Beniko Mason on Non-Targeted Comprehensible Input

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17 thoughts on “Beniko Mason on Non-Targeted Comprehensible Input”

  1. Beniko is so wise and as I read her words I hear her gentle voice. The time in Agen with her and Stephen and you, Ben, was very special. One of the participants recently sent me a message in which she said, “I felt truly privileged to meet the incredible and devoted teacher Ben Slavic. He is a true model of positive feedback, and I loved the evening sessions with him., and learned so much. I adored being able to «give it a try» myself.

  2. BAM!
    My favorite part:
    “You don’t need a textbook; you don’t need a trained teacher; you don’t need money.”
    and I believe that just by teaching English in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos — many places– you can have easy classroom management.
    “CI alone is sufficient.”

  3. What’s funny is that even though I completely supported the research on non-targeted input, it was not until I saw Dr. Mason and Dr. Krashen speak at COFLT (thanks Tina) did I fully realize that this is really the only way to teach. The research is clear everything else (other than CI) is not an effective is of my time. At best they will probably only perform as well non target students, and at worse their rate of acquisition will be greatly diminished. Incidental vocabulary building is the best way to acquire language.

  4. Perhaps “incidental” is not the right word. When we stop targeting specific words, the words that are acquired are the ones that naturally popped up, the ones that were needed to get meaning across, the most useful words for that particular conversation in that particular moment.

  5. We just found out that both Drs. Mason and Krashen will be here in Portland for the Comprehensible Cascadia Conference June 29-30 2017! I love being with both of them. They have a special synergy, a calm presence, and a long, deep friendship. It is like sitting between a king and a queen. YAY!

    1. Thanks, Greg.
      Sabrina gave a presentation at TCI Maine about teaching literature in the target language. It was a spin off of the SL approach. She did the golden goose and had plans to do Tristan and Isolde next semester.

  6. One thing that I did this week that is working out very well: Last week I spun Card Talks into stories (using the 7 step process). For each story I got a video retell, a text, and a drawing from my students. Next week I took the best story and showed it to my other classes. What I did was the following: I told the story via Storylistening on a whiteboard (I created a prompter and also gave students the key words in L2/L1 translation and then a box for writing L1 retell after the story is done- as Dr. Mason recommends). After the Storylistening we watched the video retell from the other class, then we did the reading.
    It worked quite well and it is a way to create some novelty (the process is different so it seems novel to students) and to stretch out material created in class.
    What do you think?

    1. This is awesome Greg. To me it sounds like you have to setup quite a bit but that’s just me. I would need a step by step guide and a guarantee that it would take little time (I’m quite spread thin haha). I definitely do the 7 step process with Card talk. But I have started with an abridged 5 story process first. Does Dr. Mason teach to provide the L2/L1 translations before hand or do you do it while you tell the story? I know that you should have a prompter–I went to a San Diego workshop.

      1. I just realized that the video retell is MONEY! While I am very low anxiety, calm and slow with students I have realized that while using actors during the story making process, MANY lightbulbs go off. The comprehension gets amazingly high. This probably because the context of the story is made much more concrete WHILE the action is going on. Like SL drawings during a story.

  7. Can I add this to ANATTY or another book that I am writing now? There are two things that are really strong about it:
    1. By sharing one class’s best story with the others, attention is focused on that class’s creativity. Kids talk. So when they listen, knowing that this SL is from another class, a group of their peers, they listen more carefully. Otherwise, if they didn’t listen carefully, they wouldn’t be able to understand it and how embarrassing would that be for a teenager to not understand something created by a peer?
    2. I have never thought of how Inv. (7 step process, etc.) could be linked w SL. I have always thought of them as separate. What a great link you thought of, combining the two very best modes of instruction/listening that I know of in one articulated process. It brings classes together, shines a light on artwork from “competing” artists, ups the bar, pushes the NTCI method up a notch. Wonderful!
    I will turn this into a post for publication later. It’s important and new.

  8. ¡Genial!
    I like the idea of having all students draw the story (in this case, the one you whipped up from a Card Talk) at the end of class. There has to be one or two good drawings out of the mix that can be photographed and put on the screen the next day. I struggle with getting good artwork out of my small groups of students.
    I also like the idea of showing off a good story from one class to another. Last year I made it a point to post all the good artwork from each class’s artist on the walls, and draw attention to them from time to time. But I really did so just to quietly build intrigue. The idea of not only drawing attention to the artwork but retelling the story in its entirety, could have significant influence on increasing student attentiveness, increasing their interest to offer details and make the details fun.
    I just have two non-heritage classes. And they’re small. I think it’ll work with stories that are particularly juicy. I might have students in one class choose a favorite story for me to share with their peers in another class once every month or so.
    Thanks Greg!

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