There are reasons to take it easier at the upper levels. I know, we get excited because, by the end of level 2, with all that input in the form of stories and other forms of CI, we see ourselves having the potential for great in-depth upper level study with our kids.
They’re ready. They can do it because of all the two years of CI. We gear up for that. I think it is a mistake.
First of all, when you consider that people need over 10,000 hours to acquire a language, and the kids even at the upper levels have only had around 300 hours of instruction using comprehensible input (which is very little time even if they have heard and read it all the time since the beginning of level 1).
So they are not upper level students at all. That’s the first reason to relax with your upper level classes. They are not advanced. The system only makes them look that way.
Another reason is that throughout the day we have too much pressure on us in schools. It’s just ridiculous. The system we are working in right now on a national level defies all concepts of what good mental health is. People work themselves into sad corners when fighting for respect with administrators who do not grasp what teaching a language entails, administrators who wrongly put expectations on teachers that are not in keeping with research.
So, with so much on our plates, are we to then to solve the “next big frontier” in TPRS/CI instruction, that of how to teach the upper levels? Count me out.
There is yet another reason to take it easy in your upper level classes. The students themselves are under tremendous emotional stress. These are the college bound kids who right about now are getting huge pressure to complete their application and financial aid forms for college, who have other core AP burdens that keep them up well into the night. Are we now supposed to offer them a serious academic challenge when all they need is a little kindness and relaxation in at least one of their classes from an understanding teacher, so that they don’t go nuts?
Another reason: when our TPRS/CI trained kids get to college, all the comprehensible input instruction will stop. It’s not like we are preparing them for anything they will encounter in college. In college they will not be able to drive the CI car anymore. It will be taken into the shop to have the engine dismantled and the entire heart relationship built up with the language over years in high school will be replaced with a study of the language that resembles a course in car mechanics.
Plus, we don’t even know yet the best way to use CI in upper level classes.
Here is what I suggest: we pull out as many simple novels as we can and we read them. We make them below the level of ability in reading that the kids have. We make it like reading English for them.
Here is a typical suggested class sequence:
They come in and do SSR for ten minutes while we hang out and relax in the only quiet time for us in the day. (Planning periods are filled with annoying tasks but the relaxing music we play during SSR to start our classes is truly our only time to relax during the day).
After the SSR period is over, we take out a painting or image of some kind and project it and enjoy the totally relaxed discussion as described in the dOLD strategey in the categories and in other articles here about how to do L & D classes. It is easier to teach using CI with images thanwith abstract ideas as in stories. The focus is so much easier with images. The painting itself is beautiful and pleasing for everyone to look at, as we together marvel at the details put in by the artist.
A discussion about the face of an Egyptian queen soon morphs from the physical details of what we see into a discussion of what she is thinking about. Of course, she is thinking about one of our students! But there is a problem. That student is thinking about Monica!
And we go back and forth between personalized banter between the painting and our kids. We relax and there is no AP monster on our back and there is a brief respite during an insane day for our students, who are still just children really, as they briefly forget about the academic part of school and just enjoy the discussion.
So the SSR takes 10 minutes, then the discussion of the image using dORD can take as long as we want. There is always that fear when teaching of “when this runs out what am I going to do?”. But with this approach we always have the book waiting for some R & D.
Going from SSR into the discussion of some sort of image creates a totally stress free class for us. The kids do SSR while we relax, and during that time we may want to talk to our student Eric privately while the others read to let him know that we are aware of what he must be going through having to quit the football team because his dad is at home dying of cancer. And so Eric just got a little break from teachers who think that their class is more important than Eric’s dad dying of cancer, and Eric feels a little more human and thus is more ready to learn. And when the image runs out of energy, we have no worries, because that book needs a translation.
Then the bell rings and we end class as we began it – relaxed.
That is how I say we teach classes at the upper levels. It’s how I am going to do it with my own upper level class for the rest of the year. We have enough on our plates at the lower levels, where all the action is.