The whole thing about teaching a language is that it is the heart that leads in language production and not the mind. What does that mean?
It means that people say things (i.e. use language, express themselves) because something in their heart prompts them to do so. It has nothing to do with the mind, which is just a computer. Unless we want to live with our hearts in service to our minds.
Computers don’t actually want to say anything, they just wait for instructions before doing what they do, which in speech is to (1) calculate what words to pull from the word data bank, (2) put them in order and (3) present them using the embouchure set up there.
All of that is easy for the mind, but WHAT to say is determined and originates in the heart. The heart must be involved, the desire must be there to express oneself must be there, or the system can’t work. TPRS did a good job of helping break the expression-of-self log jam away from traditional language teaching . The Invisibles do a better job of it.
That is why poetry is considered a higher form of communication, if you will, than robotic, memorized expression. The heart that leads to real human communication. Aren’t you ready for that in your language classroom?
What prompts all that activity, that production of language, that starts in the mind? It is the desire to say something, which doesn’t occur in the mind but somewhere else. The desire to express oneself in a language originates in the heart.
All of this leads to one conclusion – if we teach our students without that heart-based WISH TO COMMUNICATE, how can they possibly learn the language? Language classes would be like they always have – unproductive jokes, scams, shams, and pretend classes that are nothing more than a massive waste of time.
If a person does not want, for their betterment in life, or to help others (why we are here, in my opinion) to communicate with another person, then the motivating material, the juice, the mojo, is not there in the classroom.
Then boredom sets in because everything is stuck up there in the mind. There is no real desire to connect at the heart level, which is what real communication is all about, if I haven’t yet made that point in these pages over the past fifteen years (it’s the only point I’ve made).
So, we must be able to move from the data processing that the mind does in class to the feeling exchange that only the heart can effectuate. Only in this way can our students feel that they want to be in our classes.
The only things that interest children are those things that make them laugh and feel that they are not just a head stuck behind a desk that is there to only think. And in our work what is the pathway to the heart? Laughter. And what is the pathway to laughter? Their drawings.
We’ve kind of been fooled, haven’t we? We have been made to think that people can acquire language through the mind by thinking about it. But as I always say you have to be out of your mind to learn a language. Center your teaching in the heart using the Invisibles – what the kids draw – or whatever works for you best. You’ll learn something about teaching a language that can’t be taught.
Prepare your heart for that by learning how to laugh and listen to others. It’s the only way. The mind has proven to be a big bust. Our work is not about the mind, and you know it. So change.