(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)
Imagine that you read Mari’s essay in which she developed her ideas exactly the way that you had hoped she would. But her grammar was very weak and even caused some confusion. You are torn about what grade to give her. You know that her grammar skills are not strong enough to succeed at the next level, so you don’t want to mislead her. But you also don’t want to discourage her since her content was so good.
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)
Most of us have had experience like this with an ESL student: Someone is talking for a half a minute or more, and the student is just looking at the person. When the person stops, the student just nods his/her head. The speaker isn’t sure if the student really understood.
There is a technique which students, both the listener and speaker, can uses in conversations to avoid that type of situation.
The technique expands on the one introduced in Part 1. Discussion Technique to Get Quiet Students Involved (Part 1) Instead of asking a clarification after each paragraph, in this one, the listener summarizes in one sentence what s/he thinks was said.
By doing this, the speaker is able to feel confident that s/he is being understood correctly and the listener can confirm his/her understanding.
Just as with the technique introduced in Part 1, after students have used the two attached handout-activities, they usually find the technique to be a “tool” that they can use not only in group discussions but also when interacting with teachers and others outside the classroom.
Essay introduction
Dan nervously flipped through a magazine as he waited for the other passengers to get into their seats. Soon, a very large man sat down in the seat next to him. His shoulders were so wide that they pushed Dan’s elbow off the arm rest. The take-off and first 20 minutes were smooth. Dan lowered the tray in front of him and set his lunch and coffee on it. Suddenly, the passenger in front of him decided to push her seat back, shoving Dan’s tray into him, spilling coffee all over him. For the rest of the two-hour flight, he tried not to think about how miserable he felt in his tiny seat and wet shirt.
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*
Most people like stories. And essays that start with a story are often the easiest to enter. Like these written by a couple of students:
“A few months ago, in the middle of the night, when I was staying at home, I heard my house’s gate was shaken violently by someone. There, I saw a woman who was carrying her baby, standing with panic and asking for help. …”
“The 40-degree Celsius weather was miserable when we were going on the trail to my grandmother’s house in Bucaramanga, Colombia. We had been traveling about seven hours and were in El Pescadero, which is the curviest and dizziest part of the trip. …
These dramatic introductions are not only enticing for the reader, but they are also fun for the students to write; it gives them a chance to use their imagination and creativity.
At the same time, a good dramatic intro isn’t just a story. There are three characteristics of especially good ones:
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)
During a whole-class discussion, one of the students, Santos, made a comment.
Then Mai said, “I’d like to ask Santos a question …”
After Santos answered Maria’s question, Lan gave her opinion, and Camilo replied, “Lan said something very interesting …”
These students were employing a discussion technique “Responding to Others,” which had taken just 10 minutes for them to pick up.
The concept of whole-class discussions can be an alien one to students from non-Western countries. Students are told that participation in class discussions is expected in Western academic settings and that if they are active participants, it can affect their grade in a positive way. Nevertheless, these students don’t know what “active participation” means, other than to state one’s opinion. For instructors preparing students for mainstream, academic coursework, the techniques introduced in these next postings could help students develop five specific techniques that they can apply to be active.
An additional benefit to those students who employ these is that their classmates will feel good about them and future instructors will be impressed. For research about this, see Want Your Students to Seem More Likeable? Research Says: Teach Them Follow-up Questions
Common Sense Teaching ESL 