The most foundational research element of this exciting new work we are doing in the CI movement is, in my opinion, the one that says that human beings acquire languages through the mysterious and infinitely complex workings of their unconscious minds when they are focused on the message (vs. the language), and that focusing only on the language and its form simply cannot get the job done.
This key idea, when applied to actual teaching, sadly seems to be often lost amidst the general confusion of teaching languages in schools. Why? Well, for one thing the assessment piece plays a huge role in messing things up. Other factors are (a) too much use of English by the instructor, and (b) the lack of any concern, or even awareness by the instructor, of the research, of the necessity to establish flow, and (c) the role that the textbook has played in our profession.
I was at a beach barbecue function connected to the iFLT workshop a long time ago one summer in Los Alamitos, CA talking to Dr. Krashen. At one point he simply looked at me and said: “What don’t they get about it being unconscious?” I told him that I certainly didn’t know the answer to that question.
Now, many beautiful metaphors have been created over the years to describe the importance of teaching in such a way that our students become focused on the message in class and not on the language itself. Here are a few:
(1) Robert Harrell likens the process to common sense – to simply making sure that our students have the right amount of horsepower under the hood of their “language acquisition pick up trucks”.
Robert suggests that it is an odd thing to expect the driver of a CI pick up truck to use an undersized engine to pull the really big load of teaching a language. He suggests that the only engine that can pull the load is the “unconscious mind engine”, and not the “conscious mind engine” which is proven to not work, so why continue to use it?