Whenever we communicate with our students using comprehensible input, whether in building a character or a story, a one word image, etc., we ask questions, to which the kids answer in yes/no or one word answers. This is how CI works in the early years, and it results in speech output sometimes as early as in levels 3 and 4 in a high school program, but usually real speech emerges later – more time is needed.
But there is this question:
Q. I can understand the importance of adding details when we build our characters, but sometimes the kids just keep adding more and more and I don’t stop them because they are having so much fun. Is there a way to keep this from happening?
A. If your students are just piling detail upon detail, you might need to check your pacing. You are probably going way too fast for the majority of them to truly understand the language. Plus, how will your poor artists ever hope to keep up? Once I saw this happen in a workshop. The artists almost quit that day because the input got away from her and the details were raining down too fast. The pace might feel fine to you, but you are have mastery of the language! My advise is to train yourself to add only five or six details in the class period. You can do this and still provide a whole period of CI by focusing on slowing down, recycling some previously-established details, looking them in the eyes, gesturing, doing some quick TPR (“show me hand, show me face, etc.”), looking at the space where the language is being “sculpted” and describing it in a tone of wonderment that it is SO small or SO rainbow-colored or SO whatever. I have developed a kind of internal radar once I get past five or six details. I just stop asking questions when I feel that the character or story has a proper balance to it. More is not better in a CI classroom. With One Word Images, especially, it is all about quality over quantity.