We have this great skill from the great Susan Gross.
The eyes tell all in a language class. Students’ eyes give us data, information that we cannot get in any other way. The data that we get from students’ eyes may not be easily quantified, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have value or that it isn’t data. Doing this key skill has enormous value and is far more revealing than any quiz, homework or project could ever be.
Perhaps some day researchers will find a way to quantify such precious data. Indeed, that is what our efforts with JGR have been – I prefer Carly’s latest effort – an attempt to quantify observable nonverbal behavior and match it up with the ACTFL Three Modes of Communication and the Communication Standard.
Looking into a student’s eyes for information is hard work, but it is very simple work also, and deeply human. When a teacher chooses to pass on the opportunity, one wonders if the teacher should even be in the profession.
The importance of teaching to the eyes is so great that it is a big reason the authors now advocate for a non-targeted approach to language instruction. Why? It is because non-targeted work frees us up to connect with our students on levels that are necessary for language acquisition to happen. The eyes open the pathway for language to happen between instructor and student.
It requires a lot of mental and emotional work on a very subtle level to process all the incoming data from our students’ eyes. The process is so subtle that we aren’t even aware of it ourselves, and yet there it is.
Messages about how engaged a student is are constantly being sent to us even while at the same time we are making all the subtle adjustments to SLOW that we must make in order to keep those eyes shining brightly back at us, unmistakably revealing understanding while staying in the target language.
That is real language teaching. That is real conversation, and real involvement of the whole mind/body/heart of the learner.
What is it not? It is not merely the delivering of instructional services to the mind that has unproductively dominated and gummed up the pedagogy of our profession for far too long.
In fact, merely providing instructional services, adding in a heavy focus on isolated elements of language that we include in our speech, is just too much. When forced to choose between language targets and human connection, it seems wise to choose human connection.