SLOW/PAUSE/POINT
From storyasking
SLOW
Are you going slowly? Next to circling, this is perhaps the most important skill in TPRS. Speaking too fast disempowers students. Speaking to your students slowly indicates respect. It is an acknowledgement that you appreciate how hard it is for them to try to understand the new and foreign language.
To quote from Blaine: “The reason we have to go so slowly is that we can’t feel how hard it is. We have a feeling that the language is easy because that is our experience. By slowing down much more than we believe is necessary or possible, we are getting close to the best speed. We can only feel this by learning another language.”
Blaine implies here that compassion is a necessary ingredient in proper story telling. One must put oneself in the position of the learner, and feel how hard it is. Much of the current training of new teachers in TPRS reflects this idea – there are hours and hours at the national TPRS conferences in which novice TPRS are asked to study languages they don’t know. This truly puts the teacher in the position of the learner.
One day I was watching my class being taught by a teacher new to TPRS. She was working on circling and I was coaching her from the side of the room. Being new to it, she went very slowly. The kids responded better than they do to me, due to the slowness. I felt the truth of SLOW at that moment. To put it simply, when the kids are with you, you are going slowly enough. If it is too fast for even one student, it is too fast.
One student, whom I perceived as something of a jerk because he didn't pay “enough attention” in class, and whom I had given up on as a barometer student, was really hanging in there with this teacher and her slower circling. I had to recognize that his problem was not him but me. By slowly circling, this teacher was really getting some good teaching done. I watched in amazement at how powerful the two things, circling and SLOW, really are.
Some teachers even count seconds between structures while circling. They count “one thousand one, one thousand two” or something like that. What a wonderful idea! We can credit Mary Holmes for that one.
Personally, I have learned through practice to speak in “chunks” of sound lasting three or four seconds. I have found that if I do not aim for that amount of time for each utterance, I lose the kids. When I frame an image or an idea in these “chunks” of sound, the kids understand me.
It is quite difficult to do slow down in English, so why should we think it easy to do when speaking to our students in the target language? It requires strict discipline. The feeling is of driving 35 miles an hour in a 65 mile an hour zone.
Many of us work so hard at mastering the other skills involved in learning TPRS, but when we forget SLOW, we miss the entire point and invalidate all our efforts in learning the other skills. The other skills have no effect unless we go slowly!
When we express something in one brief second when the students might require three seconds to understand it, we often blame and complain internally that the student is “slow.” This is a big mistake. Students are always exactly where they are, and if we express something in one second, and they are two seconds behind us, it is up to us to slow our speech down to the level of the student and not expect the reverse.
We must develop empathy for what the student is experiencing. If we could develop and put into practice this empathy, we would derive results we could not have predicted.
Lynette Lang in Chicago is a real pro at this skill. She paces so slowly, and with such patience! Hers is a perfect pace and her students seem to hang on every word she says.
Moreover, Lynette actually takes the time in class to laugh with her students. It is honest laughter, and is a great tool for personalization because it is authentic. The laughter has the effect of slowing down the class. The class suggests things to her and it often strikes her as funny. She lets herself think about it and when she laughs they all laugh.
Lynette doesn’t say, "No, that isn't it, I'm looking for something else." Laughing at funny things at the right moment is an advanced skill in TPRS, and it happens more spontaneously when the teacher is teaching slowly. We should seek genuine laughter in the classroom not only because true learning is fun but also because of the enormous neurological benefits it has to the students and the teacher. We must, however, remember to avoid any comment that could be even remotely perceived as a personal comment, as the world of teens is often a very sensitive one.
Another way Lynette slows her classes down is to whisper some of the CI to her students. She uses whispering in the same way professional storytellers do. Between the laughter and the whispering, it is no wonder that Lynette’s students easily handle the AP French Language exam every year.
Can one go too slowly? In one class, I asked the students if I was going slowly enough (I knew I was), and one student said, “Mr. Slavic, do you know how when you ride a bike, if you go too slowly, you fall off? That’s what this is like!” But that doesn’t happen very often, and it is best to err on the side of caution.
It seems like a simple thing to go slowly, but it is not. It seems that most TPRS teachers, no matter how much experience they have, repeatedly forget this skill after even a few days. It requires constant vigilance, above all the other TPRS skills, and is, in my personal view at least, is among the top three of most important TPRS skills. POINT AND PAUSE
Point to the question words and structures when you say them during class. The question words are posted on the wall and, since the structures change daily depending on the story, they are written on the white board or the overhead.
The question words are:
que veut dire___ – what does___mean qui – who que – what est-ce que – is it that qu’est-ce que – what is it that est-ce qu’il y a, y a-t-il – is there de quelle couleur est – what color is où – where quand – when combien – how much, how many pourquoi – why parce que – because comment – how, describe quel/quelle – which de quelle couleur est – what color is à qui (ownership) – whose de qui (relationship) – whose
Write down the English translation of all new words, making no exceptions. Even after you have established meaning and begun the story, continue at all times to reinforce meaning by pointing and pausing during the story.
It is our choice. We can point, pausing with the intention to make sure they get it, or we can point without pausing and assume they get it. If we do the latter, they probably won’t get it.
If the structure for the story is “he preferred” and you begin with PQA, you physically point to the structure and its English version on the board or overhead each time that it is mentioned, remembering to pause.
Then, during the extended PQA or the story, the question words on the wall must be pointed at during circling. And any time you introduce a new word, write it down on the overhead or on the board, then write its translation, then point and pause. Do this for anything new or anything unfamiliar at any point in the class.
It takes months before the entire class truly locks on to the question words, and since they are always used in a TPRS class, are they not worth hammering in visually as well as auditorially?
In a recent community college class of motivated adults who were all in close physical proximity to me, I saw how valuable pointing really is. It was the first class of the term, and I literally pointed to everything I said.
Everything was on the white board, with English translations that were easy to see - all the question words, the two structures I was trying to teach, and a growing list of new words as they occurred in class.
I was focusing on just this one skill in that class, hence I became aware of its importance. I firmly believe that had I not pointed to everything in that class, the students would not have been as engaged as they were. I am sold on the importance of this skill.
I heard someone say at a workshop once: “They get a lot less than we think.” That sentence has stuck with me, and I feel that pointing but doing so in a way that we know they get it is the best way to guarantee that they get a lot more than we think.
I use a dowel from Ace Hardware as a pointer. It is wrapped in black electrician's tape and is about a foot long. Another good pointer can be taken from the cross piece of any wire coat hanger. These pointers are the perfect size and you never run out.
Thus, point to everything you can: the structures for the story, the question words, and any new words! Make sure they get it! Doing this guarantees happy students.
