[ed. note: this is a recent comment by Robert. It connects to a somewhat confusing term (confusing at least to me) introduced around 2009 by Krashen – transparency. In an effort to locate the discussion of trasnparency into one accessible place with the keyword transparency in the blog title, I have moved various related texts here as a single blog post. Here is Robert’s comment first]:
If we think in terms of “scaffolding” (to use edu-speak) or “training wheels”, then our beginning students need full-on training wheels / extensive scaffolding so that everything we say is 100% transparent/comprehensible to them. The language (and everything else) is just too new to them to do anything else – they would be overwhelmed.
As they become accustomed to what we do and how we do it, we need to introduce ambiguity in small doses so that they learn how to deal with it. (The way I see it, this is one place that Second-Language Acquisition differs from First-Language Acquisition because in FLA we deal with ambiguity and incomprehension regularly as children. Our school situation does not allow for that, because of both time constraints and the expectations of our students.) When, how and how much targeted incomprehensibility to introduce are part of the Art of Teaching because this will differ with every class.
One good place to introduce targeted ambiguity and incomprehension is reading. Then I can use a “think aloud” (a popular term in my district at the moment) to show students how I deal with a word I don’t understand through context clues, etc. We can also introduce students to circumlocution by defining new terms and structures in the target language. For example, even though it is a cognate in German, I can clarify “Bank” by saying (in German) “the place where people have a lot of money” or something similar rather than simply giving names of banks – though that is useful too as a reinforcement.
Part of our problem as teachers is that we allow non-targeted ambiguity and incomprehensibility to creep into the lower levels and then have to “save the day” by either writing a lot on the board or using English. (Yes, I’m guilty of this.)
John’s insight on this is important here:
Robert, thank you for making this important distinction regarding the role of ambiguity. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard your statement: “Our school situation does not allow for that, because of both time constraints and the expectations of our students” coming from the mouth of someone who is justifying an analytical approach. Now, we can address this very legitimate concern, but from a CI perspective.
Diana says:
Transparency, as I understand it, is 100% comprehension. This is necessary for novice level students. However, as the students acquire more language and reach the intermediate level…we, as teachers, need to include a few words structures which force the student to deduce the meaning. If we don’t depart from 100% comprehensibility our students get totally lost when there is a new structure and consequently ‘shut down’. We want them to learn the skill of deducing the meaning based on context and critical thinking.
Robert says:
Recently I came across a TED Talk that provides, among other things, a time-lapse audio of the presenter’s son transitioning from saying “gaga” to saying “water”. Imagine if the poor kid had had to wait until he said “water” perfectly to get that first drink. The comments about modifying language are also significant for us as classroom teachers. The presenter points out that it was when the caretaker’s speech “dipped” to its simplest form that utterances (output) were elicited from the child. (Voluntary utterances, btw.) I’m sure this is what Krashen is going for when he talks about “transparency”. I think the first half of the speech is most relevant for us as foreign language teachers.
Here are the URLs:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word.html
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/11/24/brian-found-an-article/
Here are four links to the overall discussion that have been already published on this blog:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/01/02/transparency/
https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/01/05/transparency-2/
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/10/22/krashen-on-transparency/
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/12/12/input-vs-output-2/comment-page-1/#comment-23320