The problem we face is one of intent. If our intention is to use stories to deliver instructional services, and thus please those who run the schools, then we will fail in our mission to teach the children the language. On the other hand, if we use stories to bring joy to children, joy that makes them forget that they are even in school, then we will succeed.
There has been, and continues to be, a tremendous amount of fakery, of deceit in our profession. The word lists still inform our instruction, in spite of what we know about how people learn languages.
Thus, few students emerge from our classes with any linguistic skills worth having. Isn’t that kind of clear by now about TPRS? Isn’t it clear that the dream is over, and that the battlefield is littered with teachers who have failed at the method? For every Darcy Pippins there are fifty nameless teachers who couldn’t do TPRS.
So what is our real intent? All of the fakery, the using of stories to teach word list or worse, grammar points to align with a curriculum stands in marked contrast to what ACTFL’s real standard is: Communication.
ACTFL doesn’t mention, in its standards or in its principle statement about Communication, the Three Modes of Communication, anything about word lists or grammar. Not a word that I personally have been able to find. And yet we go back in to our jobs every day trying to use stories to align with a “curriculum”. Communication is the curriculum because it is the standard!
It’s almost as if there is another C in the standards, one that has replaced Communication as the central standard: Curriculum. That’s messed up.