In the post about Dr. Stephen Camarata, Robert said that the big take away for him was this:
“If you want the brain to become wired for spoken language and for reading, then the input has to be real, functional, spoken language and dialogic reading. … And if you want the spoken language to serve as a tool for social communication with other human beings, the input has to occur in the context of human social interaction, which involves even more areas of the brain than the area dedicated to speech discrimination.”
The thing that jumped out at me from that paragraph is this:
…the input has to occur in the context of human social interaction….
Hmmm. I was looking for the part in there that says that we as language teachers get to throw into our speech little chunks of English here and there. I didn’t see that. Hmmm.
Does that mean that my goal of speaking to my students at 98% or above this year and not 90% is not that far fetched?
I keep thinking that, whereas Dr. Camarata DID talk about input that is “real, functional, spoken language and dialogic reading”, he DID NOT talk about how English helps in the language acquisition process. What I keep thinking about is I’m wondering now if something far greater than we can even imagine takes place when the English is left out in favor of input that is “real, functional, spoken language and dialogic reading.”
Reuben Vyn proved it in Denver Public Schools in 2011 when he almost never used English in his classroom and his poverty kids outscored all the others in the district by about 1200%. The bar graph was that ridiculous.
That makes me think that those snatches of English we allow into our instruction might just be exploding the results of our CI instruction. Does anyone think that this might possibly true? If it is, then the 90% position statement of ACTFL is completely flawed and wrong.
I’m just guessing here – not really – that input “that is real” is not input that is polluted with English particles here and there all the time.