Many people think that the shift that we are in now towards comprehensible input is like the shift that has just recently occurred from the use of film to digital equipment in movie making. The reasoning is that film was effective, but digitial equipment is more effective and easier to work with, but the result is the same – a film.
Many teachers who refuse to change to comprehension based instruction admit that comprehensible input is powerful, but see, in their own traditional efforts, power as well. They are wrong. The shift that we are in is not a shift like the one from film to digital.
The change we are in is from a perceived flat world to a round world. Those who fail to understand that stunning fact, the fact of the difference between the old way of teaching languages and the new way, will pursue their careers and their use of computers and books into a corner as the CI revolution takes off around them by younger teachers who see through the false offerings of computers and books in bringing about real results.
One such person, who has trained at the National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center with Helena Curtain and Mari Haas, recently contacted me about TPRS/CI and I could feel that she is unaware that the world is now round. I knew that bc she kept asking me for materials and I kept saying that it is not about materials but is a process* of taking anything and working with it to create comprhehensible input. She just wanted materials. She still thinks that the world is flat.
Here is an email I wrote to her, in trying to make it clear that the world is round (i.e. not about materials but about process). I received no response. She wanted materials and didn’t get any. To her, the world is still flat. Maybe someone else in our group can use this argument that I wrote to her to convince others that the world is round:
My advice is to
1. find a story (from the native culture that you are working with, an old story from the history of the tribe) that is short, to start with 2. take the two or three most common structures that you find in the story, and write a script. Here is an example of a script:
A Fight
- loves
- wants to be with
- hits
Jillian loves Brad. (get a girl actor up now and circle that). Brad wants to be with Sammie (get Brad and Sammie up now and circle). Jillian hits Sammie.
3. Ask the script – that is, start the story and plug in all the underlined variables with information about the people and the culture in the room and watch the smiles happen. Soon, they will be so focused on the message that they won’t realize that the medium for its delivery is the target language. That is real acquisition. Then you will have a chance to save this language.
Don’t worry about how stupid or unlikely the story is. That is not what this is about. It is about getting repetitions of the three structures. One of the most commonly misunderstood things about CI instruction is that the story is the big deal. It’s not. The structures are. The story is merely a delivery device for the structures. The reason for that unlikely reversal is that the story cannot possibly be learned, but the target structures can. No materials in the world can substitute for the focus on just a few words in the TL in this way. That is how people learn the language, through the repetition of just those few structures hundreds of times in ways that are personally meaningful and interesting to them. So my answer is clear to you. You won’t find any materials for this work because none exist. You must make them yourself. And you must not let the story get in the way of the repetition of the structures you have chosen. I would love to take a story from this culture and script it. I can share that process with you at a deeper level if you are interested. [ed. note: I wrote this six days ago and so she is clearly not interested in these kind of materials, these “non-materials.] So, instead of locating materials, we create them and thus grab our audience and it all changes. If any of this resonates with you, let me know and we can maybe create a script to start with. I did this with the Saul Nation in Oklahoma and I am sure that the people in the country you are going to would react in the same positive way. Jacob Manitowa is their language reclamation guy and he is someone with whom you may want to speak at some point, since we are talking about engaging very young children in their heritage language, right? Not clear on that. The Sauks follow the model described above.
Let me know if I can be of further assistance on this.
*with everything that that implies about human frailty in making it work