How to reconcile the obvious disconnect between Krashen’s idea that learning a language should be an effortless process while at the same time being rigorous? It depends on how we interpret the word “rigorous”.
Robert Harrell has said that our language classes should be rigorous, but not onerous. This involves, among other qualities, “sustained focus”. I like that. It’s what we bring to our students’ mental process in our classes with, importantly, the sustained focus being on the meaning, not the language. That is why I am opposed to teaching from lists in CI classes, which immediately and certainly pulls the process into conscious analysis and the “collecting” of new information.
Some CI teachers think that their job is to “teach” the language, which to them means involving the conscious mind. But our real job is to make the CI go into the deeper mind, not the conscious mind, avoiding all involvement of the latter. That’s where acquisition happens, in the unconscious.
When it happens in the unconscious mind the process of actual acquisition IS effortless AND and yet at the same time highly rigorous. We don’t have anywhere near the capacity to learn a language with our conscious minds, no more than a tricycle does to fly to the moon. Trying to use CI to teach something like the subjunctive mood is, in my view, nuts. Once you start getting all those reps on subjunctive forms, the process in the kids’ minds becomes conscious as they start saying, “OH, there is another one” while – and this is so key – the discussion becomes immediately very ARTIFICIAL AND THEREFORE BORING because who can sustain an interesting conversation on sentence after sentence of the same form of the a verb tense? Try it.
In my view this is the biggest problem in language acquisition these days – teachers not remembering this point and thus designing their instruction around the idea that their kids have to put out “effort” and think their way to mastery. It is best if they find ways to engage their kids in the language in ways that the kids are not even aware of listening to a language.
I also recommend that teachers no longer connect their instruction to a piece-meal curriculum (table of contents, high frequency vocabulary list, list of backwards planned words from a novel, thematic unit, etc.) ALL WE NEED TO DO IS SPEAK TO THEM IN A WAY THAT THEY CAN UNDERSTAND AND THAT IS INTERESTING TO THEM.
For more by Robert Harrell on this rather serious topic that seems to be currently conveniently swept under the rug in our profession, click on the Primers Hardlink above and scroll down to “Robert Harrell – Rigor US Department of State”.