Hi Ben,
I had an amazing experience today. Our school is doing professional learning communities, starting classes late twice a week so we can work in groups. Patty, Rachel and I had to present this morning on our work in the foreign language department.
We told them a little bit about CI-based instruction and I did a little story with them, about a pirate. My colleagues were so into it. It was unbelievable. They had a ton of questions and positive feedback. Afterwards two English teachers came up to me and asked me whether this method has application for teaching vocab, etc. in English.
Are you aware of anyone who is using storyasking to teach language arts in the native language? I actually felt like people were a little jealous of us, because we have found such a cool way to teach our subject. It seemed like the two people who approached me would like to get a little piece of what we have, a student-centered methodology with such radical results.
Now how cool is that?
Later the assistant principal came into my room to observe, the first time ever, because my presentation had intrigued him so. Since it’s Tuesday, we were reading yesterday’s story off the smart board, translating and discussing. When we got to the part in the story where the airport employee searched the suitcase and removed the turban, saying it was forbidden, so that he could use it to wipe his dog’s butt, I kind of cringed. I said to the class, in German, it figures we have this sentence with an administrator in the room. A boy replied, in German, let’s just not translate that sentence then! We all laughed, and moved on.
So do you know of anyone with whom I can put my English colleagues in touch? I promised them I’d look into it. Thanks!
Anne Matava
[my response is that it seems that there would be a ton of connections between using CI in our classrooms and the teaching of English vocabulary, and over into other disciplines, etc., but I think that is merely an illusion. The reason what we do when we do CI works is that we appeal to the part of the brain that really acquires language – the unconscious mind. Perhaps the key thought in all of Krashen’s work – an idea worth looking at certainly – is that we acquire language without being aware of it, and methods like TPRS that set that unconscious decoding up in the classroom, a sleight of mind so tricky that the kids are not even aware of acquiring what they hear, are, at the end of the day, and after all the plate throwing, the only methods that are effective. If it is conscious, nothing is going to happen in language acquisition. Except that the textbook monopolies will get yet richer and the storerooms of schools get more and more packed with crap in the form of paper, crap that doesn’t reach kids except to make them think that they are not cut out for languages. It’s weird how we in our field have this way of teaching our subjects that just circumvents the entire conscious analytical thing, and yet, because so many of us learned in the old way, we still largely teach that way, even though, this month more than ever, we can see by the looks on the kids’ faces and by the looks on each others’ faces that we haven’t reached them. I mean, Krashen has laid out a road map and all we have to do is pick it up and open it, but so many of us would rather open Realidades and Bon Voyage. Go figure!