CI Training, Tips, and Strategies, including TPRS® and other Krashen Based Methods

Laurie said in a recent blog comment:

“…I have long wondered about the irony of measuring language acquisition using NUMERICAL data…”.

I replied, as a comment, and make it a blog entry here because then it is more searchable:

Laurie I think it’s time for an investigation. I’m not wondering anymore. The manner in which we have invested in numerical assessment is cavalier, at best. So what if we’ve been doing it for many decades – we still need to look at it. Let’s compare the din of language, that is, the immeasurably complex possibilities of almost infinite possibilities of words in different orders, to an ocean. Words float all over the place, the flotsam and jetsam of language. They come and go in mind boggling combinations, like these here in this sentence. Now, are we really going to try to assign a number to those possibilities? I think that the only way to get accurate data is to create a body of evidence that has two aspects, one visible and one emotive. If a child studies a language for four years, let’s say, and we have, ON FILM, a set of eight benchmark interviews with each child (a pretest and a postest for each year), then, by the end of the course of study, we can see that the children either can or cannot understand and express themselves in the target language. Secondarily, they can either write or read in the language as well. This is a visual, not data driven, way of seeing if the child has learned anything. (This is where the ruse occurs – as long as teachers can create tests, they can teach to those tests and fool people. But film doesn’t lie and that is why I propose this visual assessment idea and the dumping of the data format). The emotive part, not scientific at all, to me, is the most indicative of success. Ask the kids if they feel that they are learning. Look at them in class (1st year students excepted – basically they are still like small children, getting input, so that their neurology is much less visible than CI trained kids at higher levels). If an administrator walks in, of course, they change the energy. Those walk in observations by administrators reveal nothing, except that teachers who are normal human beings tend to shut down some of their light when being observed (judgement has no place around languages). But, after four years, ASK THE KIDS if they are happy about the time they spent. Walk into my classroom tomorrow. Look at Chris. He is a language sponge who is a funny person. He has fun in French class. He is about six months away from speaking a ton. Look at Janine, who commented here yesterday. She sits up, squared shoulders, clear eyes, locking on to every syllable, decoding way more than 90% of what I am saying. Look at Trey. He astounds kids from other French 1 backgrounds with his output. Heads spin when he speaks. His questions in French reflect instant and complex higher order processing – this is a French 2 kid insisting on asking complex questions in the target language! (and guess what? the grammar is there!) But on the assessment instrument last year, nobody caught that. They asked him to describe some kids next to a school bus and he did, scoring something like 36 correct answers of 40 on the overall test. But that is not nearly as accurate an assessment of what he has learned as his speaking in class. He, admittedly, is rare, a supertalent, because most of my current kids in level 2 won’t begin strong output until April, but 30% of them, the ones with the discipline to truly listen in class for three years, will pass the AP French exam next year with scores of 3 or better (end of their 3rd year as juniors). I bet $5,000 on that with someone, for real, and I will pay up if the kids don’t deliver. But they will do it easily, because they will have heard and read French solidly for three years in ways that are musical, story driven, poetry driven, and therefore meaningful to them, so that the output will be there – output that will be human and not robotic. Trey will be a language output symphony by then. CI works, outhshines in the long run, when taken out of the data machine school scene thing. Why take the AP exam, then, if it a data gathering test? Great question. Reason one is that that exam becomes less and less stupid each year. They are getting better over there at the College Board. Secondly, and mainly, because Krashen trained teachers can play in any pool. We can play the data game for the data robots who then approve of us or not depending on who wrote the test and how robotic the administrator is, but we can also actually teach for acquisition. Our CI/TPRS trained kids can swim with the big sharks. Their 3’s and 4’s on the AP next year won’t even reveal all they know, which (here is the point of this ramble and it’s your fault Laurie) is because WE CAN’T MEASURE WHAT OUR KIDS ARE REALLY GETTING IN STEPHEN KRASHEN/BLAINE RAY BASED CLASSROOMS….O.K. I’m done.

P.S. Another point must be made – when 96% of kids (national statistic) are gone in level 4, with only a handful of white obedient girls left in the fourth year classes, we need to look at anything that will bring reform. And, as we get stronger and stronger (have a good week, y’all!), and we have 96% or thereabouts of our students still with us after four years, because they weren’t tested to death with left brain whips, then people will start to appreciate the affect – yes I mean affect and not effect – that data driven programs have on kids. All they want to do is learn the language and have fun. We don’t have to make it so complicated and serious.

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Heather has very kindly clarified some things about ways to use this site. This was published last summer and is here repeated for those who may have missed it then:

Bonjour to all of Ben’s readers! I recently fixed an issue with the RSS feed from the blog – if you tried to use it, it would not download the posts. As I have an iPad and am using the Blogshelf app to read my favorite blogs, that was kind of a bummer for me. So I offered to fix the feed and now it’s working. The new feed address is http://feeds.feedburner.com/benslavic – just point your feed reader in that direction and they’ll pick it up. You can also click on the “subscribe via RSS” button at the top of the blog and that will add it to your feeds.

So what does this mean? For those of you already familiar with how RSS works, it means you can now add Ben’s blog to your favorite feed program and pick up new posts as they are added. For those of you who have not used a feedreader before, it’s a great way to save time and keep track of everything in one spot. There are many feed reading programs out there, Google has one, and there are also apps for the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad. Once you add a feed to your reader program, it will check the feeds regularly for new information. Whenever there is something new, it will download the new stuff and let you know that it’s there and ready to read. If you have quite a few different blogs you like to read regularly, it’s a wonderful timesaver – you don’t have to visit all of the different blogs to see which ones have new posts, you just visit your feed reader and see all of the new stuff. It’s kind of like having your own electronic newspaper that only displays the stuff you care about!

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I published this link from Profe Loca a few weeks ago, but many of us would like to print a hard copy now that school has started for many of us. I wish there was a way to have this text automatically reappear here every week. It is a sobering text for all people in education. The words are true. Here is the link:

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/212383-Valedictorian-Speaks-Out-Against-Schooling-in-Graduation-Speech

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In a blog entry a month ago I had asked Doug Stone to comment on the idea of change to new ways of teaching, or change in any field. His response is repeated here. I think that the fourth paragraph is brilliant:

Hi Ben,

Here it is as brief as I could make in a short time. So the idea for the model for resistance to change came from my experience with acculturation which began not long after moving to Peru.  At the time I had no formal knowledge of the process of acculturation.  I’d heard the word, but didn’t know what it was about, or what I was up against.  [Later, while in graduate school I would learn that there are a number of models out there which outline the process in different ways.  Although differing a bit in perspective, all the models I came across recognize it as a process which can vary in intensity from person-to-person depending on a number of variables including how deep the immersion in the adopted culture is, how far the individual is distanced from the home culture (distance can be in terms of cultural differences, not necessarily physical distance) and the psychological makeup of the individual.  The more rigid the individual’s psychic makeup, or the more strongly identified the individual is with key values of the home culture which conflict with those of the adopted culture, the more strongly the acculturation process is likely to be experienced. (I came to call this phenomenon “Value Shock” to emphasize that acculturation is a personal process.) What I outline below is summarized from my master’s thesis, in which I propose a bit different and more prescriptive model for acculturation.]

Not having any formal understanding of acculturation, I looked to the subjects I had studied in undergraduate school for understanding and found answers in part in the ideas of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. (In others, I found tools for coping/integration.) I’m not going to go into her ideas in depth, but if you are not familiar with her work, “On Death and Dying,” I highly recommend it.  It is a useful guide for anyone who is faced with a terminal illness, or experiences the loss of a loved one (experiences any significant loss for that matter).  I also think it helps understand what our older teenage and adult students who have immigrated to this country are experiencing in our classrooms.  Anyway, Kubler-Ross, in working with terminally ill patients and their families, recognized some basic stages people go through when facing death and in the process of grief.  I don’t have my copy in front of me, so someone correct me if I am not right in the wording, but it looks basically like this:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.  What is important is that this is not a linear model and it can be a fairly rocky emotional ride.  People don’t necessarily experience all the stages in this order, or even experience all the stages.  Like the acculturation process, some get stuck in certain stages.  As well, it doesn’t tend to have a clean, well defined beginning and end—the process is a multi-layered.

