Tuesday, December 2, 2014

TPRS year 5 - spontaneous output

The other day in my Spanish 2 class, I was pleasantly amused by my Spanish students.  My class is a mixture of popular and non-popular kids (as most classes are).  Generally in my classes this is a struggle all year as we try to build them up enough to get away from those silly social norms.

But last Tuesday, I was chatting with my students about their weekends (or how they were doing) I forget.  And somehow it came up that I asked my students a question because I didn't know the answer and there was a pause.

A bright (but somewhat quiet) student said suddenly, "Porque estás en una coma" ("Because you're in a coma").

Suddenly, I was flooded with questions about how I was in a coma and for how long and my students shrugged it off as if it was no big deal and made up a back story as to why I was in a coma.  The entire thing was incredibly hilarious (within the contexts of that class).  Of course comas are not necessarily funny.  But this day, the fact that my students were explaining to me in their Spanish 2 way that all that I knew was an illusion, made for a very interesting and somewhat deep conversation in Spanish.

The neatest part was that regardless of popular status, everyone was contributing to my being in a coma and laughing it off since I am such a loser that no one visited me.  All of this of course is a surprise to me.

I love input-based teaching.  The output is so much more meaningful to me when it's finally ready to come.

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