A great hypocrisy when an admin asks you during a pre-observation meeting “What will the students be able to do after the lesson?” is to answer it. The real answer to that question is “It can’t be measured” but most of us don’t say that. But that answer is as per fifty years of research. The question, a favorite one for evaluators, reveals a complete ignorance of how languages are acquired. So tell your admin that when she asks language teachers to explain what their students will be able to do after a lesson, that – if you teach the old way – yes a few of them may be able to conjugate a verb but then, if you were to be honest you would have to say that the correct spelling ONLY STAYS IN SHORT TERM MEMORY and therefore can we say that it has actually been learned? Can we say that something has been learned when we know that it gets forgotten within a few weeks or a month? REAL ACQUISITION IS ABOUT THINGS “STICKING” FOREVER IN THE DEEPER MIND AND THE ONLY WAY TO GET THAT TO HAPPEN IS TO TEACH USING COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT. When we don’t teach for acquisition via comprehensible input, when we ask kids to memorized lists of word, we don’t teach anything. We waste time and make kids think that they can’t learn a language. And our own confidence in ourselves goes down. Is it not time to end the charade? We surely didn’t become language teachers in order to be depressed about it.