In those first years, I recognized in my acculturation process the process of significant loss and grieving which Kubler-Ross describes.  Just recognizing it was helpful.  Probably more significant, at the same time, I also knew that I was involved in a deep level process of understanding.  (Understanding means learning which takes place at a deep level.).  The deeper I got into the acculturation process, the deeper the level on which I found myself challenged — eventually reaching core values and beliefs — “Value Shock.”  That these two accompanied each other struck me as relevant:  loss/understanding.  It seemed that they were two sides of the same coin — change.  So it seemed apparent to me that acculturation, and the loss of a significant other (or any significant loss), are not just processes of loss, but processes of deep-seated learning:  For those of us who have experienced the loss of a significant other, we know that we are also faced with learning to live (or survive!) without that person — learning to fill in the gaps they leav — gaining understanding of some profound truths about relationships, life, death, etc.  Anyway, seeing it this way, change as loss and understanding helped me to understand the dynamics that I and some of my colleagues go through when faced with change in general.

The connection between this two-sided process and resistance to change in other areas came about while working at an institution which had recently adopted a new book with a newly prescribed methodology.  The new method required significant changes, both in technique and theory, for some teachers.  Needless to say, there was quite a lot of resistance to this change.  Although there were many reasons for rejecting the change, some quite legitimate (people at the end of their careers, or who had been around long enough to know that books don’t deliver what they preach), there were a number of people for whom this change seemed to represent a threat.  From conversation, I sensed a rigid adherence to a way of thinking and doing things which was in direct opposition to those proposed by the new method, and it seemed in many cases that the adherence connected at a deeper level to their concept of self (and self-esteem).  I could see that change under these circumstances would be accompanied by the process of learning/loss I described above, with its accompanying emotional content (albeit on a much lesser scale than loss of a significant other or acculturation).  There is nothing comfortable, nor desirable, about going through change accompanied by emotional content, even more so when the underlying process of change isn’t understood and no tools are available for coping with it.  In this model I feel that I’ve gained an insight into why at least some people resist change even when the change is for the better. On the up side, I also feel that if people have a framework for what they are experiencing which makes sense, and have some effective tools for coping with the negative emotions which come up (which in its most basic form involves simple reality checks on the thoughts behind the emotions), they are more likely to stick it out, and are more likely to gain the understanding which integrates opposing values — the motive for my presentation at NTPRS.  So in a nutshell, that’s my thinking about resistance to change and teaching. I didn’t think I could summarize my thesis in four paragraphs.  Phew!

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Susan Gross is coming to Japan for the first time, giving a three day workshop September, 18-19th and 20th, 2010. If you are in Japan or nearby, don’t miss this rare chance for TPRS training. The workshop will benefit teachers who teach any language and any level.

For more information and to register contact Martha Nojima at english@shimabara.jp

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Below is the flyer information from Skip providing the information about my visit to Maine:

The World Language Department at Poland Regional High School
will host Ben Slavic, author of TPRS in a Year! and PQA in a Wink!, on October 7 & 8, 2010 in Lewiston.

Per Ben: This second workship will focus on teaching fluency using comprehensible input, including training in TPRS and other
ways to reach kids in the target language. The workshop will focus on:

- providing CI through reading
- PEER COACHING – participants will practice making their instruction comprehensible and meaningful in front of peer coaches
- personalization and classroom discipline techniques

“It is crazy for me to present to people who have already been presented to. It is time to work on our feet now!”

Skip Crosby
Poland Regional High School
1457 Maine Street
Poland, ME 04274
(207)998-5410 x413 (school)
scrosby@rsu16.org

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