I have been joyful for a week now about a group of adult Russian students in my Express Fluency class. For the ninth session, I had found the perfect picture for a story prompt. I asked the students to write for just three minutes, in Roman or Cyrillic letters, and WOW!! In those three minutes, after only nine class hours, they all wrote –in Cyrillic – as much as some Russian I students used to write in five or ten minutes after an entire semester. I’d never asked short-course students to write, and I was blown away.
What does this tell me? Well, first, that I had genius students. Spanish teachers, all. Second, that I shouldn’t be so fearful of asking for limited output, and third, that my students might enjoy an occasional short challenge. Mike Peto suggests that three minutes is probably the longest that I’d want to dedicate to writing during an online lesson, given that the piece students need from me is hearing the language. The quick sample works!
Students told me the story of this conversation. They made my day!
MJ's Comprehensible Input 