Tina continues (pls refer to the first article in this series to refresh your awareness of Pamela’s concerns):
In the interest of Krashen’s ability to read the longer messages (and I am told he reads them all) I am making these short, though I have a lot of ideas for Pamela. And yes, I agree that Pamela’s bravery in sharing does touch on questions that MANY teachers have.
in fact, I used the question that way. And it was really like “Do you think we are stupid? We did understand who did what where when and how. Stop asking that question over and over again.” Even though I know that they even don’t understand easy texts and cannot produce one single sentence without a mistake.
Maybe I’m not the right teacher for tprs. I don’t know. It doesn’t work for me.
TPRS is one method to provide CI. There are other ways. There are also many “flavors” of TPRS and also, as we have seen, debates about whether certain “flavors” are actually TPRS or even CI, because some question their comprehensibility.
I applaud you for the courage to say this in public, and I encourage you to stick with input-based teaching, because it can work for EVERYONE. There is no one right way to provide CI. There are as many possibilities as there are messages that the human brain can think up. There need be no rules, no steps, no formula, no pattern. We can all do it, and so can you!
The trick is to find something the students find interesting, and convey messages to them that they can understand.
