I was ready to start class. Unlike previous days when I left my door open, I slowly closed it because I didn’t want any administrators walking down the halls to see what I was doing with my students. I was afraid that I might get fired.
(This posting includes a handout LINK AT THE END OF THIS POST which you are welcome to use with your students.) *
I was totally confused. I saw 18-year-old Ronny walking outside his house carrying a guitar case, but I knew he didn’t play the guitar. I asked him if he was starting to take lessons. He said, “No, but I’m planning to find a date for a party. And I just learned three tricks to do that, and one of them uses a guitar case.” Then he told me about the three interesting experiments.
Researchers sent a very handsome guy to a shopping mall in France to ask women for their phone numbers so that he could call them for a date. He stood in front of different types of stores (for example, a bakery, a shoe store, a café) and as women walked by, he approached them. However, he wasn’t very successful. Only 13% of the women gave him their numbers when he stood in front of those shops. Surprisingly, however, he was twice as successful (26% of the time) in front of one particular shop: a flower shop.
The researchers have a theory about these results. (See complete article below.)
For background information about these articles and for suggestions for how to use them with your students, see • Introducing “Short, High-Interest Readings” Also, I’ll be adding more of these articles in the right-hand column: ESL Reading> Short, High Interest Articles for Extensive Readings
Here is the 10th article. You can download the article for your students by clicking on the link at the end. Also included are three optional exercises: True-False Questions; Paraphrasing Exercise; Reflection Exercise.
While explaining a writing technique to my students, I noticed that one of them, Emily, was staring off to the side. Thinking that she was daydreaming, I wondered whether I should say her name or ask her a question to “bring her back” to the classroom.
Recently, I learned that I didn’t necessarily need to be concerned about Emily’s lack of eye contact with me. In fact, surprisingly, research suggests that other students might have benefited from doing just what Emily was doing — gazing away from me.
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.) *
One of my insecure students, Saki, wrote me this comment at the end of my “Reading Support” class: “I decided to take Psychology next term because of the readings in this course. I now have confidence to read the required “Pharmaceutical” book for me to get a higher paid job as a drug counselor all thanks to this course.”.
Thinking back on the Saki that I remember at the beginning of the class, I’m pretty sure I know what changed for her. I noticed that on her copy of the first article, she had tons of translations, even above words that there was no doubt she would know. She believed that the only way that she could feel confident that she was really understanding a passage was if she knew the meaning of absolutely every word. In other words, she lacked a tolerance for ambiguity.
She told me that she had lost her confidence after looking at the Pharmaceutical course book because there seemed to be so many words she didn’t recognize.
How Saki (and her classmates) gained her confidence by developing a tolerance for ambiguity in everything they read.
Common Sense Teaching ESL 