Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
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No More TPRS For Me
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CI and the Research (cont.)
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Research Question
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We Have the Research
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4 thoughts on “No More TPRS For Me”
Non-targeted is simply so much fun! The vocabulary is so rich and diverse and you create this community that loves to be together. Just yesterday, my 8th graders came up with a rich and stupid mole rat who is in love with a 2-headed chicken with a papaya for a butt who is super smart and is taking advantage of him. It was too funny!
When we work from images and not word lists, we win them over.
I am loving NTCI and Ben, I totally agree with point #3:
“The data gathering and grading pieces required in schools are in conflict with the soul of comprehension based instruction. Students, parents and especially administrators who don’t understand storytelling can ruin careers.”
I have decided to stop asking pointless questions like “what are we going to test the students on” and “what are the most frequent word” and started focusing more on everyone’s role in the classroom as a sentient being who will learn language as long as it is compelling and comprehensible. The student-created characters and storylines make everything flow (Csíkszentmihályi and flow theory) in such an organic way. Measuring student progress should be complimentary to this organic process and not at odds with it.
Ben, colleagues – if you had to list the top five skills/ characteristics that a NTCI teacher should exhibit in their classroom, how would you do that (Maybe SLOW, calm, command of the target language … etc)?
In the post about Beniko Mason, she says:
“You don’t need a textbook; you don’t need a trained teacher; you don’t need money.”
It seems like a lot of teachers are either a.) turned off by the simplicity of the method, b.) not confident enough in their own language skills to conduct a class in such a way that NTCI demands or c.) do no research in language acquisition and do not want to be convinced that CI/ NTCI is more effective than traditional textbook/ grammar models of language acquisition.
Anyway, thanks for everything you do here, Ben – my colleagues and I at Floyd County High School have learned a lot from being a part of this PLC.
Thanks Taron I really like how you clearly get it. And I really appreciate the compliment. The blog has less “pop” than in the old days, probably because of the proliferation of so many new internet venues, and so it makes me happy to know that this space is of service to others. I’ll keep writing and, really, trying to push this thing in the exact direction you point to above. Really, we don’t need to let our teacher selves get in the way of good instruction, and teaching and testing on all those targets is just stupid.
I will post your question as a post and I am so glad you asked it because I am writing a new book on classroom management and right now I am in the chapter that is about “What qualities in our teaching are the most important, the ones we would want to be able to see if we videotaped ourselves?” (That question if we think about it has a lot to do with our ability to manage a classroom.) So a timely question, my friend.