Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
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Brigitte Kahn
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6 thoughts on “Brigitte Kahn”
In PQA, whether it is based on three structures as per Step 1 of TPRS, or just on a word (One Word Images), on some bit of information a kid gives to you in class via an image, a card, a prop, something a student told you in the hallway, or on anything else (a song, a reading that you are frontloading), it is done in a much more free and open form than Step 2 of TPRS, stories.
Giving the kids a lot of ownership in free form PQA is just fine. Go for it. Just stay SLOW and circle and point and pause (not too much even in PQA) and have fun. I often cancel any plans I had for a story on the spot in favor of a raucous Step 1 experience with the kids. When this happens it is usually because the right structures, especially verbs, are in play.
However, in stories, the structures must rule and you must make every attempt to follow the script. In stories, the net theory is heavily in play, and lots of words end up getting trapped in the unconscious web of acquisition during the flow of the story, but the structures must be in every sentence uttered during the story. See the “rebar” five posts on the role of the three structures for more on this idea.
So in stories the kids have a lot less say in what happens. They can furnish minor details like names and places, both very useful for personalization and interest, but what the kids suggest cannot be allowed to alter the actual direction of the story, as happens in PQA. You know you are doing this when the story flows along in good alignment with the script (except for the changing variables), but the kids think that they are driving the story when it is actually you.
So, Brigitte, in stories, the script is there and we follow it, even if we only get through the first location, which matters not at all. The structures are repeated in each sentence, in each location, like slow motion machine gun fire, the variables are popping up making people laugh because the actors are real kids from their own class and the places are the local eateries and streets of their own neighborhood, but that’s the limit of their involvement in stories.
To restate: PQA, freestyle CI, can and does go everywhere. Discussion during PQA is highly personalized around the kids in the room. Such discussion is bizarre and imaginative. In stories, however, the personalization is limited to actors playing roles whose presence in the room and attempts at dialogue lend a certain degree of personalization into the story, but it is personalization of a different kind – the script keeps it more like a movie the class is watching than an actual crazy discussion about the kids in the classroom.
Brigitte, the thing is that the kids can get upset when you say it is your story, but just smile and insist. Let them have more suggesting power during PQA. As stated, let them suggest facts in the variable slots of the script, but don’t let them drive the story events, or you will get thrown off the story line as you describe is happening now. Follow the proven protocol for stories (read one of the sample stories at the back of TPRS in a Year! for that protocol/process).
On the second question of output, there are many answers. Mine is to play the game. Your students, you will find later this year since this is your first year at CI, will have a remarkable ability to discuss a lot of different topics that the traditionally trained kids will not have. This makes sense – traditionally trained students will not have heard the language enough to do anything more than parrot a few memorized answers back. However, and this is our problem when we teach using CI, I have found in my own experience that emergence of authentic speech (vs. the book trained kids) waits until April of the first year in the faster processors, and not until level 2 for the slower ones.
I once had a level one eighth grader get 67 of 70 questions on the National French Exam but, when a teacher heard about that in one of her other classes, he asked her to “speak some French”, but she couldn’t and was embarrased in front of the class and the teacher came to me to remark on that. I told him that, first, she was shy, and second, she didn’t have enough time for the CI she had heard that year to move it down into the part of her mind and mouth that actually produces language. He didn’t get it.
In this, of course, lies the grand hypocrisy of your colleagues, Brigitte, who write the test to the level of parroting that their kids can do. This is nothing new than what was done in 1980 and before and is still being done. The irony is that you, as a CI teacher who is actually doing your job of aligning with ACTFL, the Three Modes of Communication, etc. are made to feel nervous about the question of output.
That is why I say play the game. Find out what your colleagues are doing in class to prepare for the output segment of the exam and and just do the same thing. This allows your kids to be tested for output on an equal playing field. Get in on the test writing! Our job security is nothing for us to play around with just to tout the great long term benefits of CI in terms of speech production.
In Denver Public Schools, the opposite has happened. Diana insisted on developing a lightly weighted output test for level one kids based totally on ACTFL, tells us not even to worry about that part of the test with our level one kids, and that is the way it should be.
Maybe Diana will add some thoughts here on this question, but those are mine.
Thank you for making these points, I think I needed to hear it too. Question…. when you said “a remarkable ability to discuss a lot of different topics that the traditionally trained kids will not have”. What topics, as examples, do you mean? I’m hoping that the topics you mention will be the same ones my students “need to know” next year for Spanish 2.
On the third point, about stories becoming boring to the kids, that is normal and we all learn, with time (which you haven’t had enough of yet) to apply all those other CI options. However, when you say that you want to master the basics of stories, understand that stories are not the basics. They are the hardest part. I suggest you start in with a mini-novel or spend a lot more time on Step 3 readings as described here in different places (search reading), or start the week with a song, just to change things up a bit. Don’t forget your ultimate bail out move to get the kids happy and thinking that they are learning – dictées (see the resources link of this page for that information). I think that it is something of a miracle that you are able to pull off stories right now, not having heard of the method until six months ago. I was well into my third year before even a bad story happened and it was many years after that before I got the feel for this stuff, and I still have a long way to go. So relax. When they get bored again, if you really want them to appreciate what you are offering in the stories, give a few days, maybe even three or four or a whole week, of instruction the old way. That’ll get them clamoring for a return to stories!
Wow, Ben, thank you so much. This is mentoring at its finest!
Last year, I was lucky enough to be part of the test writing group (there are not that many German teachers on Long Island). So, for the most part, I knew exactly what was going to be on the exam. However, this was also the time when I was still following the only way I knew how to teach and I was able to create “perfect parrots” who passed that test with flying colors.
The exam will not look much different this year with a heavy emphasis on speaking. So, I will do what you suggested and spend some (as little as possible but as much as needed) time on that component.
With much gratitude, as always,
Brigitte
You are very welcome Brigitte. Honestly, don’t worry about the lost time. We can’t get crazy about this stuff. We can’t ignore the needs (born of ignorance but still needs) of our bosses. That is because they are our employers, as in we work for them. We can’t tell them they are wrong because they spent a lot of time and energy becoming bosses and so for us to tell them that the moon is in fact not made of cheese would be downright rude. In their minds it is made of cheese. Fine. I have done that kind of teaching to the test with the National French exam. In early February I (used to) take my superstars and get out old exams and go over them – during pizza lunches once a week – and teach them the exceptions and the tricks, literally training them to recognize certain questions so that they would go through certain parts of the test in a few minutes. It is also something I did with my AP students. A gifted CI trained kid trained to the test is a scary thing, because they know everything. But it just got stupid and last year I just decided to chuck it for good. I don’t need my administrators approval any more as in:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/09/26/12752/