Bryce – the Dunning-Kruger premise was so wonderful to read about. But, for me after a bit of reflection today, it only takes things so far. Can we really dismiss the failure of CI/TPRS to take hold by now in foreign language classrooms simply to the fact that many of our colleagues don’t get Krashen?
It is not our colleagues’ lack of vision at all. It is our own failure to make the method work in its full brilliance in our classrooms that is the problem. It’s not the research and it’s not the method. It’s us.
If a child takes a TPRS class for a year and the teacher doesn’t speak slowly enough so that the child understands what was said, then the time is completely wasted when the kid could have been, at least, conjugating verbs. At least that is something. Not much, mind you, but something. At least they feel like they’re learning something even if those conjugation skills won’t buy them a pastry in France.
We can’t cling to an idea. We have to put it into practice so that it works for real in the real world. We can’t speak to our students using incomprehensible input. We have to work harder and get better at it. Guess where this thought is going? Yes, straight to the word SLOW.
We make ourselves understood and we make our content personalized and interesting by speaking slowly. Everything depends on that single word. Circling is the sister of SLOW, and functions in the same interests as SLOW, but it is not nearly as effective in making the research take hold fully in our classrooms.
Without slow circling, by going too fast and failing to circle at that sweet spot pace, we destroy the method’s potential and set our kids up for failure, just like those who teach without using the target language in their classes.
So, with all due appreciation of the Dunning-Kruger premise, we must know that we will never change others’ minds about CI until 95% of our kids are getting 95% of our speaking and reading input 95% of the time in each of our classes. Nothing else but comprehensible input is worthy of Krashen’s research and Blaine’s implementation of it and Susie’s illustration and defense of it.
So, interesting and meaningful comprehensible input means input that is comprehensible, and that means input that is slow enough that our students can understand it. It means slow input that is interesting enough (i.e. about them) that they would want to listen to it.
To riff on Susie’s classic definition of TPRS as CI + P, I would add another one: good language instruction that effectively leads to fluency can be defined as personalized comprehensible input + SLOW.
Go slowly and hit some home runs, or go too fast and invalidate Krashen’s research – it’s our choice. It doesn’t count if a home run class is only enjoyed and created by the fastest one third of the kids in the class, either. They ALL have to be involved or the home run is a foul ball.
Diana knows that I ignore the barometer all the time so I am just writing this to remind myself, really. Diana has captured many stories on videotape and she can show me that I don’t pay near enough attention to the barometer and I go too fast.
Whether the method succeeds or not is on us, and we can’t blame those who never heard of Krashen. We can wonder what in the hell they are doing teaching languages if they never heard of him, but we can’t blame them that CI/TPRS hasn’t gotten off the ground in two decades of hoping and slopping. Our critics won’t shut up until we get this. We can’t stay babies forever.