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Read The Novels to Them with Love
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24 thoughts on “Read The Novels to Them with Love”
Did I miss something recently? What’s a Movie Reading?
When we translate for the kids while they read along in the text.
btw, I tried this with a Spanish 2 group while reading Piratas. I asked how they like it. They said very much. Because they didn’t have to stumble through the translations themselves. They could just sit back and see what happens. And things went smoother and faster.
Caveat: If the kids are not following along in the text, it is “second-language learningly useless”. But when we consider the power of reading-aloud, as explained by Trelease, that caveat begins to dwindle because the kids are getting all the positive emotional connections to literature, not to mention growing their first language lexicon which makes streamlines second language acquisition. So that caveat is pretty marginal, and that only applies to the kids who won’t for whatever reason follow along in the text. (Even a finger on the word, if required, is easy enough to fake. I just tried to stop every couple paragraphs and ask kids to put their finger on the spot where we’re at, so that we were all together before moving on.)
Thanks for this simple and “obvious” method to reading… Movie Reading.
Any other caveats identified?
This sounds really easy. Would make for an incredibly easy class period.
It the ‘input’ they’re getting with this type of reading good enough? Although it’s smooth sailing, they’re not hearing the language, is that okay?
Chris,
You may have missed the extended discussion we had on the merits of this method in providing reading CI. Check out this link:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2012/03/16/l1l2-reading-classes-novels-only/
please excuse a question most already know the answer to but could you clarify even further Jim:::
1. The students have a book in front of them or the story is projected.
2. I am reading the spanish AND then translating?
3. or????
Thanks Jim
skip
After we do a unit on submarine warfare in WWII for German 2, we read “Flucht aus Auschwitz” (Escape from Auschwitz). It’s a reader, and I always warn my students that because it has to use simple language there is the risk that the experience will be trivialized. Nonetheless I believe it is worth the risk because it exposes students to another aspect of the war and ties in with World History. This year I wanted to finish the book quickly, so I did the Movie Reading (good term, by the way). In both classes you could have heard a pin drop – and I have a carpeted room. It was the best experience with this reader that I’ve had yet.
OK. I think I am about ready to make the rebuttal to this idea.
The idea, “concurrent translation”, is an old idea. As an approach, it has been found to be both inefficient and, in the long-run, ineffective. Is it intuitively positive at first glance? Why, yes it is–but let’s look at why it is not an approach upon which we should depend for reading comprehension, language acquisition, or content acquisition.
This discussion has been around for many decades–much of it stemming from trying to deliver content to ELL students which was above their English acquisition level–and how very hard that is to do. After many years of using “concurrent translation (movie reading)”, a couple of things were noticed:
kids liked it a lot because they could understand everything
they did not acquire very much English (the target language)
they just waited to hear the L1 and did not attend very much to L2-the target language
Concurrent translation eliminates the need for acquirers to attempt to understand the new language (even though they might start out that way–it doesn’t hold up over time), thereby cutting down on the amount of comprehensible input, which will hinder or obstruct language acquisition in the long run. Interestingly enough, most commercial language programs still use this method despite its many documented failures over the last four decades of research. I might add that this practice also goes against our goal of providing the largest percentage possible in the target language. (You’ll notice that I wisely did not state a numerical percentage. ;-))
Krashen speaks to this issue in that can be called the “Celsius Problem” — connected to the Input Hypothesis. He posits that the American public has not learned the Celsius temperature scale over the past 50 years even though they have been exposed to it through signage, textbook lessons, commercials, news, blah, blah, etc. He believes the reason for the failure is that there is always a “concurrent translation”. When people see the temperature displayed in Celsius, they ignore the “language” they don’t understand, and just wait until it shows up in “English–or the system they do understand”, thereby circumventing the likelihood of acquiring the system.
Is it more comfortable for the reader to wait to see something they understand ? Of course, it is.
Do they understand what the temperature is when they get it in both languages? Of course, they do.
Do they learn the Celsius system? No, they don’t.
Krashen says that in one of his “unscientific surveys” conducted with more than 5000 secondary teachers at workshops over several years, when asked to give the temperature of a room in Celsius, fewer than 1% of those teachers could do so without paper/pencil calculation.
In my opinion, this kind of audio input/concurrent translation might be somewhat helpful (not comfortable, but helpful) only when the students are already mostly familiar with the language used–in other words, as a form of review or confirmation of their personal acquisition.
