I believe in keeping everything involving storytelling simple. Otherwise, I would get too confused to be effective. In my classroom world everything must be simple so that I can relax, as per:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/06/12/the-flailingly-prepared-teacher/
The more I plan, the more I scheme, the more I think that the next cool idea in CI to come along will be the one to make the method work for me, the less effective I am.
Comprehensible input is not a method but a way of hanging out in pleasing reciprocal and participatory ways with students, being led along by the beauty of a lighthearted conversation, un bavardage sans détour, to cite Stendhal’s definition of happiness.
That’s all it is. It is a way of being, not a method. You take anything interesting and you weave language out of it. We make spaces for cool things to happen. We don’t fill that space with too much planning any more than we would plan for an evening with friends by thinking about/preparing/mulling over everything we wanted to say at them.
Indeed, it is my opinion that TPRS and Krashen are very misunderstood. Ours is not to be on stage in weird and nervous and complex ways – that is not at all an accurate reflection of what Blaine and Krashen had in mind.
Without simplicity and direct instruction without interruptions, we teach a fraction of what we could if we were to stay focused and simple in the sense described here. That is because without simplicity there can be no movie in their heads. There are so many breaks for banter in school environments that we completely defeat ourselves with it and with the other insults to simplicity of instruction, all those interruptions mentioned in this blog entry:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/05/18/classroom-discipline-4/
The only way to make CI work is to get into the target language and stay there. There is no half way ground. There can be no mixing of languages if there is to be true acquisition. When we allow a lot of different kinds of CI, we lose focus and we end up delivering CI in the form of “activities” and the English creeps in. There should be no break in the CI. Therefore we must say simply: the movie must be uninterrupted.