Jim had trouble posting this comment, as sometimes happens, so I’m just making into a post so we can read it:
I used to have trouble doing the PQA to story transition. It did feel too scripted for me. I don’t really try anymore. If I’m doing a story I jump in as per what Leigh Anne and James are doing. The spontaneous PQA in the middle of steps 2 and 3 are what allow me to 1. learn more about students 2. stretch/enhance the storyasking/reading 3. embed mini brain breaks as we adjust our focus to another person/place.
This is somewhat off-topic and somewhat on:
I have undoubtedly added to the conception of mandatory structural adherence with my scripts. A year or two after I published my book I realized, in using the stories more and more, that I was not sticking to the words in the script necessarily, and if I was I sometimes “impoverished the input” by denying certain elements to enter into my sacred script (sarcasm). I was for the most part sticking with the storyline and staying in bounds, but not always with the same vocab and not always with the same “punchline”. Usually what happens is that something else emerges from the basic storyline that proves especially compelling for students, and I now try as much as possible to stay with it, a sort of birdwalk/side event of sorts. I think this is what most of us do when we have taken off the training wheels Eric refers to. We can leave the original script entirely or come back to it in a relaxed way when we feel the need for the structural comfort. So in this way, the script serves as a sort of landing pad, and we can chill on it, or we can leap off and safely return to it as often or as sparingly as we choose.
Two ways that I have so far tried to move away from this mandatory adherence to the words in my scripts is by publishing an appendix “Adapting Scripts” that talks about altering vocab to fit your needs (though still targeted and I hope to expand this idea more for the next revision) and by keeping the scripts in English. I’ve always felt that once the scripts are written in the TL (well I suppose they are for EFL teachers), they take on more of an authoritative role and teachers will feel less willing and able to adapt vocab to their needs. I wast to encourage teachers’ professional discretion.
On the topic of targeting, I’m not planning on abandoning the idea of targets just yet. They serve an important role in backward planning for certain readings (even things as complicated as novels, because novels often have themes that include certain vocab more and if we make that key vocab understood before reading we make the text overall much more comprehensible and that much closer to that optimal 98% level). They let students know what they should be acquiring (like Michele’s students want to know). They give me something of a theme to come back to and to direct what materials (eg pop song, story, reading, news, joke) I bring into the class. Admittedly though, much of this shared-target selection happens serendipitously and after-the-fact, thereby lending further credence to the idea that it’s not really necessary if we’re working toward real communication.
I think the perfect number of targeted vocab for me is one verb per week. This verb will just hang out with us, in a special chair, for the week and have every opportunity to join in the fun, kind of like the guest of honor. But they will never get to be a Party Pooper (that’s a Ben article worth reading again!).
And one more thought on the idea of PQA. What if Monday were the day to PQA that special verb? Where did you ARRIVE this weekend? or What did you MAKE this weekend? or With whom did you LAUGH this weekend? This one question, with a targeted verb that you hope to invite to all places you and your students go the rest of the week, should be fairly easy to personalize and get more and more questions from. It’s pretty wide open and should be rich, yet inherently sheltered if we keep that verb in mind when we follow-up. Maybe the problem isn’t that we’re targeting stuff. Maybe we’re just targeting way too much. Just some thoughts…