This article is a republishing of three comments made here this morning. Two of the comments are by me and one is by Jody. They address the topic of when to start reading novels in TPRS/CI classes. I post the comments here bc they contain seeds for a discussion I believe we haven’t yet really resolved in the TPRS/CI world, or even really begun, which is when to begin the reading of novels in level 1 classes (or to even do it in level 1):
Me: Reading, not listening, is the key to TPRS/CI, in my opinion. However, listening is required for reading to happen, so they must be made to work together in a kind of artful balancing act by the teacher.
Now, what is more valuable, readings based on stories or readings based on novels? In my opinion it is readings based on stories, because the vocabulary in those (step 3 of TPRS) readings have been exhaustively heard first in steps 1 and 2, whereas the vobulary that the kids encounter in novels is more diffuse and amorphous.
That is why I think that stories should precede novels and that novels should be read beginning only in level 2. I have found that it gives the kids much more confidence to read a “beginning” novel (caution on that word is advised) in level 2 than in level 1. Reading too many novels too early is a mistake, for the reason given above.
Pauvre Anne is a good beginning novel – it only has 300 words in it. The kids at level 1 can read that in the spring easily. That is what we want, for it to be really easy, almost effortless, for them.
Again, even we educators – who have studied Krashen and his ideas about how unconscious and effortless language acquisition should be – still buy into the archaic idea that learning should be all toil and sweat and hard work.
It shouldn’t be! Kids wait years to read when learning their first language and it’s still hard for them. It’s not about sweat – it should be sweet and fun and natural. It should be play!
Jody:
This is an important reply, Ben. If we find ourselves spending most of our time backward planning and prepping our students to read a novel, something is terribly wrong. They’re not ready. The end.
My only quibble would be “calling” a level at which they’ll be ready (I know you’re just eyeballing it for our benefit.) Level 2, 2.5, 3–are just numbers. Looks different at different ages and developmental levels, too. I believe teachers need to lay the groundwork, as you have described it so eloquently, and “notice” when a novel would be easy and almost effortless for their students. Then, and only then, should they be doing this kind of extended reading. I can’t torture kids with reading. Doesn’t work.
Me: And THAT is an important reply. This idea that we are discussing here today – the idea of when to start novels – is brand new, to my knowledge, in the TPRS/CI community. It is a new discussion.
About four years ago we realized the importance of reading in Denver Public Schools and I think that Diana may have gone overboard with it. We probably have more of Blaine’s readers (Carol’s new and better books weren’t available at the time) than anyone. We had young TPRS teachers in DPS getting crazy with four novels a year at level 1.
The correct idea that reading novels is key to acquiring a language did not take into account that the reading should be easy – effortless to use Krashen’s term – and we don’t do that right now in the general TPRS/CI community. We still think it’s about effort.
So what to do. Well, we can do stuff that has emerged here recently from Robert and Andrew (David’s idea of textivating texts pertains mainly only to stories, the way I understand it), so doing Essential Sentences and aWB (Andrew’s Writing Beast) is a start.
But why don’t we just hold off on the novels until the kids are ready to roll with them, sans effort? Now this takes it all back to the assessment monsters that we all have to wrestle with. We can’t do that because of the way district testing is currently set up. How can the kids take assessments on reading and writing and speaking at the end of level 1 if all they have done is listen to stories? Then we look bad and, if I know this group, we don’t like to look bad.
It’s the poisoning of Krashen’s ideas by schools and the way they are set up. Krashen has been busting his hump for thirty years now to show the world how people REALLY acquire languages, by listening effortlessly for thousands of hours before reading and doing the two output skills, and then even we, the fricking teachers who align with Krashen, try to change his findings to align with packing the instruction of all four skills into 125 hours and give assessments that reflect back heavily on our teaching and job performance after level 1.
My level 1 kids last year, who don’t know English, wrote like shit last year, and everybody said “Oh, it’s those Latino kids – they can’t even write in English!” I don’t think that that’s it. I think that we in the TPRS/CI world are focusing on the interpretive (reading) and presentational (writing and speaking) skills WAY too early.
If that is true and we are making a mockery of what Krashen is really saying about how learning a language should be effortless, while quoting him all the time, then we suck.