I’d like to share an email exchange with a Chinese teacher who is using the Invisibles:
Q. My new class is pretty reserved right now, and although I encourage creativity, it seems it will take a little more time to really get them actively involved. Any ideas?
A. This is likely 98% due to the fact that no other teacher has asked or encouraged any sincere creativity from them. My advice is to take it slow and not burn yourself out trying to get them to participate.
Q. How?
A. One thing you could do is teach traditionally for half of class – maybe a bit longer or shorter as you see fit – and then make it a kind of “special time” toward the latter part of class when you do the Category A Card Talk comprehensible input activities with them.
Q. What does that do?
A. It makes them know and feel the difference between the way they could be experiencing the language in the first part of class and the way they experience it in the latter part of class.
Q. That’s a good idea!
A.What it does is make them feel the difference between using their conscious minds to learn (the traditional way) and the way they really learn, by using their unconscious minds as they do when working with any of the six Invisibles categories.
Q. That’s an interesting point. So you are implying that when they are “thinking” consciously about the language, it’s not as much fun for them?
A. Exactly. We don’t learn languages by thinking about them, by focusing on their form. That’s basic Krashen 101. They learn when they are focused in a relaxed and pleasant way on the message. So when you teach traditionally in the first part of class, their minds get bored because that’s not how their minds are programmed to learn languages.
Q. That seems like a huge point that most language teachers miss.
A. It is a MASSIVE point that most language teachers miss. Their refutation of the research has really become quite ugly, in my mind. Can we impeach teachers for obstruction of the research? Or should we impeach their leaders, because ACTFL still gives its blessing to the textbook companies. And so in a way it is a lack of leadership in our profession that is the problem. If the national parent organization of our profession is not going to guide teachers to the research and away from things that don’t work, then who can blame the teachers?
Q. Well, I think that the teachers are to blame also, because ignoring the research seems like a dumb thing to do in one’s profession. It’s pretty basic.
A. And the fact remains that a very large majority of language teachers in the United States does in fact refute the research about how languages are acquired by their very actions of teaching out of a textbook and focusing on form.
Q. So your idea of teaching half of the class in the old way and half in the new way, thus using BOTH methods, is designed to get a kind of knee-jerk reaction from kids in favor of comprehensible input methods?
A. Yes. Doing that will make them request from you more time doing the “fun” (latter) part of class with the Invisibles. Food goes down a lot better when the people actually want to eat it.
Q. It’s true that kids don’t seem to care about anything but laughing….
A. If you use the half and half plan it won’t be long at all before they will come into class and say, “Can we not do that stuff that we do in the first part of class today? We like what we do at the end of class better!” When you get them requesting the Invisibles, it is because it is genuinely more fun for them. This takes all the pressure off of you.
Q. I hadn’t thought before of how, if I am to really reach my students, I am going to have to make my intruction fun.
A. Well, actually you don’t have to actually make your instruction fun, because just following the protocols in the Invisibles and the Star Sequence does that for you. All you have to do is follow the step-by-step protocols offered in the five phases of the Star Sequence taxonomy.
Q. I have to say it again. Kids only care about having fun in class. It’s so obvious but I’ve never thought of it before.
A. Then you will no longer experience that unfortunate inner pressure that teachers put on themselves to be a creative and energetic and engaging teacher.
Q. I know that pressure and it drives me nuts.
A. The Invisibles actually remove that pressure because they automatically bring the creativity and energy and engagement to the class so you don’t have to. You have too many classes in the day to have to have to “work” at reaching the kids. You need an approach to teaching that does all that “interest building” etc. to class for you.
Q. And the Invisibles do that, I have found in my other classes – it’s just this one new class that doesn’t.
A. That is why I constantly point to the supreme importance of how you teach in first two weeks of the year, with your main focus being on building community and enforcing the classroom rules as being more important than teaching the language.
Q. So, back to that “half traditional/half Invisibles idea…
A. Yes, in order to make them want to do the Invisibles, instead of you having to cram it down their throats, it is in the half and half in-class contrast between the old way of teaching and the new that makes them request the categories like Card Talk tableaux and all the rest. Just don’t give the Invisibles to them for the entire class period and then, counterintuitively, they will want to to do them for the whole class.
Q. I think that that will work!
A. The key is that you must learn to relax, you must absolutely learn to relax when you are in a school building. This is the only way you can even hope to make it in a balanced and peaceful way through an entire career of doing this work. Make them beg for the Invisibles, basically, and then let the Invisibles do all the work of getting them engaged in class. All you have to do with this approach is let the questioning levels and the phases of the Star do all the work.
Q. I find myself going back to yesterday’s card talk as a way to compare today’s and yesterday’s. Is that ok, or should I stick to one day’s topic?
A. It is wonderful to compare/contrast cards. However, when you do that the danger lies in using too many words – more than the kids can handle. With new CI classes, if you introduce more than seven or eight new words in one class of Card Talk, that is too many.
Q. So don’t refer to previous cards?
A. It’s probably best to wait a bit. Of course it will depend on the class. Just be careful to not use too many new words in any class for any reason. The underlying constant is that your speech should be 100% comprehensible to everyone in the room, all the time. If you can make that happen, if you can make your speech fully comprehensible to all of them, then go ahead and use the previous day’s card to compare and contrast the two students. Less is more, is the key thought here.
Q. How do I know if my instruction is fully comprehensible?
A. You look at them, right in their eyes, scanning the room, and do not in your mind fault any single kid in any way for being “lazy”. Reach that kid. Somehow reach the ones who withdraw as well as the ones who engage. Read the article in the book about the Psychology of Withdrawal on that topic.
Q. I feel that I am not repeating the words enough for them to acquire or really even take a quiz on.
A. That shows good awareness on your part. Chinese requires more than twice as much time to acquire than modern languages. That’s part of it. Maybe you shouldn’t compare/contrast cards from the day before. The entire problem is that the words you are using are generally mystifying to them, to anyone who wasn’t born there, for the first 20 or 30 times they hear it.
Q. Then I need to circle more, right?
A. Not in my book. Rather, you need to circle less for reasons I’ve explained elsewhere. The words will be repeated a ton not because you circle a lot, but because the Star Sequence brings massive amounts of reps, the difference being that in the Star the words are repeated in context over time, as opposed to the machine gun in boring context kind of repetition that circling brings.
Q. It is hard for me to remember how many times they need to hear a word before it is even minimally acquired.
A. Yes. So the only answer is to try to be ever more and more aware of how hard it is for them. I’ve taken Chinese classes at national conferences and it is a tough language! I even got confused with the experts, and a lot of other teachers told me that they did too.
Q. So how do I get quizzes in, if I need many more reps than I think I do before giving a quiz?
A. A practical response here is to use the In-Class Communication Rubric, as 100% of the grade instead of 65% of the grade. That would mean no quizzes on anything until they are ready.
Q. How do I know if they are ready?
A. One thing you could do is just give thumbs up/thumbs down (yes/no) quick quizzes in class (since your quiz writer always rights yes/no questions, and tell them that when everyone starts getting all the questions right then you will start to give them written quizzes for a grade. This really builds their confidence, and we have no hope in doing this work unless we assure our students’ confidence in themselves.
Q. Confidence really is the most important thing, isn’t it?
A. It’s the most important thing.