This new category – Greg’s Great Questions (gGQ) – is of upmost importance to new people. Those following the thread know that Greg Stout in Durham, NC joined this group last weekend and since then has done at least six months of growth into the method. (applause meter very high on that last sentence.)
I described to him a step by step list of things to do Sunday night and he took it and ran with it and now it is Friday and he is just finishing his first week of comprehensible input instruction.
From the emails we have shared this week, the last ones below, I have an image of my mind of Greg as a sprinter who on Monday bolted out of the starting blocks and built speed up each day until now, Friday, he is getting ready to cross the finish line, arms flailing I am sure, neck bent forward trying to hit the tape with his chin in a few hours, confident of victory.
Nobody I know has ever done this, heard about CI on a weekend, started it Monday, and successfully used it all week without looking back. It kind of boggles the mind when one thinks about what goes into this kind of instruction, the mind-bending nature of the transition from the old way.
Greg’s story will continue and I will create this thread here and this category to house all his questions as they occur to him over the next months, which I will ask him to post as comments below so we can have all his questions in one place. I will also catgorize this thread under the Beginning the Year category.
For those familiar with the acronyms, Greg this week did WA, OWI, CWB, and maybe WCTA today. Those four strategies are the beginning program I recommended for him Sunday night at the start of his race through CI this week.
Here is our latest email exchange, printed here with permission, from last nite (Thurs.):
Greg: My kids’ brains have been exploding all over the walls of my room. Week one summary coming this weekend, with question upon question. Thanks! I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I showed a funny little cat video in French as a brain break in French 1 yesterday. Before I hit play one of my kids noticed two cats on the screen and, using some words from OWI this week, excitedly blurted out, in PERFECTLY prounounced, unrehearsed French, “Monsieur, il y a deux chats!” I was doing backflips inside.
Ben: Dude can I post this or can you post it as a comment on your thread?? Then post the rest of the questions there as you get to them. This needs to be published, the two cats thing. That pretty much rocks!
Greg: I thought it rocked too! A whole, unrehearsed, not teacher-forced, not from a textbook, not for an “activity”, enthusiastically-spoken sentence. That’s what I’ve been waiting for for 4 semesters now, but it’s probably only the second or third time it’s ever happened. In FOUR semesters!