If our rate of speech is painfully slow to us, then it is at the right speed for our students. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. If we feel comfortable with how fast we are talking, then it is painful for our students.
There can be two to four seconds of silence between each short meaningful word chunk at the beginning of the year in beginning levels. Try it! Try saying “Is… the small cat…very angry…or very sad ?” To do that, extend two fingers between each word chunk, counting two full seconds of silence. Feel how slow that is. Now do that in class.
In addition to going slower than you feel is natural, you will find that the more you can use physicality and body language and facial expressions and give the object real space, the more you are able to use your vocal intonation to express wonder, incredulity, excitement, compassion, and other human qualities (to which human beings of any age cannot help but respond), the more you will be able to “milk” each utterance for its full dramatic and pedagogical potential.
As we say, “Class… lazy cat… is…. very sad.” and walk around the invisible cat, gazing at its sadness, creating that feeling in the classroom, we convey that idea not with any additional language, as that would overwhelm the students, but by making our thoughts and feelings visible with our body language.
We want to be like actors in a silent movie. Silent film critics have pointed out that, before talkies arrived, members of the audience were seen sitting on the edge of their seats, completely absorbed in the action, and when the talking movies arrived, they began sitting back in their seats and munching popcorn in a markedly more disinterested way. Why is this?
According to many studies, the human experience is more than 90% visual. If this is true, then we can see why it is so hard to get most kids to suggest cute answers for stories. Too much was asked of the students, whose atrophied (by school) imaginations just couldn’t create much of anything cute in their minds.
This is because they were hearing only words, and words spoken too quickly, most likely, and often without any emotion at all by their beleaguered teachers, who were typically being worked far more than is good for any human being. No blame on them.
If we are intent on reaching our students as language teachers to the fullest extent possible, then we must ensure that the scene and the characters we create in class are visually interesting and emotionally engaging. The students lap up the repetitions of the language we offer them when doing what is described above.