There is a false impression about Circling in the minds of many who practice TPRS. They think that Circling is about following a pattern in order to get repetitions on a word/structure so that the student can, by hearing the word/structure repeated in that way, acquire it. This is false.
That repetitive order of questioning that we call Circling has a deeper, much more effective, signifcance and purpose than merely focusing on the form of the process. What is it? It is the focusing on meaning over the form.
The real role of Circling in PQA is to enable the student to focus on the meaning of the word/structure being circled. After all, focusing on meaing and not form in PQA, in speech in general, is the actual and real purpose of language – to communicate ideas. That is the real purpose of language.
And we know that language that is devoid of meaning is 100% boring to the listenter. So we must set about, this year, in the PQA that we are doing in our classes, to really inject some emotion, but not false emotion, into each and every statement that we decide to turn into a series of quesions via Circling.
Krashen says that robots don’t converse. Then why would we be robotic in our speech (by focusing on the Circling process and not the personalization and fun and quid pro quo with the kids that is the real purpose of PQA?
The entire process that we call comprehensible input is about focusing on meaning. That is one of the truly important conclusions that we in TPRS have drawn from Krashen’s work – we focus on the meaning and not the words used to convey the meaning. If we want our kids to focus on the meaning of what we say, then why wouldn’t we ourselves focus on the meaning of what we are saying as well?
This point is of supreme importance if we are truly to understand the role of Circling in PQA. Our success in PQA requires that we do exactly the same that that we want our students to do. If we don’t focus on the meaning of what we say, then how can they?
Of course, this requires a change of heart, a rather dramatic one for teachers who have been taught that teaching is a thing of the mind. Nonetheless, if we want the PQA that we are doing now (which is the bedrock of everything we will do with stories later) then a change of focus from the mind to the heart when we teach is required.
If we want our PQA to have that spark, that mojo that we sometimes experience what the PQA is really crackling and moving in the classroom, then we must give up that more robotic mental kind of Circling and adapt a form of Circling that is much more centered in the heart, in feeling and, most especially, a feeling of deep respect, a kind of awe, for the fact that the person does what they do, real or imagined.
Yes, I mean that word awe. We have lost our feeling of awe for each other. We see each other as “just there”. We say the word “awesome” all the time, but it doesn’t mean anything. We have lost that sense of deep appreciation for each other. We don’t know how to talk to each other, and appreciate each other, when, ironically, the one thing that our students crave most is to be appreciated.
This year I have a welterweight boxer who spends all of his time in the gym around Federal and Kentucky in Denver, not exactly one of the best neighborhoods in Denver, one of those city kids who is going to try to fight his way out of poverty. He told me on the way out of class two days ago that he is going to quit his job in order to come to school and box, but for the next few weeks, until he quits his job, he “may be a little tired”.
No shit. I would be tired too. But that kid would have never come up to me and shared that information with me had I not just spent about fifteen minutes in class basically drawing the full energy of the class on to a total appreciation, including lots of “Applaudissez, classe!” in response to every new bit of information that I found out about Oscar, real or imagined.
Why is this so interesting to me? I will admit, it is partly because I had to box at Culver Military Academy in Indiana and get the snot beaten out of me – literally – every Saturday at 2:00 p.m. in “The Ring”. But, even if I had never boxed in high schoool, I would still have to convey that interest. That Oscar boxes must be a fact of supreme importance and interest to me, regardless of whether it is in fact of interest to me or not.
Susan Gross has said that we must believe everything we say but I think that very few people have actually heard what she really meant. This has been a point lost in the discussion about what PQA really is and how it really works and why it works. Believing what we hear in class is not an easy thing to do! But if we want our PQA to snap and crackle and pop, then we have to do it, even if we don’t feel like it on that day and in that moment. Like it or not, we have to be cheerful, because we are teachers.