Linda Li

There is something more going on when Linda Li teaches than just her genuine expertise at going slowly. There must be, because if the only remarkable quality in Linda’s teaching was SLOW, then it wouldn’t be that great, because robots can be made to do things slowly. What is it in Linda’s teaching that makes her delivery of comprehensible input so unique?
Those of us lucky enough to have attended Linda’s sessions last month may remember that there is a look in Linda’s eyes as well. It is as if she is trying to discover something. It’s a look of mystery, a look that invites us in with her to reflect on things in that co-creative process that we call storytelling.
What else? We also see in Linda’s face a kind of searching for something funny, something funny that she senses is there in the conversation, in the circling, but that she can’t quite find. She seems to be waiting to discover in the discussion something new and uniquely amusing about someone or something.
In St. Louis, Linda spoke in Mandarin for over an hour about how Dr. Krashen was sitting in the session with his cup of Starbucks coffee. She spun all kinds of things out of that. She clearly didn’t prepare any of that beforehand because she most likely didn’t even know that he would be in that session. She just saw him sitting there and started riffing on it, to use Jen’s excellent term to describe good comprehensible input.
So Linda’s command of SLOW is mixed with a sense of mystery, a desire to uncover something unique and interesting about someone or something in the room, and a feeling of wanting to find out something funny in the discussion as well.
In my view, Linda’s super slow searching for mystery and humor is a focus on substance and not form. We have seen Blaine, who also presents comprehensible input in a very slow way, do this as well. This ability to focus on substance beyond form, to focus less on what is factual and more on what is fanciful, is vital to our success as teachers who work with comprehensible input.
Linda focuses on substance and not form. She focuses on the essence of the information given to her. She doesn’t just process that Johnny plays football, she also searches within that fact for something that is greater than the fact, something that would give more depth to Johnny, something that would cause Johnny to be perceived by the others in the class as more than a mere cardboard cutout of himself, but as the real person that he is.
Linda searches, in her unique way, for something that has to do with the energy, something more essential, more human, more humorous, more at the bone marrow of the fact than the fact itself.
Linda teaches as Rabelais so long ago suggested that we read books: Gargantua’s prologue metaphor instructs the reader to “rompre l’os et sugcer la sustantificque mouelle”, to “break the bone and suck out the substance-filled marrow”…  — (François Rabelais, Gargantua, 1534, Prologue)
It has been said about Rabelais that:
…son ambition était à la fois d’amuser et d’instruire. La gaieté éclatante de ses textes, tout d’abord: elle se justifie “pour ce que rire est le propre de l’homme!”. La pédagogie ensuite. Pour lui, les nourritures intellectuelles et terrestres sont indissociables…. – (Thibault Doulan, http://www.alalettre.com/rabelais.php)
…his ambition was both to amuse and to instruct. The happiness bursting from his texts, first, is easily justifiable, because “laughter is the birthright of man!” Instruction then follows. For Rabelais, one cannot divide intellectual and earthly nourishment…. – (Thibault Doulan, http://www.alalettre.com/rabelais.php) – translation mine.
Is this not what Linda does besides just going slowly? Is there not a very human awareness of happiness and laughter and of the real person in her instruction? Is not the Chinese that we learn from Linda a mere byproduct of something much deeper going on?
Krashen repeatedly makes the point that our students learn by focusing on the meaning and not the words. Could Linda’s success as a language teacher be because she does exactly that, focusing on the meaning of what is happening in the classroom much more than on the device being used to deliver it (spoken Mandarin Chinese?)
It is her focus on the very humanness of what she learns from the group she is working with that makes Linda a teacher we all wish to emulate. SLOW is merely the vehicle for her chance to have fun with her students, to discover new and marvelous things about them. Krashen sitting there drinking coffee becomes, to Linda, a subject of mirth and lightness and a fun way to spend an hour with people she enjoys being with.
Linda goes for the substance, the “sustantificque mouelle”, and not the form. I’m going to try to do that tomorrow with my students. I will try to find little glimpses of humanity to focus on that will link us together so that we can spend happy moments together. I will use the French language to do so, but that won’t be the point. From Linda’s example, maybe I can plummet into substance tomorrow also.