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Structured Input 1
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15 thoughts on “Structured Input 1”
You have to look at the third video down, with the French guy asking the nervous four percenters who are trying hard to KEEP IT ALL IN THEIR HEADS AND CONSCIOUS – they are trying so hard to focus on the words and be good little college Fauntleroys. There is
little personalization,
the book is there to keep things boring,
there is none of the wonderful questioning technique of circling,
there is a ton of output, and it is all so vapid and tentative,
no laughter,
a room full of white faces,
the women dominate, the guys hide
What’s new here?
I watched all the videos and it made me seriously nauseous. But it is indeed what goes on in the Foreign Language Methodology classes. When I did my Masters in 2006, CLT was a big buzzword back then. I don’t get what structured input means though but I don’t feel like investigating it b/c from what I see, I m not impressed a bit. Van Patten is doing that ?? Wow, il vient de tomber dans mon estime, d’une chute vertigineuse! ( he took a nose dive)
Ten years ago, Bill VanPatten’s main point was that in order for input to be successful in teaching languages it must be of a communicative nature, which means that the focus must be on meaning. In this sense, he supported Krashen’s concept of comprehensible input. Another major aspect of VanPatten’s message was that language acquisition is different from any other kind of learning. VanPatten suggests that the brain treats language differently from normal human cognition and therefore should not be studied cognitively, which is how it is typically taught. But that was the Bill VanPatten of ten years ago. I think he has changed. He seems to be smarter now, and I don’t mean that in a good way. The following is from his cv at:
http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.aatsp.org/resource/resmgr/2011_election/vanpatten_full_cv_july_2011.pdf
in which VanPatten describes his principal areas of research as:
(1) the development of a theory of input processing in second language acquisition that uses psycholinguistic approaches;
(2) parsing and processing in monolingual, heritage and L2 speakers;
(3) the interface between syntax and morphology in acquisition;
(4) the impact of formal instruction on language acquisition.
My [VanPatten’s] research goals include the unification of linguistic and non-linguistic approaches to studying language acquisition in addition to linking the disciplines of second language acquisition theory and language teaching.
There is a term in academia – accessible. I challenge VanPatten, Helena Curtain, and the others throwing such big terms around to become more accessible to we who go into the mines every day in secondary schools. We can use some help and you don’t have to throw around terms like “the interface between syntax and morphology in acquisition”. It’s like we need some leadership from you guys, like stuff that we can use. Isn’t that one of your jobs, to be leading us forward nationally from your position as captains of knowledge? But it has to be accesssible for us.
Why don’t all the young whipper-snappers on this blog just go ahead and get their PhDs and change the university system? What’s the hold up, guys? 🙂
I hear you Leigh Anne but I say we would want to keep Chris and the other young ones in secondary schools. Why send them to a land where the coin of the realm lies in words like transformational syntax, applied linguistics, structured input, the eclectic approach, etc. etc. The entire game in college seems to be about keeping other scholars slightly off base in a kind of mental competition to be the smartest and never really quite divulge what one really means lest someone discover that you’re not sure yourself. Big time mind traps at that level. The action in foreign language education is still in secondary schools, and teachers who are trying to make believers out of Krashen’s critics are, in my opinion, at the authentic center of the vortex of true change. When you only have to teach four percenters, well…..
My intention is to engage her…. to continue the discussion … to ask question and hopefully expose all of the holes that you identify above…
There are many eyes on that discussion on the FLAME list serve ….. it is interesting that nobody is joining in….
Skip
Skip I am thinking that you are being a bad boy and going where you shouldn’t. Call this comment by me hyperbole or typical Slavic psychobabble. I don’t see it that way. Let’s get to the point here: you and Chris, who started it, are raising some real questions in exactly the way Michael Fullan encourages us to do, and that is rocking the boat. Yours is not going to be a popular position. But, since you and Chris are strong guys physically, I say you just rock the boat until it turns over. What you have written above:
…my intention is to engage her…. to continue the discussion … to ask question and hopefully expose all of the holes that you identify above…
is of tremendous importance, in my opinion. It is precisely in your intent to successfully engage this person at U of Maine that the change that we want for our kids lies. If it does not lie there, then our nation’s dull darkness and mute discussion between its secondary schools and its universities will continue to be dull, dark and mute.
Take the risk, my brother. We have your back! I will publish a longer support article here later this week, in which I will try to cobble together the interlocking ideas from th comments made here over the past few days by Chris, Robert, Michael Fullan, Sabrina, Diane and others.
I don’t know if this is the right thing to do, to engage these people, but the fact that you want to do it there in Maine gives me hope that it might be the right thing to do. I don’t believe Helena Curtain have as much as she does – she needs to answer a few questions from us, and not dismiss us as she has.
You yourself, skip, since you are not at the university level, will most likely be met with a distant, professorial dismissal of your ideas. I have some stories about how that has happened to some very prominent people in TPRS/CI, but will save that for later. Shocking treatment by the Sneetches with the mark on their belly.
