Reading a film IV

As the scenario develops I continue « reading » the film with my students, translating the subtitles into French, discussing the situation and the characters, doing PQA wherever it seems appropriate.

PQA?  Personalized Questions and Answers.  For example, very early in the film Max says that he looks like Godzilla.  My students assume that “like” is aimer, so they cannot understand the phrase.  “looks like” is a structure that they need to acquire.  Especially for this film, because Max is worried that he may be like his father.  So I ask a student if he has a brother or sister, and does he look like his brother.  This year I had twins so they quickly grasped the meaning, and I could ask other students if they looked like their mother or their father.  Or ask “Who do you look like?”  One girl explained that she looked like her father’s mother, etc.  This is PQA.  But it goes beyond relating the target vocabulary to the students, which I tried to do in a rather awkward way when I was first trying TPRS.  The heart of PQA is forgetting the target structure because you are learning interesting things about your students.  When they are focused on the content and not on the form, they are acquiring the language without thinking about it.   

When I asked a former student to put her impressions of the TPRS method in writing, she commented, “and best of all it made us connected to each other.” I think it was the PQA, making the students themselves the subject matter to be discussed in class, which gave the students the impression that they were creating bonds.  This may be particularly true in France where many classes are still in lecture mode, with little interaction between students and teachers.

PQA also helps to avoid getting into too much of a routine that some students call “play-pause”.  I play the film, pause to discuss what we’ve seen and play another bit.  This needs to be varied in order to keep their interest.  Some students who are used to having teachers use films for only recreational purposes moan and groan every time you hit the pause button.  I explain to them that we are not “watching” a film, we are studying it.  And I also use a little Fred Jones on them when they demand to be allowed to watch the film without stopping. 

Fred Jones? He wrote Tools for Teaching, which many American teachers consider the Bible of classroom management.  One of his suggestions is to use PAT, Preferred Activity Time, to negotiate the behavior you want from your students.  You allow them to earn PAT by following your rules.  I want them to be quiet and attentive while we are viewing a scene.  Sometimes they are tempted to make comments in French which disrupt the concentration of others.  So when they begin begging to watch without stopping, I challenge them to earn so many PAT points in order to have a session of all play and no pause.  I set a number of minutes, usually starting with ten, and tell them that every time they are quiet and attentive with no interruptions for ten minutes, they will earn one PAT point.  When they have a set number of points, which I decide according to the class profile, we will have session with no pauses.   

How do I decide?  I want them to succeed.  I want them to attain their goal.  So I decide on a number that seems relatively easy for them to achieve.  Once they have achieved it and have had their reward, I can announce that from now on they’ll need fifteen minutes of quiet concentration to earn a PAT point.

Now, the system will only work if it is easy for me.  I don’t want to be worried about keeping track of time while I’m trying to get some valuable PQA going.  So I choose a student to be time-keeper.  And I don’t choose the quiet, attentive student that never peeps.  I choose someone who’s pretty much a nice guy but a bit hyper-active and a bit of a class clown.  By making him time-keeper, I get him on my side.  He’s getting the attention he craves by being my assistant, not by working against me.  When we are ready to begin working on the film, I nod at him and he starts the timer on his cell-phone.  (Here in France, the fact that he’s allowed to use his cell-phone in class in this way also makes it kind of a cool thing to do.)  We begin talking about the film, but if at some point someone blurts something out in French, or gets off topic and starts talking about a rugby game, etc., I simply look at the time-keeper and say, “Zero.”  Which means to go back to Zero and start timing again.

The beauty of the system is that I don’t have to say anything cross to the troublemaker.  My time-keeper starts out by giving the culprit a dirty look, but the next time he’ll voice his displeasure.  I just shrug.  I’ve seen the whole class come down hard on a big, popular rugby player who was used to getting away with carrying on his own monologue throughout the class.  He was absolutely amazed to discover that it was his friends telling him to shut up in language that no teacher had ever used with him.  He hadn’t realized that they really wanted to earn those PAT points.  And I’m the cat that ate the cream because there they are, working hard at being attentive and concentrated so that I will ALLOW them to watch a film in English with English subtitles.

I usually manage to give them their PAT reward when we come to a point in the film where there’s a lot of action that needs little or no explanation.  I tell them that I won’t stop the film unless they ask me to.  Which sometimes happens when there’s dialog that needs to be translated.  So we’re doing exactly what I was doing before, except that for one session they are the ones who decide to hit the Pause button.     To be continued …..