We must stay conscious of what is really happening here. It is the end of one way of doing things on the AP and the beginning of another. A deep and dramatic paradigm shift that has been decades in coming has finally reached its tipping point. It’s been coming since 1963 – search the article here by that name (1963) for more .
It’s pretty much official – the eclectic approach, or whatever one wishes to call it, is just about dead, even if teachers are still doing it. It’s a building about to collapse, as per:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/09/18/termites/
No doubt, for some years into the future, this truth will be distorted by strong reactive attempts to justify using primarily English with a smattering of the TL and doing all sorts of “activities” that create no real CI, no Din, and no Net whatsoever. However, over the long haul, those attempts at self-justification will be exposed as without a soul.
Traditional teachers will now start to notice the need to change, as per:
http://teachers.net/mentors/spanish/topic27773/3.30.12.09.08.40.html
My belief is that any one at any age can learn a language if it is presented to them in a way that allows the supercomputer that is their unconscious mind to do the learning, with the analytical hemisphere not allowed into the process at all, as per:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/07/18/we-learn-languages-unconsciously-1/
https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/07/19/we-learn-languages-unconsciously/
Therefore, we need to be aware and ready to always return the discussion about AP to the facts: foreign language students need to hear the language and read it first for hundreds of hours, as many as can possibly found, before outputting it in the form of writing and speaking if they wish to pass the new Advanced Placement exams, like that TPRS kid that passed the AP French exam with a 4 after only two years of French.
(Stephen Krashen said to our group in my classroom a few weeks ago that he thinks that the ENTIRE FIRST YEAR should be nothing but listening, so there’s a fine howdy do to traditional teachers everywhere).
We need to absolutely remember what is going on here and plan accordingly.