The culture of relying on books and computer programs to teach a foreign language, which is a crazy thing indeed if you truly get what CI really is, cannot possibly succeed. It involves such a shallow and wide instructional dynamic.
Too few repetitions on too many words are involved in that kind of instruction. When we work with CI, we go narrow and deep with just a few words, ideally never using words the students don’t know.
I am currently in the middle of a three week long extended series of classes involving targeting all four skills, technology, embedded readings, and other stuff. The two words that started this learning sequence (which is based on the new bi-weekly schedule) have given birth to a ton of new vocabulary.
It seems counterintuitive that the kids could be learning new vocabulary when we are going so narrow and deep in our learning with just a few words, but that is exactly what is happening. When the kids have acquired those base words, only then can we add new words to the discussion for actual acquisition because only then can they be learned. Why? Because the foundation for them is so strong. Think of the strong man at the bottom of the pile of people he is holding up in the air.
By focusing on the grammar (correctly spoken and written language – not the fake one dimensional kind) and not on the words, we ironically learn many more words than when we merely focus on lists of words. Focusing on and memoring lists of words is pathetic. The person won’t remember them.