Listening is the Bedrock
My heart goes out to the students whose learning style is predominantly visual but who are in a CI classroom. Why? It is because languages are learned via listening, and so the visual students are at a disadvantage. The skills other than listening – reading, writing, and speaking – all emerge from listening. Listening is the bedrock of what we do.
The visual students are, of course, the students who want worksheets but can’t have them because CI is the method of language instruction being used in the classroom, not to mention the fact that trying to learn a language by doing worksheets has absolutely no value.
Conversely, students who are predominantly auditory learners really suffer in worksheet/textbook classrooms, because they want to hear the language but can’t. They thrive in CI classrooms.
But if you think about it, the problem is that most students have been slowly molded – over years – into visual learners by the general nature of all instruction in all school subjects, which is predominantly visual, even in language classes.
Thus, fully two thirds of our students have been pulled away from and out of their natural learning styles, starting usually in about third grade.
