I am working with an ESL teacher, Stephen Cook, in my school. We are trying to explore areas where ESL and TPRS/CI overlap. Our main current area of focus is the affective filter. Yesterday he brought his class into mine for a big brainstorming session, to see how his class would react to a story. After the class he sent me this email:
“I don’t know where all this is leading, but it’s fun working on something new and interesting. I mean, language learning should be fun and compelling. I think what my EAL kids are missing so often in their classes is this critical component [the affective filter]. Right?”
Stephen knows more than I do with his Masters degree in ESL, but I have always sensed that the affective filter in ESL classes is really high. If it is true, I think that it might be because ESL kids are forced to study things that they can’t fully comprehend and then they are asked to write and speak about them. Steven corroborates this.
I feel sorry for ESL students in that way, reading stuff that is too mentally slippery for them to hold onto and then having to speak and write about it. That must really suck. I bet it makes them learn to hide their fears behind stone masks and pretend as if they are a foreigner and don’t know what is going on in class when what all they really want to do is laugh and play with the language but they don’t trust anyone in the classroom to go that far and so they don’t manifest/are prevented from manifesting in the classroom as a real human being. I bet that this is especially true with Asian students.
Is there hope? I think so. Lowering the affective filter in ESL classes using TPRS/CI ideas – if we can do it – could play a role in lessening the gap that exists between TPRS and ESL. It could help ESL kids a lot. How? What things would need to happen for an ESL class to get to have a class in which the kids didn’t suffer such a high affective filter and with it all the resultant negative things that inpinge so much on their learning of English?
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.
Reading – Step 3 of TPRS
Once a story is created, take a small amount of text from the created story, like a short paragraph. Using just a small amount of text in the reading class lowers the affective filter.
Then, following the steps of Reading Option A (see below) religiously will lower the affective filter. How?
– The first step of ROA is silent reading. Here we can follow Dr. Krashen’s admonition that the text the students are reading be interesting because they made it up. The fact that they made it up and have ownership in it lowers the affective filter.
– The second step of ROA is when the instructor reads the text aloud. All of a sudden, because of the massive amounts of repetition of the same targeted structures during the creation of the story and then again in Step 1 of ROA above, the kids easily understand the text being read to them. It’s not all random reading like I sense happens in ESL classes when they are made to speak and write before they are ready. These vast quantities of repeated input lower the affective filter.
(The third step of ROA we will not use.)
– The fourth step of ROA is doing choral translation using the laser pointer. (Don’t forget to look below if you are unclear on the steps of Reading Option A that we are using to help lower the affective filter in ESL classes.) But there is a problem – there is more than one language group in an ESL classroom. This is not true in TPRS classrooms, where it is easy to ask the kids to chorally translate the L2 text because they all speak the L1. But I figured out a way to meet that problem. All we have to do is ask the kids, after the creation of the story and before the next class, to read it on your class website in English (you put it up there after the story was created) and then use their iPhones to translate the story into their own language. Then they write that out and come to class with it. In class, with the English text translated into as many L1 (for the students) language groups as there are in the class, the instructor takes the time to allow one person from each language group read the text out loud. This brings honor and inclusion of the person’s first language into the classroom process. The others in the room naturally want to listen. The teacher is no longer some kind of mysterious expert in the room. English is no longer the culturally dominant language in the classroom. Sharing takes place with this exchange of languages during this step and with the sharing comes happiness. Honoring the language of the reader during instructional time in this way lowers the affective filter.
– Step 5 of ROA is the grammar discussion part. Unfortunately, it can’t be done in the students’ own language, as we do in this part of our own Step 3 TPRS reading classes. But fortunately we don’t want to use grammatical terms to teach them grammar anyway (a very dumb idea). What we do is try to remember that the kids only want to look at the structure of the language in front of them in terms of what it means, and since they have heard so many repetitions of the text they in fact know what it means. So we can say that doing this step of ROA in fact lowers the affective filter.
– The 6th step of ROA is dialogic reading. Where ESL kids are required to constantly battle too much volume of text and being forced to output before they are ready in both speech and writing, in this ROA dialogic reading step the kids are simply being asked to give one word yes or no answers to the aural questions that the instructor is spinning out of the small paragraph being read – they don’t have to manufacture more than one word y/n answers unless they want to. This lowers the affective filter.