If we are NEEDING to do this kind of “concurrent translation”, we may need to look at the appropriateness of the “level” of reading we are asking students to tackle. Maybe, it’s too difficult for them. We, also, may need to look at the many, many proven strategies that exist to help reading and language be more comprehensible (providing illustrations, background information, personalization, etc.)
I do see the power of using L1 judiciously to improve reading comprehension–making the movie in the mind (which will improve language acquisition). This can be done by previewing paragraphs or chapters, providing background information, vocabulary explanations, character or plot summaries, etc. in L1. Also, reviewing that same kind of information in L1 or higher level thinking info about the reading in L1 after reading in L2 might be helpful.
Dr. Krashen could provide you with more information on this topic–it’s a very old one in bilingual education circles. I, personally, don’t see it as a BAD thing to do on occasion–but knowing that it is not contributing to language acquisition. It may contribute to the students’ “feeling” that they can read a foreign language which may be important. However, I don’t believe it should replace reading in the target language. I don’t believe it contributes to language acquisition which, to my way of thinking, is our goal.
On the other hand, having students translate L2 reading into L1 is an assessment strategy–not a reading strategy per se. It tells the teacher whether the student understands the words she/he is reading or not. It doesn’t tell the teacher whether the student comprehends the reading at a higher level.
I may have more thoughts on this, but here’s what I’ve thought so far. I got the Celsius story from a Jeff McQuillan (Krashen colleague) article.
Thank you for a very considered discussion, Jody. Lots to think about here.
And Diana agrees with you on this Jody so yours is an almost irrefutable argument. And this is not a formal rebuttal to your point about how we best acquire languages – I would lose that argument. However, and not in an argumentative way, I would respectfully point out the following:
I absolutely should have made it clear that I suggest this kind of reading for high school students, and my conclusions and decision to present movie reading to the group are based on my high school age Latino population’s fluency in Spanish, a population which also has a remarkably low reading level in English, since most of them weren’t born here and English is their second language. I grossly neglected to make that clear in my excitement of how this idea works so wonderfully well for me in my classroom, and I apologize to the group for that oversight.
I would add, hoping not to sound too defensive, that teaching high school languages in March is very difficult and that best practices is not always the goal at hand. The rush of months of stories and readings actually crumbles in the spring, at least in my last two buildings, as the general population of (the urban schools I am familiar with) begins to resemble a very large group of bodaciously unmotivated kids. In fact, Diana told me today that the district is starting to see gross absenteeism in the larger, poorer schools, where money and the need to work and, perhaps, a remarkable lack of hope in life, which is increasing in our kids exponentially every day, may be at play. In a word, urban schools are falling apart. Younger kids still cling to their hopes, kids beyond high school have either opted into or out of the American dream, but many kids in high school, and their teachers, are in a kind of weird ass hell state. So what are we to do? Try to keep going for three more months what we just heroically built in terms of comprehensible input 90% plus stories and readings? Easier said than done. Matava, Kirschling (two teachers I greatly respect) and many others know that a:
…need for acquirers to attempt to understand the new language…
is not really in play here. That is, many of the kids in the classrooms I am describing make no “attempt to understand the new language” because they don’t want to. Both Anne and Paul are real masters of comprehension based instruction, and they both basically shut down their CI operations in the spring for other things. All of Krashen’s research, in some way, in fact, is connected to the basic assumption that students of languages to some extent actually want to learn the language. I can’t say that for over 75% of my students. Perhaps their physical poverty brings with it a kind of poverty of curiosity. But it is a factor in our work.
Also, this statement:
…this practice also goes against our goal of providing the largest percentage possible in the target language…
Yes this is my goal and my passion as a teacher, but, if you look at what I’ve written here over the years in terms of fake classes, the use of dictation, and really just general professional survival, you can see that my real goal, my core goal, is to survive and help others survive what could arguably be termed one of the most insane professions ever created. Am I in love with comprehensible input and have I just spent 12 years drinking it in 24/7 under the tutelage of some really great teachers in the form of Susan Gross and Diana Noonan? Yes. Do I believe in it? Absolutely. However, my greatest goal is not to provide the largest amount of CI in my classrom – it is to survive and help others survive teaching. I got into TPRS because I couldn’t go on as an instructor of Advanced Placement French language and literature. And movie reading serves that interest – of survival – quite well. No, I didn’t know about what you said, and I am so glad you said it, and you are always right, as is Diana, on things like this. However, this site, as dedicated as it is to CI and TPRS and sharing with others about it, is really geared to the mental health of teachers. That need, in my opinion, supercedes wanting to spread the magic of what we have here with others. I realize that that is a far tangent from your original point, but hey, it’s my blog.
