Sometimes with untrained students the sounds we make go into their ears, rattle around a bit, and then fall out. This is not what we want. We want to instruct our students in such a way that the sounds we say move from inside their ears into their eyes, and never fall out. We want them to keep what we give them.
When this happens, there is a real sense of what I call auditory focus in the classroom. It is a unique quality of awareness of the language that is in our students’ faces when we are teaching well, when we are engaging them and when they are clearly with us. We don’t want the sounds to fall out of their ears and rattle around on the floor. We always want to be on the lookout for the exit to the Pure Land. How can we do it?
All we have to do is wait until the sounds we say go all the way into their brains and then show up visibly in their eyes before moving on to the next thing we want to say. Only until we have seen that recognition in their faces do we know that it is time to go on.
Class works better when we look for auditory focus in our students. Three things make this kind of focus happen in a NT classroom: (1) our patience, (2) our smiles and (3) our remembrance that they are just children and many things are pulling their little hearts and brains in different directions, so we learn to be soft when we teach, not dominant, not harsh, never harsh, always loving.
Teaching in this new way means that we have to learn to invite, not require, to point in the direction of, not push toward. We can invite them to the language dance now. The old days are over.
