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What is going on?Joshua Arnett and Kurtis Foster
English Language InstituteMissouri State Univeristy Springfield, MO
Improving Tolerance of Ambiguity in (and outside of) ESL classrooms
Where this idea came from…
• Students freak out• Student confidence plummets• Students remain dependent on teachers• Lack of (or lackluster)participation
• Tolerance of Ambiguity
Linguistic
Task
• Why FOCUS on Tolerance of Ambiguity?• Increases:
– Autonomy– The amount of comprehensible input– Student confidence– Class participation
• Why literature and art?– culture & language simultaneously learned
• Helps students feel that they are a part of the culture and encourages interaction with native speakers at a deeper level.
– Engages the creative mind for creative approaches to language problem solving
– It’s just more fun
• How?• Teach 2 things:
»A Mindset
»Specific Skills
A Mindset
• What we need students to understand:– It’s okay to not understand quite a bit of
what’s going on in task/conversation– The big picture is the most important part of
comprehension
Specific Skills
• –Patience
–Learning vocabulary from context
• How? (continued)– Put students in a position to feel some
ambiguity– &– Incorporate themes of tolerating ambiguity in:
• Warm ups• Intensive reading/listening for context clues• Extensive reading for the same purpose
Extensive Reading
Intensive Reading/Listening
Encouraging Students
to Embrace
Confusion
Warm Ups
Mindset- the Big Picture
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubpRcZNJAnE