There is one fundamental concept that we who follow Stephen Krashen’s ideas should embrace. It is the idea that we are doing real language teaching when we speak from our hearts in the pure TL to our kids in such a way that they understand and want to hear more.
Real language teaching is the interplay of communication with the students so that all in the classroom are elevated by the beauty of expression, the beauty of the sounds, the laughter, the lack of invasive English, the students’ confidence that they understand almost every single word, their resultant happiness.
Real language teaching is the kids’ hope that they can really learn the language. It is the teacher’s joy at being able to stay firmly in the language without feeling strangely required to provide the students with mechanical study of mere forms of words in two dimensions.
Such mechanical study, itself worth nothing, consists of worksheets, homework, group work, language games, any activities involving the use of English, grammar study, forced writing before the kid is ready to write, forced speaking before the kid is ready to speak, etc.
Real language teaching is glorious. It elevates the teacher to the sudden, transformative awareness that everything is for the best in this best of all possible professions, one which deals with modeling to others that learning a language can be fun.
Real language teaching is not punitive. It is intuitive. Indeed, it elevates the students’ days by allowing, inviting them to share in the building and co-creation of wonderful sounds, to contribute to laughter in the group, and to be important to others.
In real language teaching, students become important parts of an ongoing process of upliftment of the group. New class periods are merely continuations of good will and harmony set in motion from the beginning of the year.
In real language classes, students do not function as mere observers, unless that is what they want. They are not relegated to play the role of mere hangers-on, people who can’t quite rise to the heights that the teacher has attained, people who can be wrong.
In real language classes, kids can’t be wrong. In such classes, they are always right, because the class is geared towards unharnessing their mental and emotional energy, and making it part of something greater, keeping the class at the higher, not the lower, end of the taxonomy.
How wonderful to be in a career in which we know that what we are doing actually brings kids to a greater appreciation of life, because language is so vital to life. How wonderful to show kids the music and literature and art of other cultures in such a way that they can feel it and experience it for real, because they understand the language, because of the way we taught them, not the way we graded them.
Such is what we are learning is possible from Dr. Krashen. Implicit in his oeuvre is the key suggestion that we give up all useless teaching techniques, the games, the grammar discussions, the ridiculous notion that testing is an important part of learning a language, the pointless activities whose sole value is to burn up minutes and get the teacher closer to the end of the class period, etc.
Instead, Dr. Krashen invites us to study and embrace for real a very misunderstood idea, that of comprehensible input, the purpose of which is to elevate, to instruct, to honor, to teach in the real sense, to uplift, to bring dignity to the otherwise drab language education experiences of millions of American kids, who see little value in schooling except as a meal ticket, and who are thus dying.
Related blog entries:
https://benslavic.com/blog/?p=7484
https://benslavic.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=4475&action=edit
https://benslavic.com/blog/?p=6272
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
