A repost from 2009:
I went online and tried to flesh out this recent Krashen term non-targeted comprehensible input. All I got was an article from a Lydia White of McGill University that didn’t make a lick of sense to me as a classroom teacher. Oh well.
What does non-targeted comprehensible input mean? Dr. Krashen explained it to me last summer, but I still don’t think I fully get it. Does it mean we go all over the place when we teach CI?
I invite Dr. Krashen to weigh in on this, to clarify it a little for us in TPRS who are trained to build CI around target structures. What exactly is the point of interface between how we do PQA in TPRS and non-targeted CI?
On the one hand, we see clear success in targeting structures from an intended reading via PQA. On the other, we don’t want those structures to take the wind from beneath the wings of truly free flowing PQA. Hmmm.
I’m thinking that when PQA is done right with target structures there is no loss of flow under the wings of the free discussion. That might be one answer to the question. We don’t let the structures handcuff the free flow of the discussion, but, at the same time, we use them with the intent to prepare the reading. We have to find some kind of balance there.
Susan Gross has always told us to just talk to the kids, but, many of us are unable to let go of our need to “teach” certain structures because that’s what we think teachers do – control the instruction, and, besides, we think that TPRS means teaching structures before the full blown CI. Does it? I would think Susie would say no on that.
Maybe it depends on the nature of the structures. Complex verbal word groupings like the ones we’ve seen come up in the past five years in TPRS, those three complex ones that go with stories to set them up via PQA, are hard to get into a free flowing natural PQA. But SIMPLE words like day and night and up and down are just so easy to PQA, especially when combined with the cool answers from the questionnaires on the back of the Circling with Balls cards. Hmmm.
Again, Susan recently told me that the original design of TPRS by Joe Neilson and Blaine Ray was not around targeting structures at all, it was just to talk to the students. So that gives me further permission to pursue my love affair with the moment that the group mind, not my mind, was in, and, combined with Krashen’s non-targeted CI idea, I feel permission this year to “go with the flow” even more than in past years.
Would I end up like a hippy if I go with the flow too much? Would I be too conservative if I allow the structures to slow down the free form flow of PQA? Can someone, Susie, Dr. Krashen, anyone… anyone, clarify this?
I would try to state the question clearly but I don’t know what it is. It has something to do with how actually necessary targeting structures in PQA is. Krashen implies that it’s not that necessary (is that correct?), Susan says just talk to the kids, which is clearly in alignment with what I think Krashen says (not necessarily what he says, but what I think he says).
Perhaps we just use really simple structures (night and day and up and down) in PQA and then using more complex structures (vs. He gave her the umbrella) for stories only.
Thomas Young (tprsthoughts.com) makes it clear, in developing Anne’s idea, that there really is great power in doing PQA around a certain list of words in any intended reading material. Young argues that the reading is much much easier with a lot of PQA around frontloaded words.
So it is confusing – do we or do we not target structures in PQA? Maybe we don’t when the PQA is free, like on Monday when all we do is talk about what the kids did that weekend, but when the PQA is being used to set up a story or a reading, then we target the structures that we want our students to know. I feel more comfortable with the latter kind of PQA.
I think I’ve questioned and discussed myself into a corner. Susie? Dr. K? …. Buehler?… Buehler…?