Quill English Academy

In this section, we’ll discuss the following ideas:

• comprehensible input
• holistic immersion
• TPR – Total Physical Response
• the communication window
• mirroring
• scaffolding
• cumulative and spaced repetition review
• CLT – Communicative Language Teaching
• classroom management

Comprehensible Input:

This is the foundational EFL/ESL/ELL concept. Think of it like how the concept of evolution is to related to biology, or how the concept of atoms is related to chemistry.

Nothing is learned if it’s not understood.

What is learned when understanding was assumed by a teacher but didn’t actually take place is a critically negative lesson that further separates a student’s eager attention from an ineffective teacher, hindering future growth already in jeopardy due to the teacher’s lack of understanding.

Imagine a large, powerful, interesting alien jabbering pleasantly but mostly incomprehensibly. That’s not entirely different from what your young foreign-language students see, at times. Thus arises students’ understandable strategy of smiling and nodding if prompted, and trying to entertain themselves however they can.

Don’t expect your students to tell you when they don’t understand something.

Treasure the moments when they ask like the precious gifts they are. When questions come, treat them like handwritten letters from the Queen, or gifts from your future self sent through a wormhole. Or something like that.

Expect that most of the time, the social pressure of appearing smart and cool is greater than the
compelling urge of curiosity. (As an aside, remember that, when disciplining someone! Make sure they have a comfortable way back into your esteem and the esteem of their classmates.)

Make your classroom language simple and consistent.
It can be difficult to pay attention to the words we use, especially at first, since language is like an appendage: you just use it once you’ve got it. This is especially true for the more outgoing types who enjoy conversing.

Make your classroom language simple and consistent.
Don’t expect to be understood. Check to see if you’re understood! Asking “Do you understand?” is rarely useful. Instead, devise a simple experiment. For a very simple example, after teaching ‘open’, ‘close’, ‘book’, ‘mouth’, and ‘ear’, ask them to close their eyes with their books on their table (perhaps as part of a “Teacher Says” game…) Ask them to open their book. Then ask them to open their mouths. Then ask them to close their books and their mouths. Then ask them to close their ears and have fun with what happens.

Make your classroom language simple and consistent.
With a firm base of classroom vocabulary (this might take many weeks), we can introduce new, colloquial, fun ways to discuss things. But still, frequently check to make sure
you’re understood. Of course, each time you check and find out you were understood, that is time you could have used to move on. This is one of the many balancing acts that we must perform.

A final note here is to speak slightly slower and clearer than you’d like to, making sure that when introducing a new word, you’re using other words they’ve already become familiar with.

Holistic Immersion:

We do not teach English. We teach people.

If one’s primary goal is measured by their numerical competency on a given exam, then it may be the case that a class that’s largely run in their mother tongue might serve their present needs best. The vagaries of English phonics, grammar, and general usage can be hard to explain, even for those among us who have the vast knowledge base to do so competently.

We believe that a fluency-first approach will, in the long run, serve students better. Academic and professional successes are incredibly valuable. While there may be some tangible benefit to seeking out specialists to prepare students for a particular exam, we think that by maintaining an English-first environment, the broad fluency base that is formed will provide firm footing in any particular context that arises. By not emphasizing any particular “exam” as our basis for fluency, measuring it instead by the simple metrics of 1) ability to comprehend input (written and verbal), 2)vocabulary knowledge, 3) grammatical ability, and 4) the ability to thoughtfully set out one’s ideas in an essay, we set our students up for long-term success.

Leading a strong class of complete beginners when you only have a beginner’s grasp on the local language can work well if you:

1. have excellent classroom management skills (attention to detail, consistency, etc.)
2. foster strong, convivial relationships with your students
3. are very careful to steadily grow your communication window, and
4. are using an appropriate curriculum

But sometimes, it’ll still help to have more complex directions or concepts explained in a local language, for beginners. This is especially true for some forms of discipline.

