Eric made this comment here yesterday re: Scope and Sequence:
…explain that there is such a thing as a “retroactive” or “a posteriori” syllabus. And you could list (maybe even order) on that syllabus the types of stories you do. But syllabi should stop being lists of grammar and vocabulary….
…you can give her last year’s scope & sequence (as an order of stories and conversations you did). You can give her the scope & sequence you’ve used this year so far, but you can’t give her that scope & sequence for the rest of the year. That would defeat the whole idea of teaching to YOUR students right NOW…..
This position is the only intelligent one I have been able to find on Scope and Sequence. It fully aligns with Krashen. Go read it again. Then read it once more after that.
My problem up to now is that we all take Krashen, we all apply Krashen, to the degree that we want, that fits our own needs as educators. It has evolved that there is no Krashen. There is only Krashen as we want to see him.
(This reminds me of what has happened on an infinitely bigger level to religion but I ain’t going there.)
Krashen’s ideas are twisted and molded to fit the educational forms of the people who use them.This is how I interpret what Eric says above. The result is a disaster. Scope and Sequence documents are seriously dangerous to new teachers who want to use TPRS in the real way.
Most university people, if not all of them, like to point out what is wrong with Krashen’s ideas, but the fault lies in their inability to understand him. How can they even come to work everyday to think about how people acquire languages and plan dumbass studies without dinging Krashen? Like they are the expert and he is not.
Krashen’s work will stand as a monolith through this century and beyond, even if no one knows what it says. (The confusion and the misinterpretation are centered around misinterpretations the words “unconscious”/”natural order”/non-targeted”
The confusion about Krashen will not go away until people’s nature finally is worn away by all the current suffering and strife (it has a purpose that is honoring to humans) so that we become less judgmental, less critical, less mind-centered. Krashen’s work will not stop being dinged until the last bit of “I’m smarter than you” is crushed out of man’s hearts. It’s going take a while.
Most secondary people, also, want to see Krashen in their own ways. It’s disastrous for their instruction because it relies too much on mental formulation of a story, the creation of TPRS “products”, too much of planning of classes (TPRS lesson plans is a ridiculous concept and can’t be justified in terms of Krashen, where the unconscious rules and where no targets must come into play), and not enough on serendipity and play and the true nature of conversation as the French define it here:
https://benslavic.com/blog/lart-de-la-conversation-and-tprs/
Yes, I’m back to saying that TPRS lesson plans are not good for us. They rope teachers into planning their classes. It’s not Krashen. What about the point that they are good for new people as training wheels? Meh. OK. Maybe. Whatever. I don’t know. I think new people can be trained to teach without planning. Maybe not. What do I know?
What Eric says above, pointing out that we have to teach OUR students right NOW, is at the core of TPRS, that’s all I know, and I don’t think that it is a good thing that TPRS keeps evolving into a system with lesson plans. This is not Krashen. Planning is not Krashen. Thinking is not Krashen. Scopes and Sequences are definitely not Krashen.
Eric says it above. Why can’t people hear that? I had to read his comment three times before it even hit me what he was saying. And so it goes.