– Step 7 of ROA is when the instructor reads the entire text again and the students who were the actors during the time of the original creation of the story in Step 1 get to get up and act out the story again during the reading. What is particularly beneficial here is that if there are a few funny lines in the story, now the kids get to say them. The instructor, of course gets to really have fun here as well because she gets to direct the kids with cues from the Director’s Cues anchor sheets posted on the wall. (The Director’s Cues anchor sheets can be found at the bottom of this article.) All the instructor has to do is laser point at different ways of saying the line and the class along with the instructor will dissolve in laughter as the students try to say the words in the way they are directed. This lowers the affective filter.
– Step 8 of ROA – called Jump into the Space! is where the kids can jump in and say anything they want in English during the dialogic reading spin out discussion of the text. (Remember: we are going one small paragraph at a time throughout this entire process to keep the affective filter low.) The amount of repetitions on the original target structures that the students have experienced up to this point from the very beginning of the creation of the story will enable them to say something in a language class that they actually might want to say or repeat from what they heard the instructor say. This lowers the affective filter.
– Step 9 of ROA is when the students are invited to play a game of Running Dictation based on what they know. Read the description of Running Dictation below. This physical competition activity lowers the affective filter.
– Step 10 of ROA – working on their English accents – is when the instructor invites the students to enjoy trying to say some of the text themselves after she reads it. There is nothing wrong with a little output after all that input. This can be a very special time for the kids as they build confidence in their ability to meet their big goal of speaking English well. This step, like all the other ROA steps, lowers the affective filter.
– Step 11 of the process is when they write out a little template based paragraph describing the story. It’s output that is so easy that it lowers the affective filter.
– Step 12 of ROA is when the class artist gets to show off her work. It is a great time of fun and getting more reps for the instructor. Processing the work of the artist in this series of ROA steps definitely lowers the affective filter.
– Dictee, the next step (13) in the process, like the five minute writing activity above, allows the students to really feel as if they are making progress in writing. It brings confidence and therefore lowers the affective filter.
– Textivate (Step 14 of ROA) is much like dictee. It allows the kids to work even yet more on the original text. More and more and more reps are happening. With each one, their confidence goes up. This lowers the affective filter.
– Sacred reading of the text. This is Step 15. It is so great. Read about it below. When the kids here the original text read to them and they understand it at such a high level, it lowers the affective filter.
– Step 16 is the translation quiz. Imagine how happy the kids are to nail the translation because of all the repetitions. This success on the test lowers the affective filter.
– Step 17 is the content quiz of yes/no answers. It also makes the students’ confidence sore because they get all the questions right. Just like on the translation quiz, their success on this test lowers the affective filter.
– Step 18 is when they do a free write (rules given below at the end of this article) to show off what they learned. Unlike in their old ESL classes, they are not out to lunch on what to write about. The content has not been boring to them. It has not made them feel stupid. All the various steps they have just been through have been something that they enjoyed and now they have confidence. They write the free write with ease and confidence, without obsessing over grammatical details. Their grammar mistakes are not something that shames them because of the way the instructor treats the free writes, as signs of what they are doing right instead of indicators of what they are doing wrong. The kids want to make up another story in the next class, right away, and then go through the ROA process described above = in a happy way again with their instructor. This lowers the affective filter.
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Appendix 1
For those unfamiliar with the above terms, described here are the 18 steps of TPRS Reading Option A that lend themselves to lowering the affective filter in ESL classes as described above:
2. Instructor reads aloud in L2 – this allows the student to make the necessary connection between the sound of the story with, now for the first time, what those sounds look like on paper. (credit: Diana Noonan)
3. (not used above) Pair work to translate. (I only do this if being observed, to get the box checked.)
4. Choral translation using laser pointer. This must be done with loud voices. Usually a student steps up – the Reader Leader – to guide the class along with their strong measure voice.
5. Discussion of grammar in L1 (6 and 7 may interweave) Finally, this is when closet grammar teachers get to do what they want. They can point out spellings on verb endings, comparing, for example, a first person singular ending with a plural form, whether it can be seen in the reading or not. They can laser point to their favorite grammatical details and share them with the four percenters in the classroom who also love grammar. They can ask students what certain words mean. They can even point out adjective agreement and even spelling changes in boot verbs! This is the time to go for the grammar! What a great way to explain possessive adjectives! Use English! Just keep the grammar explanations down to under four seconds and never mention the actual grammar terms – the kids don’t want to even hear terms like adverbs. Most kids intensely dislike grammar terminology. They just want to know what it means.
