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Input Precedes Output
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15 thoughts on “Input Precedes Output”
Just to clarify,
I have begun a discussion on the FLAME (foreign language association of Maine) yahoo group. A college professor from the University of Maine responded to my post in which I shared the links to the ACTFL article on reaching the 90% goal and the article in the Oxford publication that languages are subconscious.
I want to continue the discussion and thought I would do so by posting the above.
You can read what the professor wrote and my response to her at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TPRSmaine/files/ under files. The file is called “Response to FLAME post” Dec 3 My comments are in blue…
Skip
Hey Diane N.
I don’t understand the reference to “new” and “old” TPRS????
Also, could you help me understand this sentence?
“Making sure students understand was key, she said, not just that you are speaking in the language without them understanding.”
thanks
Skip
Skip – my take on that sentence I think is: CI versus Total Immersion (??)
But “we” agree with that sentence, do we not?
thanks
skip
Hi Skip – Ben used my comment as a post called “Helena Curtain”, and offers more comments there.
What Helena said about “new” TPRS is that she quoted a teacher who claimed to use TPRS but gave students lots of direct translation “to save time.” The teacher giving translation thoroughly and often. It sounded to me like a bad example of TPRS. I don’t think that’s normal, but that’s the issue Helena spoke about. She said in the strongest terms (something like “absolutely EXCELLENT”) about “old” TPRS (and she specified, in response to a participant’s question, Stephen Krashen and Blaine Ray).
Yeah well she is not incorrect that there IS a new TPRS now, one that reflects the personal biases of all the teachers who attended even one workshop and claim to do it but are FAR from doing it as per Blaine and Krashen.
Those teachers are the problem. We can’t standardize the method but neither can we stray too far from what Blaine laid out. I have always felt that the heartbeat of TPRS is in the Three Steps.
I say that because over the twelve years I have been doing it I have pushed, sometimes HARD, on the walls of the Three Steps but they always bounce back into shape. That proved to me that we are dealing with the formula for Coke here and should be very careful about letting it explode, mushroom-like, into something else.
That is why I use the term TPRS/CI and not the new TCI that a lof of people are using. We have work to do, therefore, right? We can be a force in keeping things from blowing up into new, unrecognizable forms and in keeping things relatively in line with the old, absolutely excellent, TPRS.
If we do that well then Helena will not be able trash the term. We must remember that Helena has a very good reason to trash the term TPRS. If the term becomes trash, then she gets to still be the expert.
So she has a lot at stake. Go read some of what she has written. It’s just TPRS, but with just enough variation to make it look like Helena Curtain. But she gives herself way as a chameleon imposter because she misses the point on output, on thematic units and on the role of direct translation.
Your are wrong, Helena Behind the Curtain. But thanks for playing. There is some Yiddish expression I heard one time – I don’t know the actual word: “Hi! It’s great to see you! Now MOVE, there’s somebody behind you!”
It’s time for Helena and Mimi to move over and let Carol Gaab and Diana and Laurie and Jason and Blaine step forth to teach the world about a way to align with Krashen that is much more accurate than what they are offering. Their old way is tainted by too many brain cells. It’s not time for that anymore. It’s time for the victory of the Heart.
I just responded to a thread over at moretprs and wanted to ask people here for their advice as well. I don´t know that it fits perfectly with this thread, but it is definitely touching upon the input/output question.
Thanks so much for the very detailed description of Blaine’s method!
Having such detailed descriptions out there really helps the beginner
teachers who are looking for support.
I have a couple of questions regarding the “Who” circling as described
below
(this is a quoted message from here http://groups.yahoo.com/group/moretprs/message/127895 )
1) Who: circle with whole class in third person singular–past tense of
names (to class: what was boy # 1’s name? who calls himself_______?” Does
#1 call himself______? etc.), then turn to actor and “interview” them in
present, using2nd person, and eliciting 1st person present responses
(What’s your name? Do you call youself_____?). What is important is not
to accept an inaccurate answer. If they respond, “me llama” (he calls
myself) when you wanted “me llamo” (I call myself), it is a rich pop up
grammar point (‘if you put an “a” a tthe end you are saying he or she
calls me–you want to say–I call myself, what would you put at the end
to say I call?) (Blaine also really works on endings–asking students,
“what does that “s/n” at the end tell you? Can you hear that “s/n”?)
What I am most interested in is this idea of not accepting an inaccurate answer. I had never heard this before, and was under the impression that I should not be correcting students’ grammar when they speak. I understood that this is just a sign that they are not ready to produce output yet, and that I should not correct them, but merely model correct formations. Focusing on valid input rather than output. I do the same on their freewrites, not correcting but occasionally modeling some correct sentences in the form of questions to them.
While doing reading, I always take some time to point out different verb formations and what they mean in “pop ups” but I thought that they would distract from a story or PQA, as well as turn the student’s attention away from the meaning and to the structure (or grammar) of the expression.
Obviously TPRS is not monolithic, but is this (grammar pop-ups in PQA or stories) the way that it is commonly done by most practitioners? Especially hearing that this is the way that Blaine does it makes me question my own (novice) techniques. If a student says “te gusta helado” instead of “me gusta helado” when you ask him that question, do people stop to do a pop-up, or accept the answer which is obviously that he does like it?
If they are acquiring the grammar unconsciously while focusing on meaning and communication, what is the role of more explicit grammar instruction, which I think this would qualify as?