Even in more advanced classes, we do not suggest a 100% English approach. Sometimes, a student will want to express something but will miss a learning opportunity if they’re not allowed to ever use their native language to directly translate. We encourage students to use translation software and/or their peers to openly find ways to express what they’d like to. We suggest always writing the new vocabulary on the board to be copied down in their communication books.

The key here is that everything that can happen while using English does happen by using English.

The closer we are to this maxim, the more excellent our classes will be.

Giving them meaningful challenges to use language to actually do something is the cornerstone of CLT, which we’ll touch on below, and which ties this entire section together.

It’s important to understand that an immersive foreign language experience has a steeper learning curve (harder in the beginning), but progress quickly snowballs with thoughtful teachers.

TPR – Total Physical Response:

This concept pertains particularly to very young learners, but it’s often useful for older learners as well. Think of it as integrating movement and language. “Showing” what a word means with an action can help move class forward more enjoyably and cement concepts more rapidly.

Take a moment to watch some deaf poetry performances to get a feeling for how powerful motion can be in its connection to language.

Once, when interviewing at a local school, I was asked how I’d explain the meaning of the word ‘elevator’ to a group of beginners. I smiled, pushed an imaginary button with my forefinger, said “ding!”, angled the finger up, and moved it toward the sky, with a mechanic hum. The teacher laughed, telling me stories of all the long explanations that other teachers had given. Comprehensive as they were, they’d be all but gibberish to beginners.

Another option is to simply use more pictures, which work wonders in foreign language acquisition. However, using our bodies a bit more can be fun, and we encourage (well, almost) anything that helps bring a few more smiles to classes.

The Communication Window:

For beginners, everything that happens in a second language comes with subtitles in the first language. Hence Nelson Mandela’s observation that “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”

This is also why it’s usually not advisable to try to teach a concept in a foreign language that is not already understood, at least in some fundamental or roundabout way, in an already fluent language. That’s why we call it ‘sheltered content’ when we use academic subjects in a foreign language class.

The ‘communication window’, simply put, is the breadth of comprehensible input, specifically what can be effective in some form of communication. Working within the communication window can be very challenging, given students’ propensity to smile and nod. Sometimes we’ll overestimate the breadth; other times, we’ll underestimate it. Keep refining your models as you go.

A gradually widening communication window is what happens in an effective language class.

Mirroring:

Mirroring is very powerful tools that many teachers find themselves using intuitively. Here’s a sample dialogue that shows how mirroring might be used.

T: Hello, Jimmy. How was your Christmas? Did you do anything fun?

J: Hi, Teacher. We go to the Japan. So good!

T: You went to Japan. It was so good! [Nodding, prompting the student to repeat once more]

J: You [Laughs]- We went to Japan. It was so good. We make snowman. So good.

T: You made a snowman? Was this the first time for you? [One finger up for TPR reinforcement]

J: [Nods proudly]

T: You can say, “We made our first big snowman in Japan.”

J: We made our first big snowman in the Japan.

T: [Smiling and nodding encouragingly] In Japan. So fun, right? Can you say it one more time?

J: We made our first big snowman in Japan.

T: [Holds out palms with a big smile] Did you bring me some of your snowman? Where is it?

J: [Laughs]

This simple interaction shows the teacher helping their student be more accurate in a meaningful context. This dialogue also contains a bit of scaffolding, which we will discuss later. The concepts of mirroring and scaffolding overlap quite a bit, with the key difference being that when mirroring, the teacher is actively prompting a student to repeat what they said in a more accurate way. Extra complexity that is suggested, such as being a big snowman, is called scaffolding.

This technique is particularly valuable when teachers feel the need to use students’ L1 in class. After giving directions or explanations in the students’ first language, we think a prime opportunity has arrived for giving the directions again in the target language – here, English. It becomes mirroring if a student wants to say something, gets help saying it in English, then simply says it for herself. The key is that it is always the student who actively grows and takes the step to manifest meaningful change with language.