A parent told Eric Herman that language learning is linear. Eric wisely left it alone, because he could have kept that person busy listening to him for about 500 hours in a row with his unique knowledge of the research. But now I can’t get that comment out of my mind because it says so much about where we still are with language learning.
Then Nathaniel came in on that thread with a comment that is one for the books:
Linear is one-dimensional. There is no up or down, just backward and forward. Language is multi-dimensional. The process of TPRS is one of connecting what we are doing with everything we have done. It is back and forth, up and down, in and out, here and there, hither and thither, front stage and back stage, shallow and deep.
Linear language is plus and minus: (hablar minus -r = habla) plus (-s) = hablas = second person singular present indicative.
TPRS and other CI move us into two-dimensional (times and divided by) and beyond to three-dimensional language and exponential growth.
My comment: How is it that there are still people teaching languages who don’t trust the super computer – the deeper mind – that, needing only constant comprehensible input to operate, performs linguistic functions that are FAR beyond anything linear thinking could do? There are language educators who still think that they need to do the (nearly infinite) work of the super computer themselves. And then under the whip of that linear thinking their kids learn to hate languages. It’s really very odd! And riddled with hubris.