6. Dialogic Reading – It is clear so far that each of these steps in ROA have significant pedagogical value. But this step has the most. This is where you get the most bang for your buck from the reading. In this Step 8 work, we keep the story projected but physically turn the kids away from it. I just go sit in an armchair in my classroom so that they have to turn away from the text. Their bodies and eyes are facing me. Then, starting from the first paragraph of the reading, I start an in depth repetition of the entire story (i.e. intensely circled with very clear and slow yes/no questioning of individual students during the group discussion). This can take 90 min. itself. But it works! It piles repetition upon repetition. We can play with each line in many ways, asking direct content questions about the text but also creating parallel questions by bringing in discussion of how a student in our class may compare or not with the characters in the story. Slowly we work our way through the text. This is big work, a great new addition to ROA. I find that when I am doing this step of ROA I am really teaching. They are looking at me answering largely in yes/no answers what are some very sophisticated questions in the TL. I am doing what I want to do as a CI teacher in this step more than in any other activity I do in my CI classroom. I hold each kid accountable and have super contact with my barometers. Bam!
Step 6 is best interwoven with Step 7:
7. Students go into acting mode and act out the story while the instructor is doing the dialogic reading step above. The instructor directs the action. This is the very best part of ROA and will make you glad you are a teacher. Classroom Rule #8 must be fully observed in this step. How to do it? Each time a dialogue from the story comes up during Step 7 above, simply tell the original characters to get up and mime the lines and say the dialogue. This is your chance to use the Director’s Cut techniqueI leave the story projected on this because the kids refer to it when acting. The kids like to try to outdo each other with their lines. So if Marc has a line where he says, “You are fired! Leave this place. NOW!”, tell them, just like a director of a play would, to say their line using different adverbs that you can remember if you put them up on the wall. After a student delivers a line, see if anyone else can say the line with more gusto, more romantically, more quietly, more to the left, more to the right, more with one foot off the ground, with head more forward, with head more back, whispering, etc.” Even the shiest kids want in on this and it can be marvelously entertaining.** It can get a little loud, though, so you have to be the one in charge. I like to sit in one of the big armchairs in my room and pretend I am a director. Once, a student next to me said, “Now that is going to be going around in my head all day!” So this is a Din-creator! So what if it’s output? It’s output with a purpose (building fun and a culture of fun in the classroom, not to mention the reps.) Badass. All you have to do in this step is read the story out loud, pausing to allow the actor to do an action or say a line. That’s how simple this step is!
Step 8 is best interwoven with steps 6 and 7:
8. Jump into the Space! – this is another technique for encouraging speech output to be used when you are in Steps 7 and but is recommended to be used with only upper level students. Here is a good way to encourage speech output in upper level classes without forcing it:
With the story up, instead of accepting one word answers, largely the rule in levels 1 and 2, with third year kids or above (could maybe be used in level two as well), invite them to answer in full sentences. For example, in the text written by the kid it says that Ann has a very small light blue castle in Italy, in the suburbs of Rome. We have been working with the text following the ROA sequence and arrived at this optional step in the sequence. If I feel like it, I ask the kids to respond with good mimicking sentences in the TL as per:
Teacher: Class, does Ann have a very small light blue castle in Italy, in the suburbs of Rome?
Student: Yes, sir! Ann has a very small light blue castle in Italy!
Just keep processing information via circling but inviting them to speak as per the above example. They only jump into the space if they want to. How to do that? I just use the expression, said in English, “Jump into the space!” and I hold out my hands to the space in front of me there in class and invite them to fill it and then I wait. Some play, some don’t. Those who do rock the house. I ask them to put style and swagger into their sentences and feel as if they are French and make that pout thing with their mouth and spit R’s from the back of their throats all over the place. The kids like it because they finally see the payoff of the first two years of listening.
9. Running Dictation –
Here’s the process:
Take five sentences from the completed story and cut them into strips, putting each sentence up around the room in random places on the walls. The font should be fairly large to make them easy to read.
Next, pair up the students. One student writes and one runs. The runner finds a sentence on the wall and runs back to tell the writer what the sentence is, who then writes it.
Once the students have found and recorded all the sentences, they try to arrange them in the proper order. The first team to do that wins the game.
(Drawing Dictation is similar. A copy of a simple drawing is handed out to each student. An artist goes to the whiteboard. The students as a class describe the drawing to the artist. When done, the students and artist compare notes. This is a good activity to teach prepositions. Since this drawing activity, and running dictation as well, require some degree of output, it is best to avoid using them too much in first year classes.)
10. French choral and individual work on accent –this can be a very special time as we finally are able to hear, after a lot of constant input and relatively little verbal output, how our students’ brains have organized the language in the now emergent output. We notice how well they pronounce the language IF the output wasn’t too early. It is too early to expect anything exact in terms of their accents, but they love reading a text that they already know aloud in the TL so that is enough reason to do it.Be sure to not make this feel like a forced activity.
