Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
To view this content, you must be a member of Ben’s Patreon at $10 or more Unlock with PatreonAlready a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to
Story Listening Rant
Share:
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
LinkedIn
Ben Slavic
Get The Latest Updates
Subscribe to Our Mailing List
No spam, notifications only about new products, updates.
Related Posts
CI and the Research (cont.)
To view this content, you must be a member of Ben’s Patreon at $10 or more Unlock with PatreonAlready a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to
Research Question
To view this content, you must be a member of Ben’s Patreon at $10 or more Unlock with PatreonAlready a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to
We Have the Research
To view this content, you must be a member of Ben’s Patreon at $10 or more Unlock with PatreonAlready a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to
17 thoughts on “Story Listening Rant”
Tina,
Thank you for your thoughtful response to Terry. You say a number of important things in this reply.
I am reminded of a major controversy for the early church recorded in the New Testament: How much of a Jew do you have to become before you can become a Christian? Similarly, the current debate seems to be along the lines of “How much of a (traditional) TPRSer do you have to become before you can become a CI teacher?” Fortunately for the souls of multitudes, the early church decided that you don’t have to become Jewish in order to become Christian. I think the ultimate answer in the current debate will be similar.
You give a very good response to the argument for the tyranny of the urgent. In schools we often hear admonitions about how little time we have with students – and not just in foreign language courses. This is part of the argument for “bell-to-bell instruction” that is commonly advocated and promulgated by administrators. Since we have so little time with students, every second must count. But count for what?
Don’t get me wrong. I believe we need to make good use of our time with students. However, “good use of our time” is not necessarily keeping students “on task” every second of the time they are in our classrooms. We and students need those breaks, and sometimes the “brain break” needs to be release from the constraints of the target language completely. At the same time, since language is all about communication, and communication is relational, we need to make good use of our time by strengthening relationships.
I wrote on my Facebook page about how I have ceased admonishing students about being late and started simply asking them, “Is everything okay?” Even knowing that I am not going to write them a tardy slip, students don’t come in any later or any more often than they ever have, and they get an indication that someone actually cares about them. I also check on students who have been absent the same way.
There are, of course, two different responses (more than two, but I’m just concentrating on two) to the conundrum of language instruction. If it takes thousands of hours to reach proficiency, and we have only a couple hundred hours with students, then either
1) we cram absolutely every bit of comprehensible language into those hours that we can,
or
2) we create a desire in students to continue learning the language and equip them with the knowledge and resources to do so.
As I near the end of my teaching career, I am more and more firmly in the camp of the latter. For one thing, it relieves a great deal of stress; I don’t have to fill every second of class time with targeted instruction at the expense of addressing student needs and interests and dealing with affective factors.
In recent reading I have learned more about the Reticular Activating System and the Reticular Formation. Without going into any specifics, these two structures in the brain determine what a person becomes aware of by subconsciously (unconsciously) filtering the relevant from the irrelevant among the myriad stimuli with which we are constantly bombarded. If I have pre-planned targets for instruction, my students may not “pay attention” to my targets because they are perceived by the RAS as irrelevant. If, however, my targets emerge from student interest and participation, then students are much more likely to be consciously aware of the language because the subject is relevant to them. (Assuming, of course, that the language is comprehensible)
Just a couple of thoughts on a well-written response.
Robert is that RAD stuff from Dr. Judy Willis?
Not originally. I initially came across the term Reticular Activating System in the book “The Power of Consistency” by Weldon Long. Then I did some searching and research to find out more. It also fits well with what Stephen Camarata says in “The Intuitive Parent” about the way the brain works.
Story Listening, as Tina explains it, seems very much like what Camarata calls “Dialogic Reading”, except it is primarily oral/aural in presentation with the visual portion in the form of drawings rather than text.
Yes Robert and I think the problem is that dialogic reading is wanting the kids to speak a lot more than in SL where the kids only listen, as per this:
Dialogic Reading: An Effective Way to Read to Preschoolers
By: Grover J. (Russ) Whitehorse
(This is an archived article so I can’t provide the url but this is a sample from it):
What is dialogic reading?
How we read to preschoolers is as important as how frequently we read to them. The Stony Brook Reading and Language Project has developed a method of reading to preschoolers that we call dialogic reading.
When most adults share a book with a preschooler, they read and the child listens. In dialogic reading, the adult helps the child become the teller of the story. The adult becomes the listener, the questioner, the audience for the child. No one can learn to play the piano just by listening to someone else play. Likewise, no one can learn to read just by listening to someone else read. Children learn most from books when they are actively involved.
The fundamental reading technique in dialogic reading is the PEER sequence. This is a short interaction between a child and the adult. The adult:
Prompts the child to say something about the book,
Evaluates the child’s response,
Expands the child’s response by rephrasing and adding information to it, and
Repeats the prompt to make sure the child has learned from the expansion.
