Perpetual Motion: Keeping the Language Classroom Moving

 

Setting Up the Panauricon

What you need is:

  • a classroom big enough (to seat the number of students involved and to allow the free movement of half of them around the outside of a circle of chairs)
  • moveable chairs or lecture chairs for each student
  • ideally between twelve and thirty students although bigger groups are possible. (It could also be possible to set up two panauricon 'circles' in the one classroom.

Pre-panauricon

A classroom with a TPR (Total Physical Response) element will be an easier context in which to set up the panauricon than one in which the students are used only to sitting passively in rows. Warming up a panauricon class with some TPR instructions effectively eases students into the idea of movement as part of the language learning process. These methods are particularly effective with Confucian Heritage Culture (i.e. East Asian) students because these students do not associate movement or activity with learning contexts like classrooms. If movement and self-motivated activity are useful parts of language learning, if they are definitive of a difference the teacher needs to assert between the oral class and others, then why not begin lessons by asserting that difference, by getting students in touch with the realia of their own bodies? Such strategies help to combat the inherent unreality of the foreign language classroom, the classroom in which everyone is pretending that they have a need to communicate in a language other than their own. If you have control of students' bodies (via movement) you are a step closer to their hearts and minds.

A classroom in which students are used to following simple movement instructions is an easy classroom in which to implement the panauricon.

A Quick Warm-up

Stand in a circle. Turn to your left. Turn to your right. Face into the circle. Face out of the circle. Turn around 180 degrees, clockwise. 360 degrees, anti-clockwise. Take a step forward. Take a step to your left. Take a step back. Touch your legs. Touch your neck. Take two steps forward. Sit down where you are.

Beginning the Panauricon

For the Pairwork Phase

Instruct the students as follows.

Instead of sitting in a big circle (assuming they are used to that) we're now going to make a circle with an inside and an outside (you can call it the 'inside-outside' circle for reference). Here's how it works.

  • Half of the people are inside the circle.
  • Half of the people are outside the circle.
  • Everyone inside has a partner outside the circle.
  • Everyone outside has a partner inside the circle.
  • Please take your chairs with you. We'll have our conversations sitting down.
  • Any questions?
  • Remember - everyone has to have a partner.
  • Please do it now.

An even number of students allows the teacher to stand in the middle of the circle. From this position s/he can easily tune into any pair interaction: ask students to repeat what they have said, ask questions, correct errors, fine-tune tasks and so on. An odd number of students puts the teacher in one of the chairs, in a pair with a student. In this case the teacher can choose to be inside the circle (to minimise his or her movement) or outside the circle (especially good when introducing the panauricon so as to model movement around the circle). Being in the circle gives the teacher the opportunity to closely monitor and assess students' performance. Where students are used to the panauricon, a student's absence will allow a variation from teacher-in to teacher-out of the circle mode. This kind of variation helps to keep the panauricon lively.

Once practice commences, be it a pre-taught drill of fixed length or a fairly free conversation (or anything in between), it is of course likely different interactions will proceed at different paces. Therefore it is good to wind down a 'round' gradually. If a round finishes too abruptly just because some people have already finished then some other students may feel that they have not had the opportunity to complete their practice. If a round drags on then some students may feel bored with waiting. Timing is everything in the running of the panauricon because it is an activity which enlists the members of the class as a single organism.

Having drawn a first round to a gradual end and then definitely asserted this perhaps with a phrase like stop speaking now, it's time to make the wheel turn and to give everyone a new partner.