Since many of us will be starting the new academic year with the Circling with Balls activity, I present some additional information about it in this next series of posts in the form of questions and answers:
Q. Should advanced students I am getting next year from a traditional teacher be spoken to in the Circling with Balls activity in more complicated tenses since they already knew the present tense, and what would that look like?
A. Students consider the present and the past and really all verb tenses as not different in terms of difficulty. Once they know that a certain sound means a certain thing, that’s it. There are no levels of difficulty in comprehension based instruction – there is only how fast we speak and how clear the message is in context. We as grammar teachers made up the idea that complex verb tense are more difficult. For proof of that statement, look to how small children learn complex grammar all the time. Nothing is harder or easier to understand in the target language for beginners as long as they know what it means, so in comprehensible input we teach grammar by just saying what it means. That’s all they need to know.
The real concern with upper level classes just beginning comprehensible input instruction is that they will revolt at being pried out of a comfort zone that they have known for two years, one that has worked very well for them thank you very much in terms of the grade but hasn’t actually taught them anything except how to manipulate the language on paper, like solving a jig saw puzzle. I would suggest that you avoid this activity altogether and continue teaching them as you have in the past. A few students may embrace the shift, but for the others there will be a heavy feeling in the room as they try to find the place in their brains where languages are actually learned. Some classes may be able to do it, if you play your cards right, because who doesn’t want to talk about themselves? This reminds me of that beautiful passage in Le Petit Prince about taming and friendship where you pull your chair closer to someone just a little bit every day in order to tame them and become their friend. It’s like that. Then maybe they will give you the green light to spend a few minutes at the end of class asking them questions about their cards and so on. I would introduce Circling with Balls to an upper level class which has never before experienced comprehension based instruction in that way. I would not start the year off with them by making a big speech about how this year we are going to try a new method and it’s going to be really neat and we’re going to laugh and have fun and speak in the target language and all that. I wouldn’t even say that to a level 1 class. So with these kids sneak CWB in a few minutes a day and it may grow. If it doesn’t, cut your losses and teach the class the old way. I wish someone had told me that. Once I inherited a fourth year grammar class of privileged kids that no amount of early morning donuts could win over to comprehension based teaching. I tried for a year. All I had to do if I had only fully grasped the enormity of the task at hand was to fall back on my twenty-four years as an AP French teacher and start spouting grammar rules and doing worksheets and everybody including me would have been much happier.
