Here is an example of cRD. On page 48 of Le Voyage de Sa Vie, the protagonist Jean-Luc is grabbed by the villain La Femme Insecte. The scene I would focus on lasts only three lines. It has only about four dominant verbs and is therefore perfect for a very compact R & D 53 minute class that is entirely focused on a few sentences. At some point in class, the tag team guy PSA will come in with great effect to spell TPR and RT (if RT even happened), and to bring in with it reps on another verb tense as well. How?
Here is the text in English:
…Jean-Luc cries “Thief!” in French and then in English and the old couple leaves discretely and quickly. The insect lady turns and approaches Jean-Luc. He can’t escape and she grabs his arm….
So now let’s do what we should always be doing when we teach using CI – focusing on, repeating, illustrating, demonstrating, TPRing, etc. the verbs. What are the verbs in this passage? Here they are:
yells
leaves
turns
approaches
can’t
to escape
grabs
That’s way too many verbs. So, first, I ask myself what they already know – yells, leaves, can’t, grabs – and I throw those out. That leaves me with:
turns
to approaches
escape
Three new structures is the most I can handle in one story, so why I should I try to handle more than three in an R & D class? I next notice that they are all pronominal. So that’s my lesson – a grammar lesson on pronominal verbs without once saying what a reflexive verb is (they never get it) or writing anything down. Finally, I’m teaching real grammar – correctly spoken French from which correctly spelled writing will emerge as long as everybody doesn’t get all jiggy with it too early, writing that can lay down in a nice rich bed of sound before coming to life on paper so that it’s not all ugly when it finally happens.