Here is Bob’s response to the previous post about what CI really is, and I see there have been a few other responses to this thread. I am putting Bob’s comments here because of some odd glitch in the comment software that prevents him from posting. If that ever happens to you, send the comment to me and I will post it like this.
Ben, thanks for this follow up. I am going to work later today on what you’ve said, my own experience and cobble together the things that CI (or TCI, but I gotta tell you how I loathe all acronyms) is. Just before I found this post this morning, I fielded a question on the Latin Best Practices list from a teacher (very traditional, very 4 percenter, as I read his posts) who wants to know what students taught for four years in a CI classroom can do (it’s actually a very good question) but then specifally wants to know how they perform on the Latin AP, SAT II Latin exam and the NLE. I had to start by pointing out that none of those tests are measuring ability in Latin (waiting for a shift in the cosmos when that statement lands later this morning). I also pointed out, which your post here subtly reminds us of: CI work is just damned hard (and exciting) and relentless (and rewarding), and that there are very few Latin teachers right now who have done CI for four years straight, but many who are newly interested and taking it up. I then described for him what my students can do at the end of four years. Here’s an excerpt:
At the end of four years students in a CI classroom can hold conversations in Latin around a variety of topics at what I would call a low to middle intermediate level (see ACTFL speaking standards). They can write extensively on a variety of topics at a middle to high intermediate, perhaps low advanced level. They have begun to ask insightful questions of grammar and are capable at this point of receiving some explicit grammar instruction and using it to edit their own work (the only thing for which grammar study is valuable). They can read and discuss in Latin texts that are appropriate for their level–selected material from the Medieval period, fables from many periods, selections from Catullus, Ovid, Cicero, etc with appropriate vocabulary work (not glossing, but time spent in class having conversations using the vocabulary that will be encountered in the texts). They handle embedded readings of anything you want to offer them, which then lead to much easier reading of the original texts. They enjoy writing their own stories on a variety of topics and are capable of holding thematic conversations around modern issues: food, travel, entertainment, sports, etc, again, with appropriate vocabulary work in the class toward those topics.
In other words, they can do things that most Latin teachers have never done or been asked to do. They have a first hand experience of Latin as a language and are not dependent on translation in order to understand. They are capable of grammar and other discussions about a text being held entirely in Latin. Last year, my seniors went to the Carlos Museum at Emory University, took their standard docent’s tour, came back to school and spent the next month preparing their own tour of the Carlos and returned to give the tour, in Latin, to 100 of their Latin 3 peers. They spent most of that month in preparation developing vocabulary appropriate for a museum and working with hundreds of photos to make sure that they could talk in Latin about any display that they walked up to. AS within any group there will be varying ability on all of the things I have described. One of the major differences in a CI classroom is that everyone makes progress, all the time. No one fails. Retention rates are very high compared to traditional programs.
While I am writing this, a Latin teacher chimed in by IM (imagine–at 5:45 AM) to ask if there was still room in my workshop coming up in March. Fascinating times.