…I don’t believe it should replace reading in the target language…
Really, I don’t understand this. When they read in the target language, it is a struggle and not smooth at all. Many minutes are wasted to bullshit. We are far from in any kind of flow. I really should ask Krashen about this, but is his research based on our classroom settings, which differ so radically, possibly, than the settings he based his research on (I don’t know about any of that). Diana did tell me that when he spent the afternoon in my classroom last month, he told her he had not really been in a high school for a long time and it was “fun” for him.
Again, I should not have shared this with others to the extent that I did without stating clearly that many of my students hardly have command of English. But, when we do this kind of reading together, there is some real bonding going on. They are using a language that looks like their native Spanish to understand in their own second language (English), and some of a third language (French) gets learned. If it is a fake Celsius kind of learning, then I owe you a big thank you for teaching me that, but I won’t stop doing it in my classes for ten minutes a day in the spring, when I need it and the kids really enjoy it, if for no other reason than good things seem, if only that, to be happening. Many of my students live without much hope for the future and it is a fact they many barely make it to school now in March, It is like some kind of depressing end time movie, and I need to do whatever I can to make it through the year first and worry about any language gains second, in spite of my passion to get better at comprehension based instruction.
I don’t really get the Celsius point. Who cares about that number? Why do we need to know that number?
And do forive the lengthy super rant, Jody. I realize it has little to do with the point you made. I would kick myself off the blog if it weren’t mine. But this has been an excellent opportunity to make a point that I really wish to highlight here. If we are to get really good at comprehension based instruction, we must, absolutely, make surviving the wars of teaching our first and highest priority. We don’t really have a forum here to discuss our own personal mental health here, but, I would guess, a lot of us are hurting a lot more than we may be letting on. I certainly am. It’s that kind of job.
Just a quick two cents on my recent experience with reading in English with love. I decided to sample this with my advanced class on a newspaper article (an interview on chess boxing from Die Zeit) and was worried my students would be overwhelmed, so I pulled out this technique. I did the translation lovingly for them and we discussed in German, and at the end I asked for feedback on how they thought it went. Overall they gave high marks for the topic, but I was interested to note that some of them were disappointed that they didn’t get to do more of the language processing. They wanted the challenge.
Overall, I think this technique is a handy tool in the toolbox. Especially with lengthier texts, I like me doing the translation every third paragraph or so as a way of giving them a brain break from the load (my line is “I’ll take this one for you. You’re welcome.”) and modeling how to enjoy a text. But as with anything else we do, the students crave variety. No problem; we’ve got that.
I really like this for two reasons, Nathan:
1. by mixing the kids’ rights to be challenged, it honors those kids, while giving them those periodic breaks when you take over. A great idea to combine the two. It is a fact that we can spend inordinate amounts of time on just one paragraph and never get through the book unless we mix the two, so that is an excellent solution to the problem of getting bogged down in the text.
2. the idea of a bunch of kids talking smack about chess boxing is just cool, dare I say bad ass.
Boy, do you and I have a different clientele! I feel so sorry for my kids sometimes. How crushed, how hopeless too many of them are. Sometimes it is hard to just go into the building.
I’ve just got to share about the class that just walked out. They’re the advanced kids, who have been reading the book that they wrote (seems weird, but each pair took one chapter, and three of us have been working on extending for repetition and revising so they hadn’t all read the whole thing). They read it in pairs for one day, mostly reading aloud in Russian. Then I left the room yesterday for a few minutes to take a parent call, and when I came back, one kid was reading aloud to the entire group in English. I cut that right off, but today when I put them back into pairs to read, the same girl was reading aloud dramatically in English, and the rest just didn’t say anything. They were glued to their books. As the period went on, she began to do make mistakes and do some embroidering. The others corrected her in unison in the first case and would start telling the story themselves in the second. They read that way for forty-five minutes (finishing the book, thus ruining my plans for part of tomorrow), totally focused.
So I think that all the arguments are right for the reading in this mode to be ideally either something you want to share that is at a little too high of a level, and maybe not something you want to have to prep extensively, or something that is almost completely comprehensible. It’s a lot of fun to do it this way! I had a great time listening to them. I’ve never had such an easy lesson. Now I just need a dozen more books at this level.
I think Robert said it well: There is a lot to think about. At certain times, for certain classes, with certain kids and certain material….this is KILLER stuff. Like everything we do in the classroom, it is worth looking at, matching with our goals for our students and giving it a try. Then we must observe and ask our students: What did this do? What didn’t it do? How can I use it to benefit acquisition?
