There was a brief thread (one comment) here a few weeks ago on a post by Robert on the topic of Comprehensible Output:
https://benslavic.com/blog/comprehensible-output-hypothesis/
I put the part I consider most important in that article in orange. Robert’s comments on Swain cannot be ignored. His read on Swain is so accurate. It reveals so much. I’ll let that go for now since this is a rant, and I haven’t ranted in a long time so I give myself permission to make no sense in this article.
Lately I have been spending time with a friend of mine from Mexico. I have been listening to my Spanish in terms of the above discussion. In other words, I was noticing everything going through my mind in my efforts to produce the language, in terms of the points made especially by Robert and Nathaniel in that discussion.
Here are my conclusions:
1. You have to want to say it. I conclude from that, and I my be wrong but it feels right to me, that If you parrot something that you don’t have any particular want or need to say, as happens so much in schools, it has no value in learning the language. It is a waste of time. Somebody should try to calculate how many minutes per day are lost around the globe because of that instructional scam. I bet it would be in the many billions.
2. My friend is an exceptionally kind person. Se llama Jorge. So this quality in him invites me to speak a lot more than I normally would say if I were in a class. My friend listens to me. So I conclude that if the feeling in the room is of happiness then the language will flow like a river and not a trickle as it does in schools.
3. I would not be able to do any fun comprehensible output in Spanish with my friend unless he really cared to listen to what I wanted to say.
4. There are too many kids in the classroom for us to say things that matter to them. So the whole idea of big groups is only going to favor a few dominant kids and the effect of muzzling any output in most of the kids, esp. the quiet ones, is incalculable.
So just now while I was writing this my friend called to say he would be late. He is helping me fix the foundation of my house. I wanted to tell him that it didn’t matter when he got here. I really wanted to say it in Spanish and it came out pretty good. But, and I take Robert’s position on this re: Swain’s position. In the above referenced article by Robert only his point #2 is accurate, in my view.
My conclusion is that CI is 99% and CO is 1% in importance, if that. That we force kids to speak in school and even develop rubrics as little whips on them, when they don’t want to speak and haven’t had enough input, is deplorable.