In the next series of posts I would like to share with permission what Dr. Krashen wrote about the “Lowering the Affective Filter in ESL Classes” article posted here last week:
https://benslavic.com/blog/lowering-the-affective-filter-in-eal-classes/
The text in italics is what I wrote. The text below is his response.
PQA/Story – Steps 1 and 2 of TPRS
I think that it would be nice if the kids could create a story themselves, like we do. This would lower the affective filter because it would be about them and not about Daniel Boone. So what if the kids aren’t getting the cross curriculum instruction? Should they be? If they don’t care about it and can’t grasp the language aspects of some historical text because they wouldn’t care even if they did understand it, they won’t learn anything anyway.
So they should make up their own story. The teacher could sneak in some historical points into the reading later on if so pressured. The teacher could also target whatever level-appropriate structures she wanted to address just like we do in TPRS and then do some PQA and then create a story with the kids over a few days leading up to a Step 3 ROA reading class, and then some real learning could occur. Creating a story in this particular way lowers the affective filter.
Dr. Krashen’s response:
SHORT paper attached:
