I’m very concerned about how ppl are being trained now with CI methods. It’s the same way they were trained twenty years ago.The mechanical aspects of forcing speech output in CI classes are even on the rise, and I think it’s got to do with wanting to “align with the existing [ed. note: usually outmoded] curriculum”, but can’t lead to any real success.
If trying to use CI to align with existing textbook-based curriculums via targeting high frequency vocabulary, vocabulary in chapter books/novels, verb lists, thematic unit and semantic set lists to try to prepare kids for common exams, it would have worked by now. Everybody would be doing CI.
Like many, I tried to make CI mechanical (targeted) instead of more flowing (non-targeted) for half of the 15 years I’ve done CI. There is a tendency to want to do that with any method, to get a hold of it, to master it by making up lots of cool rules. But all that has really done is confuse most people.
Not many teachers naturally “take” to CI. It’s only a complex process on the surface but is exceedingly simple at its core. The only real way to learn it is to let go of all the rules and embrace the humanness of it. Krashen called it the Natural Approach for a reason.
It took me a full eight years to grasp what I am saying here, to make the bold statement that the only way CI can really work is if you have a strong framework within which to be very loose in your instruction. For me, that is the Star Sequence Curriculum, which along with the Invisibles and One Word Images, are my life’s work.
Unless the TPRS and iFLT camps can stop trying so heavily to orchestrate CI instruction (not to mention relying more and more with each passing year on novels that divide classes down social and economic lines), they will continue to see opposition from the more traditional teachers, which opposition in my opinion is completely justified.
CI must release itself from all the rules they made up in order to have something to sell at conferences and align more with the research. They need to find ways that guarantees true freedom of expression in each class session, with no artificiality. Once that is done, I think that the gap that divides CI from traditional will begin to be bridged.