Useful Resources for CCVT Volunteers

Torture and Second Language Acquisition

Concentration

When learners first enroll in an ESL programme they are often extremely enthusiastic and grateful for the opportunity to learn. These positive feelings can and often are replaced with feelings of frustration and failure when the learner is unable to follow lessons in class and ultimately does not progress satisfactorily in her/his level of language acquisition. These feelings of failure are accentuated if the learner happens to have been a professional with many years of experience in the educational system in his/her country of origin. That they have succeeded in completing a formal course of study in the past only tends to accentuate difficulties experienced in the ESL programme.

To help learners cope with problems of concentration there are a number of strategies which instructors can employ:

The first has to do with the length of lessons. At the CCVT we have intentionally limited class times to no more than three hours per day with one or more breaks dispersed throughout this period. Breaks tend to be as long as thirty minutes and learners are given the opportunity to have a refreshment and chat among themselves.

Some instructors may feel that thirty minutes is too long for a break. If this is the case, the instructor can allow the learners one short break where learners do as they please and then a second more "structured" break. In the case of this second break, learners again can stretch their legs and have a coffee or tea but at the same time they are asked to speak only English and perhaps even complete a suitable assignment that will have some relevance to the lesson after the break. An example might be to schedule a debate after the break where learners are assigned certain roles to assume. Over the break they can strategize their positions and ready themselves for the actual exercise. Another idea is to do a short reading assignment before the break where a story is read without the ending. Learners are asked to come up with possible endings and be ready to discuss them after the break. During this second structured break, the instructor should circulate among groups of learners to ensure that they remain on track.

While planning lessons for a class with learners exhibiting concentration difficulties, a good rule of thumb is to keep the instructor's explanation as brief as possible and then to follow up with exercises that require action or movement on the part of the learners. It is much less taxing to concentrate on a task that calls for active involvement as opposed to when one is engaged only as a passive listener.

All class assignments should be infused with some level of activity. It is often relatively simple to introduce variations to exercises that include an active component. For example the following is a common exercise used by instructors to review learner comprehension levels: the instructor reads a story to the class and then asks learners to contribute a detail thus re-constructing the story. A simple variation on this activity that gets the learners more involved is having a ball of wool with intermittent knots dispersed throughout. The ball is given to student A who unravels the wool while re-telling the story. S/he continues until s/he reaches the first knot. At that point s/he passes the ball on to student B sitting beside him/her. This continues until the story has been totally re-constructed.

Activities that demand that learners get up out of their chairs and move around the class are also recommended. The following is an example:

• Write out a small, funny anecdote that contains grammar and structures recently studied. Ask half the class to step outside the room while you, the instructor, tell the remaining learners the story. Note: No writing is allowed. Learners must retain the sequence of events and repeat or retell the story in their own words to the other learners. Invite the learners waiting outside the room back. The learners who remained in the class for the first telling of the story now go outside. Repeat the story again but this time make several obvious changes to it. When all of the learners are re-assembled, they re-count the details of the story and try to find the changes. This activity is ideal for speaking practice at anv level. It focuses learners' concentration, yet provides flexible ways to attain the goal of relating a sequence of events.

Memory

In order to minimize the chance of this situation occurring there are a number of guidelines the instructor can follow:

• Avoid discussions that deal with politics and religion in a controversial way i.e. the merits of one leader or form of government over others.

• Be sensitive to the materials used in class. Although there is an abundance of excellent ESL instructional texts on the market, many include pictures and situations that are violent in nature. Picture using pictures and stories involving robberies, imprisonment, fires, and arrests, for example, should all be avoided. Considering the number of physicians who are involved in torture, photos depicting doctors and doctors offices should also be used with caution.

• It is advisable, wherever possible for the instructor, to visit the site of class trips before taking learners on an excursion. This is especially true when a tour is involved as sometimes situations can occur which upset survivors in the most surprising places. For example. the CBC Broadcast Centre in Toronto provides an excellent tour of its facilities. A very small part of the tour, however, includes leading learners through a small enclosed area which is called the 'Dead Room.' It is labeled as such because it is completely silent and used to produce sound effects for radio drama. For a survivor of torture, however, walking through the area could easily dredge up very disturbing memories. If the instructor knows what to expect on a tour, s/he can easily request that parts. which can be potentially disturbing be eliminated. It is equally important to screen all videos before using them in the classroom and to discuss the content of any presentations given by guest speakers.

• When using TPR (Total Physical Response) activities, exercise moderation. Survivors have increased sensitivity to external stimuli and too much frantic movement could be a reminder of when the military entered a village and attacked the inhabitants.