Humanising Language Teaching
Year 3; Issue 1; January 2001
An Argument in your head
Type of class: monolingual or multilingual
Teacher: doesn't need to know students' mother tongue
Purpose: to encourage real, motivated writing in both languages
Level: elementary to advanced
Tell the students they are going to be doing a writing exercise that will be seen only by them, Neither you nor their fellow students will see what they write. Ask them to think back to an argument they have had with some one, or to think of someone they are or have been in conflict with. Ask them to write a dialogue between them and this person. They write their own side of the dialogue in mother tongue and the other person's side in L2, ( which means their voice will be stronger than the opponent's) . Give them l5 minutes for this task.
Bring them out of the writing "trance " by doing a swift movement exercise: Take them out of the classroom into an open space. Tell them to get into two lines facing each other, about 5 metres apart. Each line links arms. One line are the waters of a great river flowing down to the sea - the other line are the tide surging into the mouth of the river. Very, very, very slowly the two lines move in towards each other, nearly touch and very slowly fall back. They come together and recede seven to ten times, each time little faster until; the last two comings together are gale force 8 and force l0 surges.
( we suggest this particular " breaking state" exercise because it quickly brings the individual student out of his/her individual cocoon and back into the group, while not letting up on the theme of conflict. )
Ask them to go back to their dialogue with the conflictual person and to continue it. This time, though, they write their own side of the conversation in L2 and the other person's part in mother tongue. Give them l5 minutes for this. ( This gives the other person the expressive advantage )
Bring the whole class together to feedback on the writing and feeling experience.
Acknowledgement: Bonnie Tsai, author of Business English Recipes, showed us the idea of a power-lopsided dialogue. Here we have used MT versus L2 as the way to achieve this lopsidedness. In her original version of the exercise , in the first stage, the student writes their part in their normal writing hand and the adversary's part with the other hand. In the second stage this is reversed.
