From time to time I will update those in the group who are interested on how our Beniko Mason/Krashen study is going. This is what we hope will be the first valid study comparing CI based instruction with traditional instruction. We started this week. Paul Kirschling identified about 42 verbs that we assumed/agreed were “pre-taught” from first semester. These are simple and common verbs like “goes/gives/drinks/eats” that any group of level 1 students would know.
Paul then provided the DPS study team with a list of 19 expressions that represented the new vocabulary for the study. These were more challenging expressions like “becomes aware of” or “sends” or “in the process of” and stuff on that level.
Here is that list:
PRE-TAUGHT NEW STRUCTURES/ENGLISH
eat monte, monte dans/goes up, gets
drink envoie/sends
gives reçoit/receives
makes vend/sells
does a l’air/appears, seems, looks
cries était trop occupé/was too busy
sceams ça ne marche pas it doesn’t work
wants s’échappe escapes, gets away
walks s’inquiète/inquieté is worried
sits en train de/in the process of
asks vole/steals/flies
there is/are se rend compte/realizes
works n’en croit pas ses yeux/doesn’t believe her eyes
dreams depuis quinze ans/for( the last) 15 years
opens je vais t’apprendre à/I’ll teach you how to…
closes il raconte n’importe quoi/he says anything
takes ment/lies (doesn’t tell the truth)
knows il ne sait pas quoi faire/he doesn’t know what do
listens sort quelque chose/tkes out something
sings
plays
throws
likes/loves
says
goes
calls himself
wants
has to go
wants to be
wants to have
asks
answers (responds)
is
has
speaks, talks
watches
sees
is afraid
sleeps
looks for
costs
becomes angry
I include these because they can illustrate to new people how comprehension based curriculae are organized. We take things that the kids already know, nothing else, and we then add new things so that each succeeding story has only three new structures for the kids to acquire. They are therefore never faced with anything but three new sound groupings in any class, which is wise.
The 19 new structures above are thus divided so that we do 3 per week in the form of one story. I follow this schedule:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2012/01/19/suggested-weekly-schedule/
I personally spend Monday doing nothing but PQA of the 3 new targets, the story on Tuesday, with two days of reading and discussion after that, and, since Beniko wants a writing piece on her study, I’ll spend Fridays working on writing.
Everything we do will be connected to those three structures. We won’t do any PQA, create any stories, read anything, or write anything that does not include only the words above. (That is the ideal anyway – of course new things will sneak in during the week, but we just use Point and Pause to get them in and out, and we don’t do any more than point and pause at new stuff. We certainly don’t assess on any words that were quickly pointed to and paused at.)
This sample curriculum reveals a ton of information. The most important thing it reveals is that it takes a long time, lots of work, an entire week at least, to teach just three new structures to students. And that isn’t even enough for the structures to be truly acquired. How many times did we hear a word when we grew up before we had acquired it?
I remember once in a college course I had to teach an undending list of words and test weekly on it. All I could do was ask the students to go home and memorize the words. Few did. They got the A’s. Now I look back in wonderment at all of that insanity.
Note that all of the small readings created from each story over the course of the six week study are like little forms of a big reading, one that includes all the 19 new structures. We were very lucky when Anne Matava agreed to write that big reading. She included all of the new target structures in it, and it is the base of the entire study in that the pretest consisted of our reading the big story to our classes and asking them to first write out what they heard in English (testing listening) and then write it out in the TL (testing writing) which is the way Dr. Mason wanted the study set up.
One traditional DPS teacher, when he saw the big story that Anne so graciously provided for us, immediately quit the study. He thought the study was geared towards the TCI teachers in the district and he didn’t want to be thus victimized.
Diana immediately wrote to him the response below. I like it because it clearly and directly invites all traditional language teachers to sit down at the ACTFL proficiency table, where they must now fully digest what is expected of them in terms of real outcomes that, first and foremost, reflect the three modes of communication (read proficiency skills) and not the now outdated skills listed in the nationals standards of “what kids can do” in terms of listening, reading, writing and speaking:
I will not try to change your mind but I would like to explain it this way: you are a student of French and hear a French speaker telling a story about something that happened to him or her. As a student of French, what is your level of comprehension when first hearing the story? After 6 weeks of French immersion and instruction, what is your level of comprehension?
And how did the student get there? What instructional methods were used to develop comprehension of the storyline which is focused on key high frequency vocabulary structures necessary for proficiency in the language.
The over-riding question is: does the focus on explicit instruction and focus on form with forced output work better to develop proficiency than an approach that does not use these strategies?
I am sorry you do not want to participate. Thank you for considering participation. Should you change your mind, please let me know.
The part in blue deserves to be written many times in a lot of places. I suggest that we all memorize it – I am going to – and use it when speaking with those who might be open to actually hearing the real messat there and who might actually think about what it means in terms of their students’ best interests and academic engagement in their classes.
So the study is off and running. I know that my students do in fact know (have acquired/can recognize in spoken French) the assumed pre-taught structures and now I can set myself to teaching them the new ones as described above.