In 2011 I got an email from a person I don’t know. I read it from time to time to remind me of how far we’ve come, because there was a day when people like this ruled the world, back in the Jurassic period of language instruction. Here is is:
From: steve leggiero <sleggierous@yahoo.com>
To: benslavic@yahoo.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2011 8:32 PM
Subject: Please stop deceiving the public
Dear Sir,
With all due respect, what you wrote and I cut and pasted below is so false it disgusts me. As a teacher of Russian and one who has mastered this language, to mislead people like this is just wrong. Not only do most people in our country speak our language wrong, but we are far behind the rest of the world in 2nd language acquisition, mostly because of these “fluff” theories. If you are trying to make money selling something, can’t you find something material that will not cloud the common minds. Have you really mastered a second language?
If so, I think you are being false to yourself to really believe all this TPR nonesense [sic]. Without the structure of the language, nothing is learned, and those who claim that second language learners comprehend as you keep talking in classrooms clearly just enjoy the sound of their own voice because it just doesn’t work without the structure, especially in languages with many inflections.
Yours truly,
A teacher who really teaches
Here is my offending article:
The Case Against Verb Conjugation
We are now entering a new era in language acquisition. It doesn’t have anything to do with conjugating verb and manipulating rules, as happens in mathematics. In this new era, students of language focus on hearing and decoding the language first. This is the way we learned our first languages. Children learn the word “fast” for example, but they don’t know that it is called an adverb.
Please, therefore, as parents who may have received an older, grammar based education in a foreign language, please do not assume that, if your child is “only” hearing the language in their first year class, that they are not learning the language. In point of fact, they are. They will learn the grammar once they have learned to decode the language, later on in their study, once they understand the language.
Sometimes it takes actual language teachers over twenty years, even thirty years, to see and understand this. Some never get it. But that is what’s coming. Your real concern as a parent should not be whether your child is successful at conjugating verbs. Your real concern should be whether your child is hearing the language spoken by the teacher in ways that are interesting and meaningful to him or her, so that they gain confidence, and, when the time comes to study how the language is built on paper, only then, should they begin conjugating verbs, and only if they want to, because it is not a necessary skill.
As a patriot, I am concerned that so much time and tax dollars are being wasted in manipulating languages on paper, and on memorizing single words without putting them into their real place in language, as parts of sentences. And it’s not just about time and money. Everyday in the world there is an increased need for fast and real, not slow and largely fake, language acquisition. Our national security is involved! We in language education must now provide a product that works!
It is a time of change in many aspects of our American life. We don’t need to do it the old way anymore because the old way doesn’t work. Please accept this information in the spirit in which it is given. We know that the old way doesn’t work. Therefore, we in the profession are changing that, so that the language program in your child’s school honors your child and all the other kids in the school and leads to all the kids, the “smart” and the “stupid” ones, all of them, of all colors and (often wrongly) perceived abilities, acquiring the language.
The last time I checked, the U.S. is full of people with IQs ranging from very low to very high, yet all of those people speak fluent English just fine. That is because all people can learn a language, not just the smart ones. We in foreign language acquisition in the schools of America are working hard to make sure that your child doesn’t end up like many of you parents, who have long since forgotten the verb conjugations because you only remembered them for a test on a certain day, for a grade in a grade book, long ago. We don’t want your child to end up like you, who spent two or three years or more focusing hard on a language, but now can say nothing.
Thank you for your consideration and openness of mind to what is really happening in this area. Accept this change. If your child reports to you that, in their level one class in some language, they “only” hear the language all the time, trust us. We know what we’re doing.
And show some respect. Would you question some other professional in some other field about what they are doing? Then stop doing that with us. You will be very happy when, in four years of secondary schooling, your child graduates with very strong bilingual skills. It will help them in life. And your child won’t feel stupid in languages, like you do.