I thought I would repost this from November of 2009:
Jody and I were talking today about Krashen. Aren’t we all trying to figure out, by studying his work, how to reach our kids at a more authentic level?
Krashen is prodding us all to look at the ways in which we provide Comprehensible Input to our students. For instance, when we write a brief translation on the board as “the meaning” for the target phrase (Point and Pause) in our CI classes, are the consequences of that act a bit more complex than meet the eye/ear? In giving the students a synonym (albeit in another language), are we asking them to “try to remember” the synonym instead of “feel” its meaning? By giving them the “meaning” of every single word, do we stymie the all-important process of using context to comprehend more and more meaning of a structure or vocabulary item over time? By providing the student with the meaning for every single word, do we hold her/him back from building the necessary skill of negotiating meaning with speakers of the target language? There are, of course, MANY positive consequences for students when there is 100% transparency in the classroom. However, there are other consequences we may want to consider. Interesting question–and this is just one way we provide CI. What about the others?
As we discussed the topic, Jody asked me if we provide translation to small children when “teaching” them their first language. She talked (she has known Dr. Krashen and his work for close to thirty years) about the entire process of language acquisition as much more intuitive than most of us make it, hence the kind of distance between Krashen and TPRS (even though he supports TPRS more than any other approach), a distance which is now centered around Krashen’s new term of transparency (which started out last summer in discussion of “non targeted CI”). See the link below.
To expand on the term “transparency”, when we translate, we think that we are focusing our students on meaning, but Jody was suggesting to me today, in direct alignment with Krashen, that when we do that, we are in fact asking our students to focus on form – i.e. we may be asking them to try to learn the language in a part of their brain that cannot acquire language, the analytical part. Jody reminded me of the importance of the concept of FLOW, which we have discussed a lot on this blog. Jody asked an incredible question – does anyone really know when they first acquired their second language? Wasn’t it really a din and then suddenly you noticed that you were communicating in the language? Is it not true that we have no real cognition of acquisition? We have no idea when we became fluent. The way we do school is so bizarre and against all of what Krashen suggests to be optimal. And then we in school classrooms dismiss Krashen, for what reason I will never be able to understand, as if what he is saying is interesting but not really on point in terms of what we do. Well, maybe what we do is not on point in terms of Krashen and maybe we better get off our asses and make it align with him, with much more CI that is not a kind of CI that focuses on form. Maybe we really need to look at our history of ignoring what Krashen has laid out as neat as this whole acquisition thing can be laid out, and make that work for us and quit messing around in silly arguments, or cat calling out, Chesire Cat-like, at colleagues who are desperately trying to change a broken system. We either focus on form or we don’t, ultimately, right? Now that Dr. Krashen has come out with this new word transparency, I will now change how I discuss this stuff with my colleagues. We can’t just slice and dice TPRS into a thousand pieces and claim that it aligns with Krashen any more. Many of us, most of us, don’t even do TPRS the way Blaine invented it, but I’ve beat that horse enough times on this blog to go there again. What are we doing? Anyway, here is Jody’s email. We all would do well to visit and study the link.
Ben,
I’m sure you’ve viewed/listened to this. Everyone who reads your blog should be versed in what he has to say about the current state of theory and how it jibes/or not with current TPRS practice.
http://cetstream1.mediasite.com/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=8be0b992a82a4e5690b8a9d4e114ab7c
He addresses strengths and weaknesses of TPRS as he sees them. One of the most fascinating points he talks about is the difference between 100% comprehensibility and 100% transparency. Subtle, but powerful shift.
At the end, he also answers some questions. He addresses “songs/music” and “output”.