11. 5 minute write of the story, in which the students answer the questions: title, who, where, what happens, what is the problem. I give them the following template in the TL to fill in each time:
This is the ________ story (fourth, tenth, etc. – teaches them to write ordinal numbers). The name of the story is ________. The main character is ________. The story takes place ________. What happens in this story? ________________________________________. At the end of the story, ________________.
12. Process the work of the class artist. This does not require much time. We pretty much just enjoy the drawings and I use this time to get more reps on the structures, but in a different context. Fun!
13. Dictée –
Here is the dictée process:
First, I give the students a half sheet of paper with groupings of three blank lines on them. Then:
On line 1, I read chunks of sentences and give the students time to write each chunk. I read each sentence chunk three times. The first time I read at a normal pace and they listen. The second time I read very slowly as they write. The third time I read at a normal pace while they check what they have written. I do not read it a fourth time. You will learn how to pace this. I simply do not allow a student to ask for a repetition of anything at any time.
Next, I show the students the correct version of the text, phrase by phrase, or chunk by chunk, and not sentence by sentence, which is too complex. They look at it and make their corrections on line 2 as I successively reveal each new correctly written chunk on the LCD or document camera.
The students bring down onto line 2 any corrections of the text only if any are needed, but the teacher may want to require that they copy the entire correct text on the second line. I grade both lines, whatever is correct from line 1 as well as any corrections made on line 2. In this way, the students are graded on what is correct, and not on what is wrong. They are graded on how well they can copy!
Line 3 is just a line space to make everything clearer and easier to read, but the teacher can opt to make them write the English version of the text on that third line as well.
The dictated version of the story doesn’t have to align perfectly with the story passage it came from. In fact, intentional inaccuracies as you recreate the story force deeper thinking by the students, and allow you to perhaps introduce a limited amount of new vocabulary.
14. Textivate. Download this program for $40 – it’s worth it – from the internet to work more deeply with the written story – it plugs right in from Word and you can eat up lots of class minutes with the cute things Textivate offers for us to do with any reading we create from a story. http://www.textivate.com/
15. Sacred reading of the text. After all the opportunities they have had to both listen to and now read the same basic text, the students know the material. So, to conclude the Reading Option A process, and this is a most special time with your students in class, I read it to them slowly with meaning, dramatic tone, artistry, in a quiet, sacred kind of setting, as if I am gently reciting poetry. I was told by one teacher that one day she read with such drama and emotion that her students told her that she should have been an actress. I generally do this step without the text in front of the students, turning off the LCD or document camera so that they can just listen and not be distracted by the words on the screen. The students are really pleased when they can understand a foreign language read to them in this way. (highly recommended because you and the students will enjoy it so much)
16. Translation quiz – pick any paragraph from the reading and have the students translate it into English for a quick and easy grade.
17. Content quiz – have ten yes/no questions prepared before class. I no longer employ quiz writers. They just couldn’t make good enough tests.
18. Free Write based on completed story – student write for ten minutes for ten minutes as per the Free Write Rules posted on this site. They enjoy making up their own stories based on the structures and plot of the story just completed.
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Appendix 2
Here is the list of director’s cues I use for when they act out the story during the reading class, in English:
with gusto
romantically
quietly
like a Munchkin
to the left
to the right
looking above
looking below
laughingly
sheepishly
with one foot off the ground
with head forward
with head back
with arms in the air
while whispering
loudly
with face scrunched
with eyes closed
severely
suddenly
fast
slow
really fast
really slow
while eating
while drinking
whiile turning around
with hands on hips
with hands on head
like a king
like a clown
with certainty
in a staccato voice
in a high voice
in a low voice
in a legato voice
six times
fifteen times, etc.
while touching something yellow, etc.
unevenly
nervously
obediently
proudly
relieved
thankfully
victoriously
in an embarrassed way
grumpy
itchy
mysteriously
worried
calmly
happily
proudly
relieved
in a silly way
thankfully
victoriously
sweetly
cuddly
with tiny hands
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Appendix 3
Free Write Rules
- Write without stopping for 10 minutes.
- No English words in the story except for names.
- Keep the sentences and story line simple.
- Get your story idea ahead of time.
- Use lists if you have them.
- Use words that you already know.
- If you don’t know a word, don’t use it.
- Use as many adjectives as possible.
- Spell as accurately as you can and then move on.
- Add another character when you get stuck.
- Use posters from the room as help.
- Illogical stories are o.k.