Beth McCune wrote on iFLT FB yesterday:
Trigger alert: contains musings on untargeted CI. You may want to keep scrolling…
Maybe the process of acquiring L2 is a less natural process than acquiring L1 only because we make it so.
Many people acquire L2 without any classes. An hour per day of CI is an hour per day of CI–we can only expect so much with that limitation. Is there research that demonstrates acquisition happens faster when you concentrate more reps in a shorter time frame?
My guess is that the targeted form of CI help students perform on specific types of assessments and therefore may be easier to measure (and therefore more attractive to those feeling pressure to “prove” results quickly). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is just one specific goal.
Perhaps in the space of a year, 100 hours of targeted CI vs. 100 hours of untargeted CI would even out. Students would still be getting the necessary reps (because CI is based on high-frequency words) but the reps are distributed over the space of a year (or whatever extended period of time) instead of concentrated over 1 or 2 days (or whatever significantly shorter period of time) and targets are not pre-determined but rather emergent. This is more similar to L1 acquisition and perhaps more natural. If it is closer to the way we learn L1, why not at least consider it if we could get the same or better results within in a school year?
To be clear, not debating which form is better. Just that untargeted may be at least as effective. Maybe it’s more about rethinking short-term expectations, benchmarks and assessments for untargeted Instruction. Thoughts?