Dr. Krashen has set before us an enormous challenge by his suggestion that we learn languages unconsciously. That is because learning in schools is typically about conscious, analytical, left brain deciphering of subject matter.
Thus, in languages, we have created books to help us present the language, but that very fact takes us, if Krashen is right, out of the one place in our brains, the unconscious mind, where language learning actually occurs.
Not only that, but the school vision of language learning as an academic (conscious, analytical) progress process conflicts directly with Krashen’s vision that language learning is essentially a social process. Academic progress process vs. social process. Hmm.
Yes. The set of expectations that we give a child in a book based classroom is exactly the opposite of the set of expectations that we give a child in a Krashen based/comprehensible input based classroom.
In the former, the child is asked to show up in class as an academic being, with no real responsibility to the group except to do well on tests. In the latter, the child must show up in class as a social being, with a social responsibility to the group, doing their 50% to hold up the reciprocal nature of CI based instruction and make it work.
In the former, the child is primarily a thinking being. In the latter, the child actually experiences feelings. There is nothing wrong with thinking in a school, it is what schools are for, but the problem is that we don’t learn languages by thinking, but rather by hearing and feeling and experiencing them.
Our students must hear languages for thousands of hours, in interesting and meaningful ways in a social setting that is essentially an unconsious process in which we focus on the meaning of the message and not the medium of the message, thus freeing up the unconscious mind to work its magic.
Now that I am asking my students to show up socially as human beings in my class, I am a much happier teacher. I don’t feel so alone or distant from my students. My students aren’t robots and neither am I a robot. How refreshing!
There really is a difference between the academic and the social responsibility of students in schools when it comes to language learning. We teach in a field that is not simply academic, if the results are to be tangible.