I made a funny:
We are like dogs trying to help all of the language teachers who still have their feet planted firmly in the grammar translation methods of the past century. We are C ing I dogs.
Admins don’t actually read the research. They don’t have time. If or when they do read it, they do not really grasp it. How could
I got a question: “Hi Ben, I am preparing some documents that support CI teaching to show my administrators. I looked through the blog and
A teacher contacted me awhile back. She had been attacked about using CI from a team leader. I told her to get some research from
We don’t need any more research. In academia that would be a frivolous comment, but as a classroom teacher in languages I support it. Yes,
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3 thoughts on “CI Dogs”
Ben,
I just finished looking over my students’ free writes. I started CI (in earnest) after attending your Minneapolis Institute three years ago, so my current students have now had 2 full semesters and a quarter–yeah we don’t get enough time in the schedule. I’m far from a master in this and often days don’t always go well, but I’m a better teacher and my students are MUCH stronger in their abilities to communicate in French.
I am so grateful to you for sharing your methods with so many teachers. I just wanted to take a moment to thank you again for all you do.
Merci mille fois,
Kara
Wow Kara this is so thoughtful of you, and it means a lot to me. Thank you.
Ben
So Kara I am trying to make the case for the Invisibles being easier and much more effective w 99% less planning than TPRS. I wouldn’t make the case unless I thought it was.
The Invisibles grew from the entire non-targeted push that I heavily spearheaded here in 2010-2015, starting in about 2008 when I saw TPRS starting to stray from the research (no blame!) under the pressure of how schools are set up (schools have a detrimental effect on TPRS – read why here: https://benslavic.com/blog/category/33-reasons-i-prefer-ntci/).
So you were at one of the first Invisibles workshops. My question: Would you credit the success over the past three years that you describe above to (a) the Invisibles and the non-targeted approach they are based on, or (b) to a combination of TPRS (which I assume is what you were doing before 2016) and the Invisibles, or (3) mainly just TPRS?
(Because everything I presented in MN that summer was new, having been invented during the 2015-16 year in the American Embassy School in New Delhi, that wonderful year when my 24/7 15-year long FRUSTRATED pursuit of making TPRS work for me in my own classroom finally came together in terms of the research and my own feeling that I should dump circling and esp. targeting which is how the Invisibles function – with no circling and no targeting and none of the 43 other TPRS things described in the above-cited article.)
I can take it. It is important to me to try to know what strong teachers like you are experiencing with the Invisibles and the Star Sequence, so that I can know if I am basing my own opinions about the Invisibles on solid ground? In my opinion, of course, the Invisibles and Star Sequence runs circles around TPRS, no pun intended, but I would like your opinion.