About a week ago here Udo asked why we don’t discuss the TPRS mainstay skills of Circling and massed repetitions of target structures much any more, like we used to.
It is because some of us here have come to the realization that massed circled reps of pre-chosen targets cannot in themselves make our work with comprehensible input any better. Upon reflection, in fact, one notes that those things – circling and mass reps of targets – are mechanical skills. How do circling and massed reps of targets limit the gains we enjoy in our foreign language classrooms?
It is because nothing that is mechanical in nature can improve human communication. We cannot improve human communication by increasing the frequency of a mechanical process. How then can we in fact improve human communication (language)? We can do it by increasing the interest levels of what we are talking about.