Imagine that the parent and the child are looking at the page of a book that has a picture of a fire engine on it. The parent says, “What is this?” (the prompt) while pointing to the fire truck. The child says, truck, and the parent follows with “That’s right (the evaluation); it’s a red fire truck (the expansion); can you say fire truck?” (the repetition).
The fly in the ointment and why Dialogic Reading won’t find a home in my instruction:
…no one can learn to play the piano just by listening to someone else play….
It’s true for the piano, not true for languages. The idea of “practicing” the piano is accurate for the piano. But the mind when learning a language need only listen without “practicing” for years and years in most cases. Then, just like the rose who came out from under the shelter of her green room only when she had had enough time doing her “toilette du matin” in Le Petit Prince, she appeared when she was ready. We make a grave mistake as language teachers when we ask kids to “practice” too early.
https://benslavic.com/blog/a-labri-de-sa-chambre-verte/
Dialogic Reading as a systematized instructional methodology is different from what Camarata describes.
For Camarata, Dialogic Reading is the parent sitting down with the child and reading interactively, the way that parents intuitively read to their children. No expectation of production is placed on the child.
Camarata also speaks against all of those programs that are supposed to give a child a head start, such as “Baby Einstein”. (He mentions that one by name.) Camarata’s advice to parents is to interact with the child in three dimensions, and the child’s brain – barring actual physical impairment of some sort – will do everything necessary for the child to learn language. Children who are “behind” suffer from a lack of input, and doing specialized practice such as listening drills will not put a child ahead.
It looks like this is one more instance of someone taking something that is natural and trying to monetize it by packaging it “in another form”. (Sort of like Big Pharma wanting to get people to stop using home remedies – e.g. willow bark tea for pain relief- and yet using the ingredients found in the natural remedy in their products – e.g. aspirin. Of course the argument for medicine is the necessity of standardizing dosage; that’s counterproductive for language acquisition, though.)
Nice clarification. I esp. like this:
…Camarata’s advice to parents is to interact with the child in three dimensions, and the child’s brain – barring actual physical impairment of some sort – will do everything necessary for the child to learn language….
That’s right up my alley.
Hmmm. Do you see a parallel anywhere with another language-acquisition method?
Just asking. ::looking innocent::
Hmmm… I think I see where you are going with that.
This also seems like just another case of someone judging from without and not from within. Has Terry actually tried using Story Listening? Has she given it a chance in her own classroom? Has she done any training with it? It doesn’t sound like it… But, I could be wrong. It just sounds very dismissive to me.
Well said Bryan. The number is great of those who have no experience in non-targeted work, and yet they judge. “Please God forgive me for judging their judgment of me” is a prayer that I should say more than once a day. Like a hundred times. Otherwise we have that kind of back and forth judgement thing going on and nothing ever happens for the kids. Tina and I spent the last year being judged and dismissed in some cases with venom. We are slowly absorbing the point you make above.
People should be able to make their own decisions how they teach using CI. Some will choose targets, others will choose no targets. We are all individuals teaching artists and if our teaching doesn’t reflect our own personalities then it won’t be affective. The current mantra that the TPRS/CI community needs to adopt is “Live and let live.”
I agree with all my heart: Live and let live.
If what we do in the classroom, feels good for everyone and the language gains are there, I am sure everything is just fine!!!
And I know that the vast majority of students dislikes thorough grammar instruction with worksheets and testing, Like one of my 7th-graders put it last week when we were spending a little time on the difference between adjective and adverb: “I’m not interested in rules and I don’t learn them, I go by sound and feel.”
I feel compelled to do some minimalistic grammar teaching bc it can help them edit when writing but I’ve stopped using worksheets years ago.
Just my thoughts.
Dudes you need to get a Mandarin teacher on board to start experimenting w/SL and video-record her- or himself doing it – with beginners -…and share and comment…take the hypothetical to the real…
I will start video recording in Hebrew (though I so hate to see myself on video- Tina has emboldened me) in the fall as the school yr is over for Hebrew…
I think it helps in a tiny way as Hebrew doesn’t have as many cognates – (still it has way more than Mandarin) but the perception is that it’s so very different (prolly due to non-Romanized right to left alphabet…) Yet the kids, once their processors got revved up after several weeks, could begin to comprehend simple stories…
I don’t know why on the video thing Alisa. Check this out. It’s got SLOW, gesturing, pausing, staying in bounds, all of it. What’s not to admire in this demo of mastery?
https://benslavic.com/blog/video-report-from-the-field-alisa-shapiro-rosenberg/
Tina, I just love your response from which I can tell that you mean everything from the bottom of your heart and from lots of experience and the courage to try out new things, and not judge without giving it a real chance.
You are one of my heroes!