What is going on?Joshua Arnett and Kurtis Foster

English Language InstituteMissouri State Univeristy Springfield, MO

Improving Tolerance of Ambiguity in (and outside of) ESL classrooms

Where this idea came from…

• Students freak out• Student confidence plummets• Students remain dependent on teachers• Lack of (or lackluster)participation

• Tolerance of Ambiguity

Linguistic

Task

• Why FOCUS on Tolerance of Ambiguity?• Increases:

– Autonomy– The amount of comprehensible input– Student confidence– Class participation

• Why literature and art?– culture & language simultaneously learned

• Helps students feel that they are a part of the culture and encourages interaction with native speakers at a deeper level.

– Engages the creative mind for creative approaches to language problem solving

– It’s just more fun

• How?• Teach 2 things:

»A Mindset

»Specific Skills

A Mindset

• What we need students to understand:– It’s okay to not understand quite a bit of

what’s going on in task/conversation– The big picture is the most important part of

comprehension

Specific Skills

• –Patience

–Learning vocabulary from context

• How? (continued)– Put students in a position to feel some

ambiguity– &– Incorporate themes of tolerating ambiguity in:

• Warm ups• Intensive reading/listening for context clues• Extensive reading for the same purpose

Extensive Reading

Intensive Reading/Listening

Encouraging Students

to Embrace

Confusion

Warm Ups

Mindset- the Big Picture

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubpRcZNJAnE