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NT 2
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18 thoughts on “NT 2”
Absolutely! It’s so interesting to see how much the students remember when it comes from them versus what comes from us.
Which is why I am against reading whole class novels. Along w the other reason that it divides the class along the lines of readers from reading families and less privileged kids. Which is why the SSR time is the only time I recommend reading novels. Have you gotten more books? The AES French selection was pretty thin when I was there. I would recommend Carol’s of course.
My question is….is emergent input necessarily non-targeted input? I got this question recently from a pretty experienced and well-known TPRS teacher who got a little flustered when I mentioned NT and I didn’t really know how to answer. I want to read more of what Krashen has to say about NT.
I showed them (I’ll leave them anonymous) my book of stories from my classes based on the OWI and Invisibles (40 pages since the beginning of the school year!) and they said “from reading this I can see that you are in fact targeting.”
Is the OWI creation targeted since it has questions built in “contento/triste” “inteligente/estupido”?
I kind of have the Sweet 16 as my “in bounds” verbs in the back of my mind but I am not going into the OWI or Seven-Step process with targets in mind.
All I know is this….I went into this year wanting to TRY the invisibles and OWI and now it has turned into 90% of my curriculum since it’s such an enjoyable process for both teacher and student. The kids have voted and so has my mental health.
Greg pls don’t tell me who these people are. I don’t want to know. But if you talk to them again, ask them why it is so important to them that Tina and I didn’t invent anything new. And send them a message from me. Tell them that I define non-targeted instruction as anything not connected to a list of any kind, from a chapter in a textbook, a list of words taken from a novel so that the kids can read it (never works, is just a buzzword as you said here a few weeks ago), a high frequency list of words, a thematic unit list, any other semantic set, a S/S of any stripes, a pacing guide of any variety. I intensely resent those ill-advised comments from people who have never even read what Tina and I have written on this topic. The Invisibles have spoken for themselves for almost two years now and Tina and I don’t need any more bullshit from the Old Guard of TPRS. It’s times like this when I like having our nice and small group here, where we can say openly what is on our minds. It’s either that or go smoke a cigarette but it’s 30 degrees on my front porch here in Denver tonite.
Ask these people why it is so important that the Invisibles be targeted. They embarrass themselves with such petty inquiry. It doesn’t matter what we call it but I I have written extensively on this topic – they haven’t read those pages. It is bc for some reason they want to argue semantics. Greg, you are NOT TARGETING. My broken thumb prevents me from elaborating. Color me fatigued by such petty argumentative intellects. Let them be right. I don’t care. The fact is that when we don’t try to tie our instruction to a list (targeted) and thus let the class go where it will (non-targeted) then we reach kids in a way they can’t. Not even close.
When I told this particular teacher though that I went into the year just trying it out and the kids actually beg me for it, argue about whose OWI is better, include other classes’s characters in their stories, and the fact that I feel confident in the process where in the traditional TPRS story ask I still don’t feel confident.
Also, another misconception that people have is that this is just about One Word Image. It isn’t. It’s about a 7 step process for asking a story where you don’t have to worry about being funny, cute, or crazy. It puts the kids in the driver’s seat with the story and takes the pressure off of the teacher. It’s also about the classroom management piece and the assessment and curriculum. Other seminars/conferences don’t give teachers a clear answer on these things.
It’s just a shame too that people want you to take sides. I just want what is best for kids and my department. I remember at the Chicago conference I told you I still like the “expression of interest” and you said “You can do what you want but I think it’s manipulative”. There are people on this PLC that target to a certain degree. In the end we are all adults and professionals and need to evaluate anything we hear at conferences and see if it will work in our particular situation.
I even want to go to an Organic World Language workshop just to see what it’s about. I think they might have something that could be good for our Honors track (I don’t believe in tracking but it’s a reality where I’m at) because I’ve seen those kids. They actually want output.
The thing is if nobody questions things, nothing changes. You can see quotes from TPR people criticizing TPRS back in the day and refuting the claims that TPR becomes boring. Any time a method morphs into something slightly different there are defenders of the old ways. It’s just how progress works.
So many CI people claim legacy teachers are close-minded but then do the same thing when it comes to NT vs. T2.
**when I told that teacher those things mentioned in the first paragraph they were kind of like “hmm…I didn’t know that”…..
This argument is getting tiresome to me as well especially considering how successful the Invisibles have been for so many teachers and kids. The whole targeting debate is very wearisome and emotional for me. Steve Beniko and Ben I had a long talk in Agen about it. Krashen has been very clear on the topic then shifted to being very unclear. He’s shifted position. People seem convinced that they need to get him to say TPRS is Targeting 2 or Story Listening is Targeting 2 or the Invisibles are Targeting 2 and/or to get him to condemn TPRS as Targeting 1 or circling as Targeting 1. I had many email exchanges with him in which it became clear to me that he wasn’t really very firm in his knowledge of actual classroom practice or even what is being presented st conferences – conferences where he keynotes. I don’t say this to disrespect Krashen’s work. But it blew me away to learn how arbitrary his application of the NT/T1/T2 definition has been. Of course now Beniko and Steve are no longer willing to talk to me because of a comment on this blog that was written about a book we were working on with Beniko. Someone who was on the blog told Beniko that we were trying to undersell her SL book with a Bite-Size Book in SL. In reality we were not but that’s just how it goes I guess. I wonder if the mess will ever be straightened out but have come to terms with it and now I don’t care anymore if it does because I figure that if Steve doesn’t even clearly understand what the Targeting thing is in actual fact if practice, then it’s a moot point and a useless set of terms.
Recently on the SL page there was a debate between Claire who has become a SL champion and Karen Rowan who has been training on backwards planning from novels for a long time. I was sent screenshots of the debate since Claire banned me from the SL page due to this business misunderstanding and I can’t really read there any more. Karen was saying why does Krashen praise Linda Li so highly because Karen asserts she’s doing T1. Karen was asserting that backwards planning from a novel is T2. I’d say it can be, if the teacher is just reading with the kids and clarifying meaning when needed. I’d say the Invisibles are NT with a little T2 when needed to establish the meaning.
In the screenshots, Claire was saying Steve recently said that the newly-minted “Story Listening Toolkit” is the “definition of T2” or something. The toolkit is a collection of skills for comprehensibility that the SL group has written to describe the way Beniko makes the stories Comprehensible. The skills aren’t anything that others don’t do and include things like drawing and writing in L1 and L2. I myself use a lot of these tools in my Invisibles stories and other CI. I mean I even use em in giving L2 directions for assessments. I did that yesterday.
Once Steve told me the Invisibles are most likely NT plus T2. Now due to these misunderstandings he wouldn’t dream of mentioning them. It’s ok. I will keep working with Ben´ to spread the best way we’ve found so far to co create stories in a NT plus occasional T2 way. I’ll keep helping teachers liberate themselves from the heavy burden of trying to use CI to squish targets into kids’ brains. I understand the distinction, and the methods (TPRS, SL, backwards planning, etc) better than most people involved in the conversation (though I’ve been excluded from the conversation now) and I’m confident that the invisibles – at least as Ben and I do them and train others to do – is truly NT plus T2.
T2 isn’t bad or evil. T1 is. T2 happens all the time in human interaction. It happens in content-based teaching like math or science. It’s just what humans do to deal with what happens when we are talking or reading and the other human (or humans) need clarification on a word.
It’s not teaching from a word list. Even OWI isn’t teaching from a word list. Ive stopped even using the poster anyways. I don’t even have question words on my board or anywhere in my room. I just basically use whatever language I want as I go slow and deliberately from utterance to utterance and in the silences I carefully cultivate between utterances I look carefully at the humans in front of me and I dig into my ancient human soul and I use ancient human ways to make my messages get through to them.
I’ve noticed that sometimes Ben’s or my years of training and practice in circling will make us briefly sound a wee bit targety. That’s user error, not the spirit of the Invisibles.
I’d be interested to see the text you shared with the teacher. Maybe you were doing some written circling. It does get tempting. We all have hangovers from the idea that we are responsible for getting kids to uptake certain words. No shame in that. It was an intermediate step for the movement. The mass movement that’s underway that’s leading us away from T1 and textbooks.
T2 is Karen’s made up term. Or am I wrong on that? She made something simple into something complex. It’s all politics and ego promotion. J’en ai marre.
SK made up T2. I think the later debates on TPRS caused SK to say some TPRS folks are doing T1 and others are doing T2. Its true. They are. But the message hadn’t been clear or forceful enough. Before I became persona non grata to them, I was hot on the trail cause I know that whatever SK recommends gets loads of attention. So I wanted to help him reform TPRS and get them to move away from T1 which is what a lot of trainings are teaching new teachers. Circling re selected target structures. It’s likd gladiator school. Only the strong survive. Cause they go back to real life and it flops with real kids and newbie teavhers’ Clunky skills. Classroom management tanks cause it’s aenward and clunky and they think CI is too hard.
There’s a better way!!!!!!!
Talk to them!!!!!
You do t have to tell grimms takes every day!
You don’t have to do the calendar!
You don’t have to do one word images!
All you have to do is talk to them!!!!!!!
Since this is all it takes then ALL I CAN ASSUME is that all the dithering is die to adults wanting power and money and social capital.
It’s sickening and I’m done with it.
Targeting and circling surely worked for some. And continue to do so.
It worked for me. I was good at it.
Once Von Ray shook my ha d so hard as I was doing circling in his workshop that I thought he would take my arm off.
I got skills. They mostly came from theatre and who I am. Not from the TPRS trainings. I came there primed to be entertaining enough to carry circling. Except for my fatal flaw – depression. If I’m overwhelmed with that grey heavy feeling then I just can’t bring the noise. And targeted circling requires some entertainment value to be added or it sure gets stale.
This argument that there’s skilled and unskilled circling is wearing on me too. Why teach something that if not used skillfully is so deadly. Why not teach them how to be Comprehensible with the actual flow of genuine communication.
Why play with fire when each person who takes up CI is a precious new egg in our basket of liberating kids? Why set them up to struggle?
These people who haven’t tried this work and are just naysayers – Laurie Clarcq telling me in 2016 that NT work with the Invisibles was dangerous and would lead to people losing their jobs. What did she know about it? Or the endless debates of Is It New? Well it’s new enough to get two old dogs – Ben and me – pretty jazzed up and then for loads of people we’ve trained to say that it’s made CI easier and more understandable.
I’m tired of playing it small too. I want to help more teachers. And more kids.
Love. (Yes, I’ve been brainwashed in Facebook land… 😉 ) If it’s not their bag, just move on. Teaching is tough enough without negativity from other teachers. I think we should all be cheering each other on just for showing up, and doing the best that we can with what we have to give (on whatever “side” you feel yourself to be).
Hi Tina.
The following is the book I demonstrated:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rGAWET2DafQ3n_06UhvyP94MfhbavCDHzKbtGrcwta4/edit?usp=sharing
Please do not share outside of the PLC
The teacher is just seeing how skilled you are at using the hf words as Targeting. They don’t understand and likely haven’t read the book.
Tina said:
… I wonder if the mess will ever be straightened out….
Probably not. The need seems to be for the Old Guard of TPRS to label the Invisibles. They want it to have a certain label. Actually taking the top off of the jar and tasting the contents doesn’t seem to be important to them. Too much trouble. Might not taste good. Might have to adjust their taste buds. Just keep staring at the label and they won’t have to get food on their face. I’m still pissed about their snarky jab at Greg.
I disagree. It will change. Capitalism. The market will decide. People are hungry for the Invisibles. Then people will get on board.
Not to say people aren’t hungry for TPRS, but IMHO, the personalization in the Invisibles is amazing.
Two most cutting edge CI things—-> OWI/Invisibles and Persona especial.
And – in my experience – content-area instruction strategies for upper levels. People are hungry for ways to continue CI after two or so years of stories, for ways to gently transition kids to output in upper-level classes.
Just make sure you credit Jody Noble in Mexico for the Persona Especial. She is the inventor in spite of what others claim. Sabrina Janzcak brought it up a high level but never made any claims to be the originator. The inventor is not Bryce Hedstrom.
You guys know what we have here, at least the old timers on this PLC know. What do we have here in the Invisibles? We have greatness. I am tired of holding it back, under some sense of avoiding self-promotion, being humble, all that ego-driven drivel that keeps us from stating who we are.
My view of those who roped Greg in on this point is one of disdain. I have zero respect for such people who have not found time to actually study the work Tina and I have been doing for two years now, and yet find time to criticize it.
The proof is in the pudding, and the Invisibles are fine pudding indeed. I will not let my heart be troubled by the things that pass me by in this ever-so-trying work. I know that in Tina I have found a truly great talent with whom to slave away in this work, and I will continue to promote her work as the best out there in the CI world.
What Tina says above is true. Those people she mentions above have done a lot of damage to our movement. Take that how you like. Find fault with it. It’s your call. That is why this site is private. Know one thing: after a lifetime of teaching using traditional and then targeted CI, I know for a fact that no matter what anyone says about the work Tina and I are doing, it is far superior to anything that has come along so far.
Now the reader of this comment must decide. Am I nuts? Then cancel your membership here. Am I correct? Then stay and learn with us, as we continue to push the envelope into discussions like this that are not shallow. It feels good to state my truth here.
Tina gets it. Listen to her. Follow her direction. She’s right on every level. Don’t attack. Those others who have NOT REALLY STUDIED WHAT TINA IS DOING, have missed a boat to a fine land, a very fine land. It’s their loss. Tough noogies….