“Will” and PPU

Imagine a second class session on “will.”

Review of what happened “last week” in his hypothetical class:

• In a few weeks Tatiana will go to NY. She’ll eat blintzes and see strange people in the subway. Oh yes, she’ll also teach English.

• In January and February, I’ll visit cert students at the sites. I’ll be happy to see them, but will they be happy to see me?

• In a few weeks, I’ll ____________ [my answer: have to say goodbye to my daughters and my friends again, and head south to Mexico with some wonderful people.]

LP:

1. Look at the “last week” review sentences and review the “will”
2. Fill in the last partial question. He used a true sentence not just because of S interest, but because it forces/motivates them to find the form that goes with the intended meaning.
3. Pair up and say your sentence
4. The other person asks a follow-up question
5. The first person answers
6. Switch roles
7. Follow up: Who was asked a surprising question? Who was asked a hard question?

Then he did the thing on the handout.

• Summary of use of will in above exercises: future action
• The handout introduced a new meaning: an offer

Five sentences from your mother.

1. I’ll wash the dishes and set the table.

2. Oh, that’s okay. I can iron my own shirts. How many things do you need at the grocery store. Are you sure you need them today?

3. Sit down right now or I’ll tell your doctor.

4. It looks great already. They’ll just mess it up anyway.

5. Okay. Are there any other lights I can turn off before I leave?

My sister needs money and housecleaning to get her house ready for sale.

• It’s so hard getting a house ready to sell. It has to look nice, but I can’t fix it up until after it sells.
• I don’t know how I’ll ever get it cleaned in time.
• I wish my kids would be a bigger help in getting this house cleaned.

Sometimes people’s requests are so indirect that people don’t recognize them as such.

“Will” in the sense of “offer” is also pragmatics, so that needs to be taught to. Got to set up Ss for real use. Possibility of error lends authenticity.

Why do we have initial phase when people are writing inauthentic stuff (what they’d say to their mother): to have something to draw on, to understand/internalize the relation between form & function. Repetition, safety. THEN you can move into the “real” exercise of, say, ask someone for something you want in an indirect way. Always the “use” phase is more challenging for Ts.

Gallery Walk [but this one is individually based]

When groups in class either make a poster (e.g. Bev’s “what is a teacher) (it’s always provocative and complex, benefitting from several minds thinking about it) and then describe it. Like, how should we as teachers deal with fossilization. Or Bev & Eliz having us peruse a wallful of quotes and stand by one, identifying why we chose it. Usually group-based.

Group-Based Gallery Walks for working with challenging subjects (this one is geology, but it’s transferable)

He did Cat Steven’s “The Wind.” Invited class discussion about who he was. Then handed out lyrics to his song and had us read them. Then played the song. Then had us silently and concisely encapsulate our interpretation. We chose the color paper we wanted and we wrote down our summary. They all got passed to one person who shuffled them and then we each picked one and hung it up and did gallery walk. Then we picked three: most surprising, most similar and most different. Then a few people volunteered their reactions.

Class book: You gather materials Ss have produced throughout the term and it’s available to people throughout the class. You could have lyrics to the song and then people’s responses (which he’d collect; not important to him who wrote them).