Bob wrote this a month ago, and I am republishing it here. I put certain parts of this text in bold. It is a powerful argument and a decisive one against all who think that CI is just another tool in the box. It makes it clear that people learn languages by hearing them spoken and by focusing on the message and not the vehicle for the message:
There is a tendency, sometimes, some people, to take the atttidue that “you either do CI or you don’t.”
The truth is that the ONLY way anyone acquires a language is when they receive understandable messages in the target language. I have not found anyone, so far, who can’t settle down into that and acknowledge that it’s true. The issue then becomes: how can we teach so that we get as many understandable messages consciously into our teaching as possible? (ed. note: bold text mine)
Almost any teacher, any time, any method gets an occasional understandable message across in the language. That’s language roulette, though. What CI as the umbrella approach that it is trying to do is to help me as a teacher show up every day, every class and consciously deliver understandable messages.
If we take that as a kind of pre-amble, then I think much of the research that supports the importance of language study for students also supports CI (because, really, it’s the other way around–any language teaching that works does work because the teacher has found a way to deliver understandable messages).