Would you like to receive publication updates from HLT? You can by joining the free mailing list today. |
Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 4; July 02
Discipline Exercise secondary and adult
told by Margit Wehrli, Switzerland
written by Mario Rinvolucri
1. If you have an unruly group write up a long, complex sentence about the behaviour of a group like them on the board.
2. Tell the class that, together, you are going to REDUCE the sentence.
Explain that they can tell you to take out ONE WORD
TWO CONSECUTIVE WORDS
THREE CONSECUTIVE WORDS
As soon as a student tells you to take out one, two or three words, do what she asks
irrespective of whether the deletion is linguistically possible.
Ask the student to read the remaining sentence and to decide if the deletion is
grammatically and semantically acceptable. If she, the group and you agree that
the deletion is OK, then it stands.
As deletion follows deletion, the sentence will CHANGE MEANING several
times.
Sometimes it is possible to reduce a 40 word sentence to just one!
Note: The REDUCTION exercise is an old and very productive activity from Gattegno's SILENT WAY. Margrit's insight is to use the technique to get an unruly group reflecting on their behaviour as they shrink the sentence. As the sentence reduces they are forced to see their own behaviour in various, unpredictable ways.
You can use Margrit's insight to work on other contents, apart from discipline.
Before an important test, you might give them an initial sentence about pre-exam
tension.