This is no longer time for talk that stays here on the PLC. It’s time to engage the people we are talking about. It is not fair to them to keep this discussion going privately here without giving them the opportunity to respond. That is what Fullan is all about.
I will contact Helena Curtain with another article that I have in the works. I’ll run it by the group before I send it. Let’s do this thing. Otherwise, we suck. Either we do what Michael Fullan says or we suck. We’re gonna need Robert and Jody and everybody on this one.
I am going to write a draft to Curtain, and maybe we can do some collective editing of the text to make it short and sweet for her to read. Because she won’t read it otherwise, she is too busy saving the world for Curtain’s View of Language Teaching, which is something that borrows way too heavily from Stephen Krashen, by the way, in my opinion.
The boat may get rocked but not tipped over. A boat is a hard thing to tip over by just a few people. Ask Krashen about that. It may not happen, the boat may not tip over, but I feel that both Curtain and the Structured Input stuff are just weak. I’m sorry to say that but it’s weak. That video is a joke. There is so much potential for real teaching to occur in that video and yet all I see is stuff that isn’t any different from what we did 35 years ago.
skip I have been waiting one full career that’s pushing on to 40 years now to have this kind of discussion and to read the kinds of words you have written here. Saddle up. Time to hit head on out on an adventure. Why not? What have we got to lose? Dear Dr. Curtain….
Oh man, you’re getting me all pumped up now.
What she describes as structured input was exactly what was presented at the TESOL conference as the “dogme” method. It was getting a lot of attention. I sat in on two presentations. The whole point is that it is based on “emergeant language”. The question that doesn’t get answered is how do you get your students to the point of “emergeant language.”
Such a huge point here:
…the question that doesn’t get answered is how do you get your students to the point of “emergeant language.”…
I think that 50% of the discussion bears on this single point about when language emerges. A structured input teacher apparently has the idea, a false one in my opinion, that if they just bring enough “structure” to the input (I still don’t know what that means, either, skip) by good “structured” teaching, then the kid will start to output. That is hooey. That’s not how languages are acquired, by (the marvelous and talented woman or man behind the Curtain) bringing the student to the point of emergeant output. It is a MUCH MORE COMPLEX process than that, involving MUCH MORE INPUT than we have any idea, and involving sleep and neurological activities FAR BEYOND what anything but constant comprehensible input can provide. All we need to do is provide the input, and not “bring the four percenters to speech.” Dude, that’s nutty. That’s not how it works.
But all the names for all these methods are so confusing? I watched the video with the prof doing “structured input” where they had to sign that they understood?? and honestly, have NO IDEA what he was doing in terms of how the method works.
The other things that frustrates me (because I went more than 15 years as a Spanish teacher without knowing) is that NONE of these methods (philosophies?) address HOW humans acquire second languages… None except CI of course 🙂
Also, could you help me understand the “dogme” method?
Thanks
skip
…they had to sign that they understood….
Language students naturally sign when they DON’T understand, not when they do.
“It is not enough to repeat phrases or conjugations nor is it enough to simply expose students 100% of the time to the target language. have seen the latter done by a native speaker who thought she was using the “communicative approach.” The results were dismal.
Why then do you have teachers have students repeat sentences like sheeps as is the case in one of the clips in which a male teacher has the students repeat sentences. That s what made me nauseous when I watched this I guess.
Furthermore, is it possible that the native speaker spoke the native language but did not make it comprehensible. We are going back to the point of immersion/submersion ( as Jody so eloquently puts it) versus comprehensible.
“The idea is simple, for me: plan a discussion that will reinforce a given structure. It does can be new or review material. Keep the discussion lively but under control, not straying from the focus of the conversation.” Isn’t this what we do?
My question is : is what we do in our classrooms , i.e TPRS, CI whatever you want to call it not structured?
In the link we are given types of ” Structured Input Activities such as :
1) Supplying information -( Our kids do that)
2)Surveys (not all learners are logical-mathematical )
3) Matching ( not all learners are logical-mathematical )
Binary options ( True / False, Logical/illogical, normal /Strange)- again we do that in our classrooms
Ordering/ranking (not all learners are logical-mathematical )
Selecting Alternatives ( we do that in our stories, don’t we?)
OK bell rang, G2G
Could be refuting much of this stuff for a while.
…the idea is simple, for me: plan a discussion that will reinforce a given structure…
Bingo.
“The idea is simple, for me: plan a discussion that will reinforce a given structure. It does can be new or review material. Keep the discussion lively but under control, not straying from the focus of the conversation.” WE DO THAT!!!
“The key is controlling the focus and eliciting meaningful responses/exchanges.” WE DO THAT !!
“It is also common for me to back out of the preterite/imperfect comparison to focus on one or the other of these aspects.” WE DO THAT !!
“Another thing I always do is to use body language and gestures” WE DO THAT!!
And the list goes on and on …..
Was this is a commercial for Comprensible input /TPRS philosophy?