To restate and clarify. In my current view we will get much more verbal L2 output from our kids than we ever thought possible if we do three things:
1. Put really extreme limits on how much L1 they can use.
2. Use Power Point images with captions (stories can’t do this) so that they can have something to hang their output on to make it easier to produce.
3. Show genuine/human and not fake/teacher-robot interest in what the kids are thinking and saying.
Again and I got this from Suzy Livingston:
People have a deeply rooted need to express themselves in a language and try with the language to output it, and this need is something that we in the TPRS community can no longer ignore, tossing it off under the heading, “If they want to speak we don’t stop them.” That is not enough. By doing the two things listed above, we open up an entirely new vista in this work, in my view. Output is a personal need and not an option in learning a language.
Sabrina has shown this dramatically recently with the Star of the Week technique. When she talks about it, she shakes her head and looks at the ground and says in a kind of amazement, here paraphrased: “Ben, I can’t believe what these kids can do when I ask them these questions in this way! I have never seen anything like it and, in spite of the power and wonder we have with stories, I think I could build an entire year long curriculum on Star of the Week and be perfectly happy doing so and not miss stories much!”
3 thoughts on “Visual PQA – 4”
I agree with this, based on my first couple of classes in my very first year of committed CI.
“I think I could build an entire year long curriculum on Star of the Week and be perfectly happy doing so and not miss stories much!”
I remember distinctly the conversation and the energy and the kids’ eagerness to sit in the “Oprah” chair. (I called mine “Oprah show” or Oprah interviews”…something like that)
It was a pretty immediate “clunk” in terms of the kids’ engagement in the “interview” and the “forgetting” that the whole thing was happening in French. As I read these posts I remember how powerful this was, and also how it got sidelined because I was new and because I was trying out all the other very exciting CI stuff.
And also I was so new that each interview strayed wildly and I did not get the repetition needed. So to have a questionnaire will help a TON! Can someone remind me where to find a questionnaire? Thanks!
Jen, this idea is intriguing to me and so I ditto that question about “where to find a questionnaire, please?”
There is a questionnaire in the appendix of Anne Matava’s scripts.