They will feed us if we let them. What does that mean? To me, it means that if we give up worrying about controlling the direction of the discussion in the target language, and listen to them more, then the discussion will be more interesting, because it will include, not exclude, their point of view.
But we must hog the conversation with them, one might say, since we are the only ones who can speak the target language. I don’t believe that. Just because they can’t speak yet doesn’t mean that they can’t express themselves. Why?
Consider what they are experiencing as we speak to them. We are, via our comprehensible input, drawing the attention of their brains to what is being discussed. They are unconscious, completely unaware if we are doing it well, of processing any language, such is their focus on the meaning of what is going on.
That experience in class of thinking about what is being discussed (the story, the meaning of the song, the personalized discussion about one of the students), and not thinking about the language (the brain can’t do two things at the same time) does not actually keep them from having gut reactions to the CI proceedings. What kind of reactions?
Invisible ones, unless we train our eyes into seeing them. Such fleeting responses are there all during the CI. I saw a bunch of them today in my classes. Enough to power extra hours of CI.
Only when it is their subtle invitation to us to dance with them, to draw out what they are thinking (because they sent us those almost invisible moments of response – a look in the eye, a movement of the body, a laugh, some other emotion), the resulting CI is going to contain elements of them.
We don’t want be all alone trying to be impressive in our delivery of language. It’s not a stage act. They will beautify the dance. We verbalize for them what they can’t by picking up on their cues, what they are feeling. We grow up and let go of the fear that, if we give up control of the CI, then we will somehow fail.
They are feeding us so much information all during the CI as they react emotionally to what is being said! But we just drone on, controlling the CI, making it our own discussion, really. Wondering why teaching this way is so hard.
Hey, any form of excluding others from anything limits things, hardens it, let’s fear in. A gathering of one doesn’t lead to very interesting gatherings. We need to step down off of our pedestal and involve them in the CI.
We need to stop thinking we need to control the conversation. There are 35 kids in that room, most of whom are having strong, but invisible reactions to the discussion, as stated above. They may not be able to talk about it, but the entire tenor of the class will change when we let them feed us.
All we have to do is look closely at the sometimes fleeting signals they send us. Good CI invites, does not exclude.