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. It is the difference between apples fresh off the tree (motivated learners as one might find in language schools) and old squishy apples that have been in a crate for years and half of them are on their way to rot (yes, this describes many kids in our schools today).
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 they have too many lead or weights on their ankles, or whose ankles are strapped with ipods and such that weigh them down.
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?
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, all the while my kids were winning prizes and kicking the ass of the AP exam.)
That fear wasn’t because I was incapable or unmotivated as a teacher. It was because I was in a sick environment on a daily basis, 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 here to that fact, so that individual teachers don’t end up thinking, as stated above, that if they “just work harder” and “get better at TPRS” it will all come together. Of course we work to get better, but we don’t think that there is a moment where we have mastered it, not in the buildings we work in.
There is a place for hard work, and then there is a place to face the facts of what is going on around us 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 and our jobs still suck.
So we don’t have the research about how people learn languages in schools. In a recent comment here Judy explained how she learned from that one private French national when simple translating one on one! And yes it is a true statement that it happened because she was motivated. No it wouldn’t have worked had she not been motivated.
But, since our classrooms are populated by rotting apples and pig kids – not all are such but all it takes is one – I personally embrace the idea of reading in L1 to the kids – on certain days when we are weary – while they read in L2. Why? Because it works for me in an environment in which it is difficult to even survive.
The idea of motivation is everything. I don’t care what the research says about how we teach. I do what I have to survive. If the kids give the language full on attention, then I will do that activity because it works, not because it has or doesn’t have foundation in research.
I will ask Krashen what he thinks about all 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 operating 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, and where struggling teachers with the best of hearts toil at superhuman tasks that angels couldn’t do.