Food for thought...
Students
Who Pretend to Understand When They Don't
In
this thoughtful article in Essential
Teacher, Massachusetts ELL teacher Patricia Martin confesses that when she
travels in Latin America with her limited
Spanish, "I'm duplicitous; I'm an unmitigated bluffer." More than once, she says,
she's boarded the wrong bus rather than keep the people in line behind her
waiting while she haltingly asks the driver where the bus is going. On these
trips abroad, she says, "I can say with humble certainty that at least half my
daily energy was devoted to various modes of faking comprehension."
In her intensive Spanish
classes in school, Martin also frequently pretended to understand when she
didn't. "Comprendes, Patricia?" her patient teacher would ask. "Ready to move
on?" "Oh, yes," she'd reply, telling herself the textbook would help her figure
it out later. As a result, Martin still hasn't mastered Spanish imperatives.
Why is bluffing so common?
Mark Twain said it best: "Each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval - a
thing which, to the general run of the human race, is more dreaded than wolves
and death."
Martin's experiences have
helped her empathize with her ELL students, for whom, she believes, "bluffing
is a permanent part of their lifestyle, in and out of the classroom. In
mainstream classrooms throughout the United States, nodding, smiling,
American-accented ESL students are bluffing their way through the school day."
Teachers confidently say, "Oh, she's fine. She's getting everything I say" and
huge gaps in knowledge go undetected and only show up on high-stakes state
tests.
Once Martin taught a unit on
the War of the Worlds hoax by H.G.
Wells. Students read news accounts about the phony radio program, the story of
a family that was almost fooled into abandoning their home, and Wells' own
reactions to the panic he caused. But two weeks into the unit, Martin realized
that one girl was utterly convinced that giant Martians had laid waste to parts of
northern New Jersey
sometime before she was born. Reminded of all the material they'd read making
it clear that the whole thing was a hoax, the girl said, "Oh, is that what all
that means?"
This is also true outside
school, where shopkeepers and others have little patience. English learners,
says Martin, try to "fly under the radar, eager to avoid the humiliation of
being the center of irritated attention, fearful of sounding like a tyro in
front of strangers. This determination not to humiliate yourself in front of
native speakers calls for full-time vigilance and a straight-face-and-nervous-gut
approach to the world." Many students are also put in the role of interpreting
for their entire families. "Imagine the confusion," says Martin, "when someone
who only half-understands the terminology explains complicated medical matters
to family members, who understand much less. Their collective comprehension
must frequently spin out of control."
For teachers, student bluffing
and faking is a major instructional challenge. Teachers who check for
understanding by asking, "Are you with me?" or asking their students to give a
thumbs-up or thumbs-down signal are not going to get an accurate sense of
what's being learned. Martin has formulated the Rule of 50% Bluffing - kids are
nodding and pretending to understand about half of the time. But it's hard to tell
who's bluffing and when, because many ELLs have good verbal language and social
skills and sound so plausible.
These insights have led Martin
to check for classroom understanding in a much more systematic way. She stops
after each instructional point and asks students to rephrase what she's just
explained. In every class, she calls for some written demonstration of mastery,
either on erasable whiteboards or in students' notebooks. Because students know
they will be held accountable for they understand, Martin says they're less
likely to bluff. "They may as well admit their confusion," she says, "since
they know it will soon be revealed." Constant checking for understanding also
keeps Martin from kidding herself about how well things are going. "A teacher can't
clarify and do comprehension checks too often, alas," she concludes.
The
Ubiquitous Art of Bluffing" by Patricia Martin in Essential Teacher, September 2007 (Vol. 4, #3, p. 17-19), no e-link
available
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