Once we have used L1 to decide what we want to build, it is time to use only L2. We bring the object to life in the target language.
The first step in bringing the object to life is to say the word for the object, which we have written on the board in L1 and L2, with emotion, and wonder, and care. Thus, through the tone of voice with which we slowly repeat the word several times, we express our love for the students’ creative and adorable suggestion, just reveling in the sound of the new word. Doing this is not a requirement, of course. Each teacher will adapt the ideas found in this book to their own situations and their own personalities. There are no rules.
We might, as we are repeating the word, gesture to the area where we will “build” the image, a spot on the floor where we will sculpt the image out of thin air. How to use that space?
I simply ask questions from a list (provided below) that I post in the room or carry with me on a laminated card, and we create the object out of thin air. I use my hands and body language, thus “sculpting” the object in front of the kids, as if it were made out of invisible clay. I move as if I can actually see the object, as if it were actually there, even though we only see it in our mind’s eye for now. Later in class we will see what it looks like as drawn by the artist when we turn the artists’ easel around.
The object must seem as real as possible to the students, despite it being invisible. It must take up space in the actual classroom. So I must not step into the object’s space, or reach through it, or point to it in random places during its creation. I “place” it with my hands in one location and then I let it stay there, as it rapidly takes on more and more real qualities in the minds of my students.