Framing students and sentence frames

Until recently most of my private students have been adults.  And almost all the young people I had for lessons were actually studying English for the pleasure, not because they were in difficulty.  One fourteen year old begged his mother for private lessons because "he was bored" at school. His English is already fluent, so doing grammar exercises and memorizing dialogs ......

In addition, I'm now giving lessons at a tutoring center. My new students are kids who are coming to me in hopes of improving their grades.  Several of them have been told by their teacher that their English is catstrophic, that they are two or three years behind.  I can't imagine talking to a student like that.  And after meeting the students, I can assure you that I've see far worse in my career.  Even if I thought a student was far below the expected level, I didn't tell him that.  After all, the purpose of grades is to tell students and parents and the school administration what the student's level is.  Why rub it in by making negative personal comments? I only made suggestions about what he could do to improve and I encouraged him whenever I saw progress.  

The problem with telling students that they are weak and not meeting your expectations is that they may believe you and become convinced that "they're not good at languages".  From then on, there's little you can do to help them progress because you have convinced them that they lack something essential and are beyond help. Of course, the teacher who denigrates her students has an easy out for their lack of improvement.  The students' total ignorance of the fundamentals are the problem and she can not be held responsible for their failure.  This is what I call "framing the students".  We paint a picture of them that is so gloomy that no one can expect us to teach them anything. When worried parents come to plead, you point them to grammar books and lists of irregular verbs, knowing full well that even heroic efforts will make no difference.  Of course, there are private lessons for those who have the means. 

Today I met a girl who told me that although she had decent grades last year, this year, her fifth year of English, she is failing.  Her teacher told her that she's at least two years behind the rest of the class. After talking to her a little, my impression is that her English is about average and she's very shy. Also very willing, since she came to me with two brand new grammar books with exercises that she had just bought at the book store.  I suggested that she could try to return them and get her money back.

I explained that we would be talking more than writing and once she could understand without thinking about what I'm saying and answer without thinking as well, she would have no problem with grammar. She plays volleyball, so I compared it with seeing the ball coming in your direction.  Do you think about how you're going to hit it, or do you just do it? Speaking a language should be the same way. She seemed to grasp what I was trying to say. 

She said her teacher spoke in English almost all the time, but that she didn't understand much of what she said.  I told her that I would be speaking in English, that was my job, but I would try to make it comprehensible.  And her job, her only job, was to let me know when she didn't understand, so I could backtrack, repeat, speak more slowly, reword and translate if necessary.  I explained that we would be talking more than writing and once she could understand without thinking about what I'm saying and answer without thinking as well, she would have no problem with grammar. 

With my new students that I am meeting for the first time I have been using sentence frames, as developed by Robert Harrell on Ben Slavic's PLC. I gave them the sentence frames which are intended for use after the Christmas break.
        I went to....
        I saw ....
        I got* ......
        I ate ...
        I played .....

So I asked my students where they went during the holiday.  Who did they see?  What did they see?  What did they get for Christmas?  What did they eat?  What did they play?   (All the girls played JustDance4 on their Play Station 3. All the boys played Call of Duty. )  I also told them where I had gone, what I had seen, what I had got, etc. Then I asked them to complete the above sentences in writing.  We circled them once more then I asked them to add details, which we also circled.  

The final step was to ask them to answer the questions again, but to lie this time. You should have seen their eyes light up at the idea that they could invent a holiday and use their imagination. I don't think I'm going to have any trouble getting them to buy into TPRS.  

Sentence frames seem a good way to ease students who are used to traditional language teaching into PQA with the questions about their holiday and then into a story as we start to invent things for the fun of it.  I wish I could have taken timed pictures of their faces as we gradually went from "stiff and prepared to suffer" to "puzzled" to "intrigued" to "really?" to "you must be joking!" to a wide grin and shining eyes. And we were speaking in English for more than 95% of the time. Is there any better formula for improvement than speaking in English and having fun?

*Robert used "I received" in German.  For my French students this is a no brainer because "receive" and recevoir are transparent.  I prefer to use "I got" because it's higher frequency in English, and an irregular verb and sounds more natural.