Targetless Instruction - 16

A repost from 20o9:

Dr. Krashen has identified the word “non-targeted” as a key modifier in the discussion about CI, saying recently:

“Constraint on interest: With non-targeted comprehensible input there are no target structures and target vocabulary that must be used in creating activities and stories. There are no grammatical or vocabulary constraints. The input only needs to be comprehensible and interesting (or compelling). This is hard enough to do.

“The problem of providing input that is both comprehensible and interesting is the fundamental problem of beginning language teaching. It is easy to get input that is interesting but not comprehensible from the real world. Unfortunately school tends to provide input that is comprehensible, but not interesting. It is hard to get both, to say interesting things using limited language, even if one is not required to use specific vocabulary and grammar.”

In my own personal TPRS voyage, I have become more and more strict with the structures, much more aligned with Blaine’s method as close as possible.

However, I rarely get past, nor even care about, anything but the first structure, because it is usually enough to get both comprehension and interest going. In other words, one structure and a very loosely followed story script gets me into a good interesting story, but using no structures (the Realm) brings plot weakness, and using three structures often brings boredom via too much restriction. So when Dr. Krashen says that:

…it is hard to get both (comprehension and interest), to say interesting things using limited language, even if one is not required to use specific vocabulary and grammar…

my comment is that I can get both comprehension and interest with just that one structure. I suggested to Dr. Krashen that perhaps it is true that in schools, with the boredom dripping off the walls, I am able to survive by mixing non-targeted generalized CI around a limited vocab source – the one structure, but going too far in either direction away from that one structure doesn’t work for me.

Dr. Krashen responded to that with the following:

“Let me try to summarize your point: Focusing on a single rule of grammar provides an anchor. Trying to base input/activities on content alone is very hard to maintain.

“When I first discussed this approach to language teaching in 1975 with a colleague, Larry Hyman, an open-minded linguist, his question was: ‘So what do you talk about?’ I still think this is the fundamental question of language teaching, finding topics that can be made both comprehensible and interesting (not to mention compelling) in classes where, as you say, boredom is dripping off the walls.

“One of the GREAT advantages of using Blaine’s method in a pure way is that it is conducive to personalization. This is hard to do with topics like The Realm. And what is interesting to one group is not to another. And the teacher has to find the topic interesting! All I have managed to do is restate the problem … but I am convinced that we are getting closer to a solution or a set of solutions.”

I like the way Dr. Krashen here doesn’t try to make any concrete prediction about where things are going. Rather, he suggests that things in the world of foreign language education are unfolding in a way that is natural and that, at least, we have now clearly identified the problem that has kept us back all of these years.