I am starting to realize that every time I want to break into English, I don’t have to. I can, but instead of doing it, say eight times a class period, I can just do it once. I can teach myself to avoid the needless English.
Paul Kirschling (Thomas Jefferson High School, Denver) and I have been beating on this idea for days now. Minimal English. It’s the real Achilles Heel of what we do. Like Mark Callahan (George Washington High School) told me yesterday, even the little English interruptions for the kid who comes in late or whatever, those little bits of English, is upsetting to the proper flow of CI that we try to get going. We’re messing with brain neurology when we do that.
I think that our primary overall goal should not be to do a story, do the skills right, do cool PQA, etc. but to just to stand there and MAKE OURSELVES UNDERSTOOD at all times in the target language. That means leaving out the English, and even the skills of SLOW, Point and Pause, and Circling take secondary importance to that overiding idea. Every time I think of speaking English in class, it better be good, and it better be infrequent.
So, the Every Time Project (I want t-shirts with a little logo of some sort) reminds me to stay in L2 at all costs. Unless, as Little Joey Krashen (George Washington High School) told me yesterday, it builds relationships with the kids. He is so right that English should be used to that end, but judiciously.
Also, of course, English can be used to teach culture. I don’t think that Stephen Valdez does that, which is brilliant – using L2 to teach culture – I just can’t do it. But if I can cut down on the casual use of English by 70% or more this spring, I know that the acquisition of my kids will skyrocket.