Austin TP 3

So.....Michel and I met up to work on his reading skills. I gave him a few passages from the textbook, with multiple choice questions for him to answer. It became apparent to me the way CIES has been teaching him how to read. He was not reading them chronologically or in any kind of order. He was scanning them for nouns and then verbs. "Of course," I thought. He's looking for the main idea. Now on the one hand, this will help him answer faster, but not necessarily correctly. He finished it in two minutes, even though I gave him 5. The first passage was easy, so he got them all right. "Alright" I said. Let's make it a little harder.

I give him a harder passage, that I think might be a little too hard for him. I give him 5 minutes. He finishes in two. He gets half of them wrong. Now this is only one instance, but I feel just teaching students to look for the main idea and scan the passage is cheating them. Sure learning English word for word takes a lot longer, but this will inevitably help them pick up on words they might have missed. One or two words can change the entire meaning of a sentence, so we would be remiss in ignoring them. "Try again," I tell Michel. "Only this time, take your time. I want you to focus on each word and piece them together." This time he takes the entire 5 minutes. And gets them all right.

Timed activities can be useful, but I have found that extra pressure hurts performance, not helps. Of course, exams, quizzes and presentations can be stressful, but how can we emphasize the quantity of language absorbed when much of it is slipping through the cracks? Now I can't speak from experience, since I've never taught before, but I think I am of the mind for a more slow, methodical approach; rather than bombarding my tutees with words and expecting them just to find the important ones and ignore the others.

Or maybe I'm just whistling dixie.