O.K. there have been two blogs featuring some questions by Amber Sullivan here lately, with commentary by Byron and me. There will be additional commentary in blog 4 from Amber by Matt Jadlocki.
The two not yet published here – 3 and 4- will be published in the next week. But I am not going to publish Amber Sullivan 3 until we fully appreciate the content in Amber Sullivan 1 and Amber Sullivan 2. Why?
Because I consider the four Amber Sullivan blogs – and Byron thank you for sending them to me for this blog, to be the four most important, by far and away the most important, blogs among the 1500 or so blogs so far on this site, also among the almost 4000 comments. Why?
Because Amber, who is new to TPRS (yet clearly a TPRS talent), raises the ultimate question about TPRS – the argument about ouptut vs. input at the early levels.
This topic must be discussed and it must be discussed at length and in depth, and decisions about pedagogy need to made and training done by all level one and two teachers before next fall.
I am even thinking of shutting this blog down because, with the publication of Amber Sullivan 4, there will be nothing left to say about TPRS – we either do input 90% of the time at the early levels or we don’t. Why have a TPRS blog when all we do is talk about that, and yet never do it?
There will be nothing left to say because either we do input 90% of the time in the form of listening and reading at the first two levels or we don’t. End of dicussion and I get to shut down the blog part of this site and just sell books and spend more time with my kids and quit being so OCD about TPRS.
If we don’t appreciate the point italicized in the above paragraph, our students won’t be able to do any output at levels 3 and 4 – which is when output in the form of speaking and writing should occur, along with the formal study of grammar, and not before because the neurology involved in language acquisition simply doesn’t work that way.
So, if we don’t make an attempt this summer as a group to retool our curriculae to reflect 90% of teaching time spent in the form of listening and reading at the first two levels, then, as I said, we have no reason to continue talking to each other on this blog. We will have become a bunch of talkers.
Our students won’t be able to ace the AP exams like (properly trained) TPRS kids can because we asked them for too much output in the form of writing and grammar and reading too early.
That is what Amber’s four blogs are about. So, please go read the two already published again, make a comment, kick your share of sand up in the air, get some dirt in your eyes, pleurniche, and then make a commitment to train yourself in some way this summer so that you don’t end up bullshitting your levels one and two kids next year with too much output.
Stop thinking about TPRS and start doing it, for the love of Ubaldo Jimenez, who just pitched a no-hitter in Atlanta yesterday for the Colorado Rockies. Did Ubaldo pitch that no-hitter because he TALKED about being a big league pitcher, or because he pitched his ass off as a child and young man in the Dominican Republic for the past 15 years? That last paragraph was an ad for the new G5 Program.