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Herman on Krashen
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4 thoughts on “Herman on Krashen”
I hijacked Krashen a bit here, using his writings to apply it to the Can Do’s. He says not having enough access to CI is not a valid reason to use another method. I’m generalizing it to mean: if we believe in our hearts and minds that CI is how we acquire and it is the only way we acquire (at the least the most efficient means), then there is no reason to teach in another way. Of course, keeping your job may be a valid reason 😉
Read that entire Krashen article (7 pages).
Ben would probably say: “That’s some badass Krashen.”
Keeping my job is the only thing between me and doing 100% CI with 0% assessment. As long as they understand the language they hear (and read), and hear (and read) it a ton, the students can’t help but acquire the language over time.
Someone wrote here, I think it was you Eric, that Blaine has also said this about keeping one’s job. But Carol and Michele and I guess Mira are describing doing it not just to keep a job, but, if I may interpolate, also to make sure that the kids learn it, since our kids don’t have 24/7 exposure to the language.
I also have a question for Michele: To what extent do the Can Do statements resemble the study of thematic units like time and weather?
Check out this link to answer that question:
http://www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/Can-Do_Statements.pdf
Page 6 is an overview of the levels we expect to see in high school classes over four years.
Scroll down to page 8 for Novice Level Interpersonal Communication Can-Do statements.
You could teach these thematically if you wanted to, but most of what the kids need to know will come up in regular CI.
My kids had to practice using what they knew to accomplish some tasks. Their initial confusion reminded me of how, when I went to Russia after four years of college Russian, I couldn’t communicate in the post office that I needed a stamp for America. A gesture and the word “America” would have been plenty. I tell my kids that story every year, and I believe it’s useful to practice thinking through how to wrestle with these situations.
Can-Do statements should not be a curriculum. They suggest what learners might do at the different proficiency levels. But if there is a relevant can-do statement that I think should be a no-brainer, based on what we’ve done in class, and kids think they can’t do it, it’s worth considering putting useful phrases into a story or finding the situation in a reading or song to get it into their repertoire.