All of these ideas are gifts. They get us thinking about our students and our teaching.
with love,
Laurie
One comment on the Celsius argument. I had a colleague complain about translations posted on the walls making his students lazy to the point that they didn’t learn basic classroom commands, but I think they picked up on his lack of interest in and attention to such basic words: he didn’t make those words compelling to students. Same goes for the celsius argument. I would argue it’s not that the method of translation that is at fault, Rather, Celsius hasn’t stuck because we don’t care about it, because it doesn’t help us to make sense of our everyday lives, and so learning it is therefore not compelling in any way. Farenheit is a common-sense measurement: zero is darn cold, and 100 is darn hot. A mile is 1000 paces, etc. Whereas our traditional measurements are rooted in use, in daily objects and experience, in the world as we know it (which is why it is irregular), the metric system is abstract and created by 4%ers.
I would suggest that the Celsius analogy is not apt here. I have very little exposure to Celsius temps. The local Denver station never gives temps in Celsius, neither does NPR (my beloved source of news), and I would counter that our kids get more reps of an L2 structure in one class period than the general American public gets of Celsius in a decade.
But I don’t live in California either…
LOVE the discussion of theory, research, and the meeting at the crossroads. Wonder if movie reading would work with my middle schoolers….anyone tried it?
dori
I live in California, and we don’t hear or read Celsius on a daily basis, either. I have a friend who uses metric and Celsius all the time, but he is in fact a rocket scientist.
Such friends, Robert! I wonder what they think about your choice of profession?
Very mojorific John.
Chris asked: “Is the ‘input’ they’re getting with this type of reading good enough? Although it’s smooth sailing, they’re not hearing the language, is that okay?”
And Jody made a well reasoned reply, but as I was thinking about it, all of a sudden a light went on! This is how I learned French! Let me explain. I took French I in my sophomore year in Maryland. 1958/1959? With a young teacher who did try to speak as much French as possible, but also explained the grammar in English and had us memorize grammar rules in French. I loved it, but my family moved to Illinois and there the high school did not offer French. I was so disappointed that the principal put my parents in touch with a young French woman, the only French speaker in the town. She agreed to give me lessons once a week. She had never taken a methods course and had no idea how to teach and I now suspect I would have learned less if she had. We sat at her kitchen table and translated, chapter by chapter, Vingt Ans Après (Book II of the Three Musketeers trilogy?). That’s all we did, one evening a week. (A professional teacher would have known that a French I student is not ready for unabridged 19th century French literature.) At the beginning she did most of the translating, and we stopped often and she sometimes tried to explain bits of grammar, which I didn’t really listen to, because she didn’t sound very convinced herself. She did try to do some conversation, telling me about her children etc. But I’d say 80% of our time was spent on translating the novel.
The following year we moved again, and again the school did not offer French. But by then my father was convinced that his daughter spoke French and he went to the local college and was able to enroll me in an Intermediate French course during the summer before my senior year in high school. The teacher was a stereotype of the traditional grammar teacher (I remember that we read Colomba – read, translate and memorize the vocabulary) and I passed her course with an A+.
It’s only now that I realize that I was able to do that because basically what we were doing in that kind woman’s kitchen was pretty close to Movie Reading. I think Jody’s arguments are valid when you’re dealing with students who are merely going through the motions. I was highly motivated and engaged, and yes, the French woman was reading with love. With only 2 hours a week, I was able to pass an intermediate level college course. ( When I did get to college, I was fortunate to have a different teacher, someone who spoke the language fluently and provided comprehensible input.)
@Judy
They are not my arguments. They are the arguments of much research over many years and Krashen’s. Just thought I’d throw it out there since there seemed to be a tidal wave of uncritical agreement on the blog about something I had a lot of experience with many years ago.
I agree that a highly motivated student can do just about anything when she puts her mind to it.
But I would make the point again that there is a big problem with applying research in language acquisition to schools. Said research has been designed by Krashen and others without any real consideration of the variables that must be accounted for when the very large part of learners is unmotivated. We need research that specifically looks at how language learners in schools learn, because it is different. Apples and oranges.
Without that research (does it exist in any form anywhere?), we look, in my view, rather silly, trying to get our students to jump up and reach branches on the language acquisition tree that most of them don’t really care to jump up to, or have too many lead weights on their ankles. We work in schools, and schools – at least as they are run now in this hell time – are different places than what Krashen had in mind when he did his research. Schools don’t work. We are part of a large group of American adults who get them to function but do they really work to train American children up to the level of mastery of language? If the promise of Krashen’s research and Blaine and Susie’s work were realized (can’t be done in schools), then we would have, now 20 years later, a bilingual nation of people up to the age of 35. But we don’t.
What do I mean by “schools don’t work”? It’s simple – the motivated kids get taken out by the unmotivated kids and the teacher gets taken out by that lethal combination. Again, this is not negativity but realism. We need to keep that in mind before we go into emotional meltdown, especially at this time of year, and for what? For a system that doesn’t work? I don’t want any in our group to suffer an emotional breakdown. (My entire career can be said to have elements of that with at least ten major burnouts in it and a kind of low grade grinding fear going on all the time.)
That fear wasn’t because I was incapable or unmotivated as a teacher. It was because I was, on a daily basis, in a sick environment, and still am. We all are. Again, skip, this is not negative talk. If you walk into a school these days you are walking into a sick environment. I am merely trying to call the attention of the group to that fact, so that individual teachers don’t end up thinking that if they just work harder it will all come together. There is a place for hard work, and then there is a place to face the facts of what is going on around you and just accept them. Chris, hear that. Traditional teachers could only reach 4% of the kids in that really sick old way. We are now able to reach 50%+ of the kids, but the buildings are still sick.
So we don’t have the research about how people learn languages in schools. Of course Judy learned from that teacher when simple translating one on one! Yes, she was motivated. But Jody do you see my point here? I don’t care what the research says about how we teach. I personally embrace that idea of reading in L1 to the kids while they read in L2 because it works for me in an environment in which it is difficult to even survive.
I will ask Krashen what he thinks about this. I will ask, “Does your research apply fully to school buildings and classes like those at Lincoln you saw here in February, or do you think that there are other mitigating factors operationg in schools that somehow skew your research and its potentional in those venues?” I hope he answers, because I think it is a mistake to apply pure research to cesspools where inappropriate behavior, poverty, lack of proper backgrounds and out of control rudeness play a major factor.
No, Ben. This is not Krashen’s research (I said it was his argument), but he knows about this phenomenon, the research, and has commented on it.
We do have research about how kids learn language in schools. There has been SLA research in schools for 40 years at least. Much of this research is about ELL kids, poor kids, very poor kids, in poor schools, learning English or Immersion kids learning French/Spanish/German. It’s not the same as an FL class. ELL kids are learning English on the playground, on TV, all around them. The research (and there is much) on language acquisition in schools is more about “academic” language acquisition–but it has certainly been done in schools and with kids like yours.
Concurrent translation is an old practice that was used by many, many frustrated teachers working with poor Latino ESL kids in poor schools (elementary, middle and high school). We’re talking the 80’s.
These (bilingual themselves) teachers were faced with teaching these kids content in English without much training to do so. The kids’ literacy skills were below level and their English skills were not high enough to handle the texts that were available. Kids, whose teachers used “concurrent translation”, were not making decent progress in language acquisition. This was noted and researched. They compared these students to the same kinds of kids but who were receiving different kinds of instruction: preview/review, front-loading vocabulary (like we do in TPRS), and a whole bunch of other sheltered-instruction techniques that were being developed during that time 20-25 years ago. These other sheltered-instruction methods provided the kids with content and language–and were found to be much more effective–as long as the teachers were trained to do them.
In California, an entire addition to our teaching credentials was added, which required all teachers, who worked with ELL kids, to take courses to become qualified in “sheltered-instruction” techniques. Now, it is just part of the regular credential classes for all teachers. “Concurrent translation” just does not meet the standard for an effective language acquisition technique according to “classroom” research. It is not the same as a “quick translation” of a word or phrase.
To me, this all makes sense. It is much more comfortable to “understand” especially if what I’m trying to read is “too hard”. If a teacher translates the words for me into a language I understand, it will feel comfortable and I will understand. That doesn’t mean I acquire the foreign written language in front of me. It means I understand what the teacher said. There may be “some” acquisition going on. I don’t know. Research says that students don’t acquire very much with this method. I think that makes sense.
What makes more sense is for us to have kids only read that which is pretty easy for them to read: L + 1 not L + 100. The brain has so much to do when confronted with a foreign language in text.
Ben, you are so right about the many factors working against a poor child’s possibilities of academic success in the environments of their lives and in the environments of their schools. I am curious about why/how you are connecting this issue of “concurrent translation” with our survival in these difficult environments. Is it because, for a little while, the kids are quiet and focused? If it is, I, too, would jump for joy and want to continue doing whatever it is I’m doing so that the situation continues. However, just because “concurrent translation” produces what looks like “language-centered concentration”, doesn’t mean that is what is happening. I believe “they are understanding something that they believe is difficult for them and, when they understand, they relax and feel comfortable”.
So, I’m asking myself, if this technique appears to work/provides relief in my classroom, but has been shown to be ineffective, how might I use it anyway and MAKE it more effective? Hmm. If I immediately have them re-read the page I translated by themselves, there will be a short-term English memory overlap which won’t show me anything. They’ll all understand it because I just translated it. What if I wait until tomorrow and do the same thing in French then, asking them to translate the page to English–as a class, or in partners, or by themselves? Would that show me more? Probably–but, they might not like it as much. Hmmm. I keep thinking.
Ben, I’m trying to stay curious about this topic. When I read what you write, I see a mixing of dilemmas. I hear that you want to continue to do this because the kids behave better, are more focused, and seem more interested in the text which helps with your energy/mood/and “survival”. I really respect that need. I exhort us to continue to look for ways to reproduce that “calm, focused scene” in our classrooms. Hopefully, we will learn techniques that are as effective for language acquisition as they are for classroom management–even in the most difficult of schools.
We can only do what we can do at whatever place/level of knowledge we are right now. I hope we keep wanting to improve that knowledge base.
I feel badly every day knowing that I will retire at a time when teachers are considered lower than cockroaches and are treated as such. I am a studied and experienced teacher and have given my whole life, health, etc. to this profession and the children I’ve taught. As a group, we are not respected and are subjected to daily abuse by students, parents, administrations, the media, well-funded lobbyists, and our own government. (I can hardly bear it when someone finds out I’m a teacher and goes into this “apologetic” monologue about the importance of teachers, how much they respect what I do, blah, blah, blah. They have no idea.) It is so hard not to take the abuse personally. Why is this profession on par with martyrdom at this point in history? Really didn’t sign on for this. Truly, the only things that keep me going are knowing that what we are trying to do with this method is to create a more humane and sensible classroom for students and to use the most effective ways possible to teach them language, opening up their future worlds to things they can’t even imagine right now–but I can. Kind of small. Kind of big. Enough.
…if a teacher translates the words for me into a language I understand, it will feel comfortable and I will understand. That doesn’t mean I acquire the foreign written language in front of me….
That is pretty much the crux of the argument and I agree with you. I thought I had found, in movie reading, something really valuable and I was wrong. I might still do it, but only when I am having a really hard day and need a bail out move on the level of dictation.
Honestly Jody I had to read what you wrote about five times, no exaggeration, and it has taken me a week to absorb it. But, in the end, I have to agree. Even with easy texts, this applies.
There are people in our school who know about Krashen’s work, not even WL people, and I asked them about this whole thing yesterday. They all agreed with you, Jody. (We have an amazing staff!)
And, truth be told, after I got on that week long jag here about movie reading and how wonderful it is to see the kids so relaxed and focused, I haven’t done it since. That is because my “intuitive teacher sense” hit the overide button and preferred to go with the heavy input in the form of stories and, most especially, reading, with a special focus on readings built from stories.
When we do what got us here, interesting and meaningful comprehensible input in the form of stories and reading, one can almost feel the knowledge pouring off the screen into their heads, bc once they have created the stories, they can read so easily and it is such a marvelous time of advancement and such a fine time to teach grammar.
And I appreciate your clarification, Jody, that this is not Krashen’s research but his argument. The best argument against concurrent translation, however, has nothing to do with theory and everything to do with what we do in the field on a daily basis. Those kids acquire when we use some form of the three steps of TPRS/CI/TCI (man we need a name!) – it’s that simple. We see it and we feel it and we know it. It’s like an old car and a new car – which one do you want?
I will use concurrent translation (it that is the correct term for what I call movie reading) again. The school I work in is too rough not to and some days are just too hard to deal with. But I feel more clear on it now thanks to you.
Jody I have to run to work now but just want to briefly respond. I love the fact that we can argue about this. I love that all of us in this venue can say whatever we feel and put on gloves and taper dessus/bonk each other on the heads a little bit for the good of the discussion. It’s what this site is for.
Meanwhile, and I didn’t get to read the above carefully enough (what you say usually needs to be “studied” more than just “read”), but I have to say again that I come first, my mental health comes first, and so I justify what may not be the best pedagogy for that reason. I’ll go read this again when I get to school.