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November 15, 2009

Once upon a time, recently in fact, the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language Young Learners And Teenagers Special Interest Group had a field discussion about storytelling led by Andrew Wright. The discussion was deep and diverse but what a mouthful that opening sentence was! Are there certain kinds of words, certain strings and phrases that have no business in a story - are unstorylike, unstoryable, I mean unusable in stories - or does it all just depend upon the skill of the teller, the audience and the relationship between them?

One of the threads that developed was about NLP. Andrew was angered by the term and pointed out that the words it stood for Neuro Linguistic Programming were designed to be just as intimidating. He suggested that NLP was little more than dressed up common sense. This drew forth a response from me that I am going to use in full:

Hi Andrew,

While I agree with you about the name, I think NLP is a bit more than collected common sense, it's more processed, refined, distilled. Having been on an NLP course I wouldn't say that tying a knot in one's hanky is REALLY anchoring or fitting in with others is ACTUALLY mirroring. At the very least mirroring would involve copying a person's posture, breathing, language, tone etc. A lot of stuff on the web about NLP is horrible so it takes perseverance to find clear useful information. By chance I came across a page describing Anchoring the other day that I bookmarked. Here's the link:

http://www.whitedovebooks.co.uk/nlp/anchoring.htm

One thing NLP is ABOUT is learning techniques to control and CHANGE one's mental state. It's about the senses. It's about thinking. A lot of us prefer thinking in pictures. Some of us prefer sound, Some of us use feelings, some of use words. Most of us can do them all but we have a preferred method. What this means is that if we want to get an idea across we need to present it in different ways. This is similar to Gardener's multiple intelligences idea.

NLP is based on suppositions. For example, the idea that if one person can do something then anyone can do the same thing. It's just a matter of finding out exactly how the something was done. Another is...

Eek.. this is getting long! If anyone wants me to write more about NLP please let me know. For now I'll finish by mentioning a technique I learnt on that NLP course which is split stories. I often use split stories when I present. The idea is to start with a story and break at some point. This usually gets people curious and attentive. Splitting a story can make it more powerful and also help people to reflect upon what they have just learned and experienced. In The Arabian Nights tales Scheherazade uses split stories to save her life and reform a king.

Best wishes,

Chris (Hunt)
www.wisehat.com

Andrew then asked me about split stories and I started on a reply but day-to-day work took me away from finishing it. Now, with cold trying to take camp in my body I'm taking the liberty of finishing it and using it here:

Hi Andrew,

I doubt splitting stories is unique to NLP and didn't mean to suggest that it was. To show you what I mean here is one I use when I was presenting about using games to teach English. I used "The Cancer Of Competition"as my title but one time I was asked to change it on the grounds that it was negative. Though it's less the case nowadays, often when teachers think of games, they think of competitive ones without even realising that there are alternatives. My presentation was about the alternatives, non-competitive games and co-operative games. My opening story usually went something like this:

"Hello, I like games and I like stories. Here's a true one. I learnt to play chess at the age of 4. I once got asked if I'd ever considered turning professional and sometimes I wonder what could have happened if I'd ever had a proper teacher when I was young. Anyway, I've been making games longer than I can remember. I used to save up my pocket-money, such as it was, and think about which game in the shop window I'd buy once I'd saved enough. Sometimes I'd try to figure out the rules of a game from looking at the pieces and I'd try making my own version. After a while I noticed that the games I made myself were often more interesting than the ones I bought. Anyway, when I started teaching English I immediately thought of using games. The games I used were competitive because I didn't know of any other kind. They worked OK until one day I had a class with a little girl in it who just never won anything. Whatever kind of game I tried be it language game, or physical game or both she always lost. The other children never complained at her or ridiculed her but I still felt sorry for her. Sometimes I'd try giving her a helping hand but she hated that kind of cheating. I wanted to do something. I started thinking about what I was observing and then I got hold of "No Contest" by Alfie Kohn and that was a revelation.

Alfie Kohn defined competition as MEGA. I'll write it on the board. I promise it's the only bit of jargon I'll use today. MEGA stands for mutually exclusive goal attainment which has several implications. It means that if I win you lose. It also means that if I can make you lose I win. Not very friendly! Anyway, I told you I used to play chess? One time while at college I was in a chess tournament and in the first round I had to play a young boy. He was about 10 years old. After a few moves I came up with an idea, a new move I had never seen before. I decided to try it. This boy looked at the board for a while and then sacrificed his Queen. He forced check mate in just eleven moves. My new move led to a forced lost and the boy had found it! That's my shortest loss ever, but he was a nice boy and we had a friendly talk after the game. A bit later on, maybe round 4, I played another boy the same age. He was totally different. He lounged at the board. He sneered. He banged out his moves aggressively. I tried to be nice and offered to buy him a drink. He ordered cola and somehow managed to sip it contemptuously. He had some book knowledge and he caught me in an opening trap. Before long my position was totally lost. I could easily have resigned but there are times when you just don't want to give up, when you just want to win. So now here's a questionnaire all about games that I'd like you to fill out...

I hope that shows the idea. Start a story that has relevance to the topic at hand and at some point, hopefully when the audience is drawn in break the story and go onto something else. This way when you return to the story later it has more resonance. The story is a hook to draw learners to look at something important to the teacher. It's more than a bookend and it's more than a sandwich. It helps the learners. The story helps shape and deepen the more formal learning experience. What do you think? Does this make any sense?

Best wishes, Chris

What about BICS vs CALP? That will have to wait until next time. It's not another story but rather emeshed in this one. If you can't wait and why should you, you can read about it here and here. What's that? You couldn't care less about the acronyms. They give you indigestion? You want to hear about the little girl and the horrible boy? In my story they need you to know about BICS and CALP.

Humanistic Teaching

An approach to learning English

CALP vs BICS

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