Some obvious reasons why TPRS/CI has failed in many if not most buildings:
1. The culture of the language instruction has accepted that teaching out of a textbook is normal. Since we all have come to accept textbooks and worksheets as “the way things have always been done”, we stay mired in the past.
2. We cannot mix CI with the textbook. CI cannot be tamed and made to fit in with other methods. It is about freedom. People who object to its need for spontaneity and think that it can be used to ‘teach’ certain words at a certain time for a test don’t understand CI and don’t understand the expression ‘Teach for June’.
3. The curriculum has always been linear in nature, reflecting the table of contents in textbooks. We tell the kids to memorize a list of words or verb conjugations by a certain date . This conflicts egregiously with the research about how people acquire langauges.
4. When we hold our students responsible for memorizing lists of words in a semantic set (the colors, the rooms in a house, etc.), we assume that all kids learn languages at the same rate. They don’t, because people process language at different rates depending on how their brains are wired.
5. We don’t know what it means to provide language instruction in rich contextual settings. So we are like a pilot trying to fly a plane with no engine.
6. We read about CI and attend workshops, but many of us never get up on our feet and actually practice moving the CI into our bodies before we actually try it in our classrooms. This is a disaster, because it destroys our confidence. We need to practice putting the CI into our bodies before trying to put it into our classrooms. This is because CI language instruction is housed primarily in our bodies and not just in our minds.
7. Coaching is the new future, but we rarely but ourselves into coaching situations. If we are to succeed with CI, we need to become vulnerable and willing to teach and be coached by others who are on the same teaching journey that we are. Reading about CI is not enough. We need to allow ourselves to be coached in a safe setting with our peers before we have students in front of us.
(Patrons in our group here are reminded that on T/Th from 4:30-5:00 p.m. we will meet for coaching.)