Meagan is my colleague at East High here in Denver. Last week she told me about how a kid came into her classroom and asked, “Is it true that four year olds can learn a langauge faster than us?”
I loved Meagan’s response:
“No, it’s not true. That myth exists because of the way languages are presented to high school kids and to adults. We would never ask a four year old to conjugate a verb or ask them what the infinitive form of the verb was. We wouldn’t ask them to memorize lists of words. We just tell the kids to go play, and they learn language by playing.”
Meagan went on to tell me about a methods teachers she had in college who told her, “You would never hand a baby a pencil.”
I find it ridiculous to think of a baby trying to write something. There are those who would counter that young adults and adults are not babies, but, in truth, when it comes to their ability to write in a foreign language, aren’t they, in fact, babies? Krashen has shown that the writing should emerge only after massive amounts of input.
Thank you Meagan.
The Problem with CI
Jeffrey Sachs was asked what the difference between people in Norway and in the U.S. was. He responded that people in Norway are happy and
