This group had an online war with ACTFL four or five years ago and since it came up in recent discussion here I am reposting what the director of ACTFL said in response to everything we were saying back then, which were strong points that needed to be rebutted by ACTFL but weren’t. Instead, all we got from ACTFL’s leader was this:
Sandrock wrote:
… ACTFL has been asked directly to respond: we do not find disagreement in the discussion around the various points being discussed….
Here is the response I did not send to Paul, since ACTFL’s 18,000 member list serve group clearly, unbelievably, didn’t want to acknowledge any differences between TPRS and what they do with their “eclectic” (read: ineffective) approach. Note again that this was written in 2014 and so I was using the term TPRS:
Paul I don’t think that ACTFL is aware of the kind of attacks by many teachers on teachers attempting to do TPRS/TCI over the years. Had they been, since you say that they have no disagreement with TPRS/TCI, they would have found a way as the national parent organization for all foreign language teachers to step in and protect those attacks from happening. I guess it’s good that you weren’t aware of the attacks; it stings less.
Attacks on TPRS teachers have been the norm rather than the exception in most secondary school buildings. They are attacks that probably have their roots in misinformation and in misperceptions of the work of teachers who haven’t yet mastered the comprehensible input approach.
Such attacks have ranged from mildly abusive or dismissive in-building statements by teachers who should know better to ramped-up unfounded scathing indictments on teachers’ characters which in some cases have destroyed careers or driven good teachers out of the profession.
In that light, ACTFL’s silence on TPRS has been wrong. If they do support the approach as a viable one, you should have said so a lot earlier than now. One would assume that ACTFL would be interested in policing and guiding the national discussion on best practices in language acquisition so that the needs and hopes of all teachers in the profession are defended and illustrated and that lively and vigorous discussion is assured.
Therefore, a statement condemning or condoning TPRS as a teaching approach would be appropriate next week at their convention, to prevent further attacks.
The fact is that serious pedagogical differences – they should not be made to appear personal in nature – exist between the traditional approach and the CI approach. In no way do I agree with your official statement above. We cannot whitewash that fact. Mr. Herman’s original question calling for research in support of ACTFL’s position on thematic units still remains unanswered.
The response to the four points raised earlier are insufficient – one short dismissive paragraph on each one is not enough. We have raised complex issues, for example the new thread on testing but no response from your group has been forthcoming. It’s been radio silence whenever we have asked for research backing up the textbook, etc. Please make a clear statement as to whether thematic units should be the sole accepted organizer for a curriculum, as is stated in the ACTFL 21st Century Skills World Languages Map.
I seek clarification on this statement:
…language learning is complex….
I don’t think it is. And even if it is, shouldn’t it be our jobs to simplify it? In my opinion it is a very simple process that has been made complex in our nation’s classrooms. A baby is born, hears the language a ton, for years, then starts reading it, and after hearing and reading it for years she automatically starts speaking and writing it, because of what has been planted below the awareness of the conscious mind for all those years. It’s like planting a seed. It takes time for the seeds (language spoken to students so that they can understand) to sprout and we can’t rush or mechanize that process.
If you are right and language learning really is complex, then why is the process completely and effortlessly handled on a daily basis by the giant language acquisition machine that is the unconscious mind? Either Dr. Krashen is correct on that point or not. All his work points to the pivotal role of the unconscious mind in directing the process of acquiring a language. And yet most teachers keep the process in the conscious mind in their classes, explaining, flipping around between L1 and L2 like a pinball, preventing the unconscious mind from even getting involved. Which is true?
Is language learning a complex process involving the left brain and constant analysis, as it has been made to be, or is it an effortless unconscious right brain process language? This in my view is the key question we all must answer for ourselves. Each teacher must make the decision as to which of those two faculties of their students’ minds they wish to address in their teaching, but they can’t have it both ways.
Teachers can keep stay in the left brain analytical part of the brain and continue to get the same terrible results, where most students drop out of their programs thinking that they can’t learn a language, or they can at least look with an open mind to the idea that they have been teaching to a part of the brain that is not responsible for language acquisition these years. Teaching has been made so complex in our nation’s classrooms that kids aren’t learning it.
Here is a related example of that discussion with ACTFL: https://benslavic.com/blog/authentic-texts/