Rubber Chicken facilitates learning a language!
Brian Anderson is a Tutoring Director in Madison Wisconsin. He has a blog called the Literacy Network. He was asked what to do in a language class when a learner wants to, or, for clarification reasons, needs to revert to his or her first language during a class. Here is his answer:
One strategy used by a teacher of Ojibwa language in a Wisconsin reservation is very interesting. All classes are held exclusively in Ojibwa language. However, in her classroom hangs a rubber chicken. The chicken has a sign on it that says,
“FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY!”
If a student can’t say something in Ojibwa, he or she may grab the rubber chicken and hold it over their head while speaking English. After saying what needs to be said, the student hangs the chicken back on its hook. The unmitigated silliness of the rubber chicken gag gets learners off the hook, so to speak, when they can’t express themselves. Perhaps you can have a policy like that, where one has to do some silly act in order to revert back to the first language.
For the rest of this post, go to: http://literacynetwork.blogspot.com/2010/03/using-learners-first-language-good-idea.html
