had become wings. We did some TPR as I hammered the image of arms becoming wings home. They thought that we were just yammering about arms and wings – I was getting them ready to listen to a great song in French.
And I stayed in bounds with ferocity. If I was working on one line, I stayed with that line – “So class, it seems that to Sarah her arms became wings when she was young!” “Class, did it seem to Sarah that her arms became wings when she was young?” “Sarah, how old were you when it seemed to you that your arms became wings?” etc. Then I went to the next structure and isolated it out and stayed in bounds and went slowly enough and asked personalized questions using the key words in each line of the song, over and over, and the stronger kids got that it was a game and kept lying to me that yes, they did that and yes, they have experienced such things, all in bounds, and then I worked it all into one big reading and finally when they heard the song, they understood it. Why?
The song was about love. Ask your kids if they are in love. See what happens. It may be too late in the year and they may be too jaded and tired so if that happens leave the topic. But see what happens. Try.
Give them countless reps of “are you amoureux” if they are boys and “are you amoureuse” if they are girls. Get some images from the internet of people in love. Ask them if they can “toucher le ciel/touch the sky”. Always be ready for a story or at least a little scene to spin out of all of that.
Or maybe it will be too hard for them. But, if you go slowly enough and make it personalized, for real, and not for faux, no matter how hard the text is, they will learn it. So take a song about love, feel it, go slowly enough, get plenty of reps, and see what happens.
When you talk to them about this stuff, be real. Don’t fake it just because they are packed so deeply in the concrete of their teenage lives. Don’t teach to their foreheads. Take a chance. Put yourself out there. No faux personalization.