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Anti-rules

I saw the other day that Lindsay Clandfield and Luke Meddings had done a session at IATEFL on subversiveness in the classroom and that there is also a publication. I love being subversive and I find that being creatively subversive with teenagers can be a great boost to the class dynamic and also to their motivation. Today I had a chance to introduce a little subversiveness with language I tend to always subvert and that is modals for prohibition. I doubt it's a new thing for most people, but I always find it interesting!

by liborius on Flickr

Often, in the books, there is an exercise where the students have to decide what rules they should follow in different situations: in school, in a library, in the swimming pool, for example. I tend to allow them to practise creating 'anti-rules', particularly regarding what they are or aren't allowed to do in school. Some examples from today's class were:

You must hit the teacher.

You must break all the windows.

[not just from the more destructive boys in the class, hitting the teacher was fairly common!]

You shouldn't do your homework.

You can listen to music in class.

You can sleep in class.

and also?

You can sing with the teacher.

[which I thought was interesting!]

They also learnt 'to throw somebody out of class', obviously because they suggested that:

You can throw the teacher out of class.

In this activity they can be creative and a bit silly, but they have a framework in which to work and because they are focussing on 'anti-rules' they still have to consider what they are and aren't allowed to do normally, in order to subvert the rule in the first place. In fact, we started the class with some pictures of real situation where we talked about proper rules, such as no jumping in the swimming pool, though they were also introduced to the word 'wee'. I think you can probably figure out why.

I teach these groups only once a fortnight and our aim is to get them communicating as much as possible in English, while following the language points that their 'normal' teacher is introducing in their regular classes. As a result, I like to promote creativity in these classes, as I think they are often restricted in terms of creativity at school in general. One student said to me recently "My teacher says I have to stop being so creative", which worried me somewhat, after I'd asked him to invent something and be creative. I replied that I was happy for him to be creative, when it was required in my class, but that perhaps it wasn't always a good thing in other classes - I was trying to be diplomatic.

This outlet for creativity perhaps also encourages them to make suggestions for what activities we do and how. Today, for instance, the final activity was for them to come to the front and present the anti-rules that they had concocted. The first pair just read their list, but the second pair decided that one of them would read 3 sentences, while the other partner mimed, then they swapped for the other three sentences. I thought this was a great idea and told them so. The remaining pairs asked if they had to do this, so I suggested that they could choose whether they did or not. All of them did the same and the activity was lots more fun!

So in the end, I had subverted the normal textbook-style activity and they had subverted my plan. I'm quite happy with that.

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