4. When you introduce learners to a new technology, do you always have your students write instructions on the board? What are your reasons for doing this and how have learners responded to this approach?
Yes. I always use a TPR approach: Total Physical Response. It's an ESL teaching method. It means I'm showing the students and they're writing it on the board, so the language is generated from the experience. I use this approach with students. I use it with teachers. I use it with everybody I work with. And the reason I have the students do this semester after semester is that when you hand somebody instructions it's not part of them--it's not part of their experience. They're handed a piece of paper and they don't understand the necessity of following it. But when you have them write it down in their own words, then it's a meaningful piece of paper. Sometimes they will take little side notes in Spanish and they'll put little extra things here and there that they want to remember. And this would only be done if it were something that they created.
