Today I heard yet again a common refrain in this work: non-targeted CI instruction works for some but it isn’t for everybody. The problem in that statement lies in the fact that it refers to teachers and not students. If non-targeted instruction is best for kids, if that seems to be the gorilla in the room right now, then wouldn’t we want to give it a closer look before dismissing it as the rantings of some of the fringe element in the TPRS/CI world?
A lot of people like to point out that not everyone can “do” the non-targeted kind of teaching. I think that is because they haven’t tried. It is easy but is being dismissed as hard. The fact is that if this new non-targeted way (Krashen started talking about it in 2011) is best for kids, then maybe teachers who use the old mechanical form of TPRS (targets, circling, reading books that engage the conscious faculty and are therefore not what Krashen has in mind, doing the old kind of summative testing), then maybe those teachers shouldn’t be teaching, if is isn’t best for kids.
Boy that statement is bound to piss some people off. But I’m not sure I would want my kids to have their teeth worked on by a toothbrush salesman when what they need is a dentist.