Please excuse both my ignorance and insistence, I am just quite surprised that my own practices are so different.
thanks,
Dave
Susan Gross (at a workshop in Aug. 2012) said she would repeat back what the student meant/should say but affirm “Yes – (and then say it correctly).” If another student would point out the error, she would hush them. So she’d demonstrate the correct way but not point out an error at all.
However, she would do pop-up grammar when looking at a sentence. Ex: “Why does this word end in s”?
…if a student says “te gusta helado” instead of “me gusta helado” when you ask him that question, do people stop to do a pop-up, or accept the answer which is obviously that he does like it?….
You accept the answer as is. It will correct itself over time. By explaining the error, you make a million mistakes that insult real language acquisition. Don’t do that.
Dave asked, If a student says “te gusta helado” instead of “me gusta helado” when you ask him that question, do people stop to do a pop-up, or accept the answer which is obviously that he does like it?
What I do depends partly on how long we have been working with the structure. If we have just begun working on “me/te gusta”, I might say, “¡Que bueno!” then turn to the class and say, “Clase, Juan dice, ‘Me gusta helado.’ [turning to Juan] ¿Sí, te gusta helado? [student responds] A mí [pointing to myself] me gusta también helado.” Then we do some more circling / PQA with other students to get more repetitions.
If we have been working with this for a while and I think the student should be able to pick up the change of perspective*, I do what Ben and Diane talked about above: model the correct response and re-ask the question. Often the proximate cause is that the student hasn’t realized that a shift of perspective must occur with “you” questions. After all, in class we ask “he/she” questions all the time and get “he/she” answers (with no change of perspective). So, I do something like the following:
T: ¿Te gusta helado?
S: Sí, te gusta helado.
T: Sí, me gusta helado. [huge gesture toward myself] Pero, ¿te gusta helado? [gesture toward the student]
At this point the student usually recognizes the need to change perspective and does so easily, but this should come only after students have heard many, many repetitions of both forms over a period of time.
*Change of perspective is a challenge that often goes unrecognized. It’s one thing to know the forms and be able to use them in a consistent narrative (e.g. I got up this morning, I drove to school, I went to class) and something else to do the mental gymnastics of turning a direct question around. Hanging on the wall in my room is a poster of the 10 rungs of language acquisition. Rung 10 is “able to re-tell the story easily from another perspective or in another time frame”. That is high-level thinking. (I got the poster idea from Julie Baird, a German TPRS teacher in Indiana. We met at the Sweetbriar German TPRS conference several years ago.)
I just saw Ben’s response and recognize that our answers may seem at bit at odds. Notice, though, that my second model takes place when I am confident that the student has mastered the structure and just needs a little “nudge” in the right direction. Then there is the “well, duh” reaction by the student, and we move on. But be sure you are reading your students on this. I would rather do model one too many times than push a student too soon on this. As I noted above, I think we often don’t realize how complex that immediate change of perspective really is.
…she’d demonstrate the correct way but not point out an error at all…
Because that makes the student conscious of how the output happens, which ruins the process. The first (incorrect) utterance comes up from the unconscious into speech naturally, brilliantly, and the teacher has the choice to allow it to just happen in that way, without correction (would you correct a baby?) or point out the flaw in the child. By pointing out the flaw, the child is insulted. Fear and guilt and inadequacy is activated in the child’s mind. Is that what we do – insult children and make them feel inadequate? Actually, it is.
…however, she would do pop-up grammar….
That is because we work in schools. The way it would work in environments where we don’t have to test writing and speaking too early is that as the years went by the, and as the student got a deeper and deeper foundation of input language, correct writing would emerge naturally over years from all that reading and correct speech would emerge in the same way from all that listening. But schools don’t work that way. We till the soil, thus piercing the skin of the earth. School wants output NOW. So Susie capitulates and throws a bone to that conscious function. That’s all it is – throwing a bone to get the dog to shut up. The only time I do that is during reading classes and even then it feels kind of stupid. But hey, we gotta teach writing and gotta get them speaking, right? That is why we often hear “If you really want to learn a language, go to the country where it is spoken.” They don’t say, “If you really want to learn a language, go to the country where it is written.”
Related: http://backtoedenfilm.com/faqs/index.html
Wow, Ben, we set up our home garden after watching the video at the website you linked! I was already seeing all kinds of parallels between acquiring language to spiritual rest, and now you link in the really fruitful, excellent gardening approach that we began this year, too. It takes more prep work and then runs itself. Let’s say it’s unconscious gardening. Not much weeding or watering at all.
Thanks for the replies from the experts, Diane, Robert, and Ben!
This was someone describing how Blaine taught in his classroom, that was partially what prompted my question.
Also, I find that my students very often when I ask them questions do not have any automatic response with the first person because that is not the exact structure that we have been practicing. On the board it says “quiere comer¨ “he/she wants to eat”. There is no separate structure for “quiero comer” “I want to eat on the board, and it does not become automatic for them. Now I give them input orally with the I forms, and in the stories, but it is much much more limited. Am I missing a step to encourage this automatic reproduction of the I form? I am already saying “Good”, Billy says “I like to eat” and giving them the correct form without calling attention to the error.
Do more dialogues in your stories. That’s one way to get reps on first person. And don’t worry about it. The kids need thousands of hours for mastery, and you have 125 hours per year, and you won’t get all verb forms/tenses taught in all forms in the 500 hours you have in your program so don’t try. Just let the CI flow and trust.