“You muddled it!” is not a term that I would want applied to me. And yet, I just had the opportunity to read a landmark new study on the importance of SLOW in teaching using comprehensible input, and how “You muddled it!” is indeed a term that may apply to me as a teacher.
In a word, this $2.3M, five year, longitudinal study showed that 92% of the teachers tested abandon the TPRS method because they consistently spoke too fast in their classrooms. Nationwide, 60 first year TPRS teachers were tested each year for five years, totalling 300 teachers, and, according to the study, only 40 were still doing the method at the end of the five year period.
Isolating the single factor of SLOW in the study was the brainchild of researcher Bennie Iko K’Ration. She explained: “I thought it would be a good idea to see if, when teachers using TPRS don’t go SLOW enough, it makes them quit comprehensible input instruction in their classrooms.”
K’Ration turned out to be right. She explained that, even among the remaining 40 teachers still using TPRS in their classrooms, follow up studies showed that 29 of them hate the method because they can’t go slowly enough and they can’t understand why, according to the data, they “suck at the method” and why their kids “don’t understand shit”.
K’Ration went on to explain: “They muddle it! They go to all these trainings and all those conferences. They read blogs. They are sick individuals. All they need to do is SLOW down, but they can’t! They muddle it when they go into their classrooms simply because they can’t apply the Amy Teran Formula of SLOW – SLOWER – SLOWEST: COMPREHENSIBLE! It’s pathetic.”
K’Ration had to be restrained when concluding that only eleven of the original 500 teachers in the study, which was underwritten by the Mel and Belinda Gates Foundation, were successful with TPRS, uncharacteristically yelling, “When a teacher muddles it by going too SLOW, the students can’t understand, and all of Ray Blaine’s and Gross Susie’s hard work goes out the window! This is bullshit! This study cost me five years of research and I will personally crawl into cyberspace and come out of the computer monitor of any new TPRS teacher who doesn’t go SLOW enough and beat their ass! I mean it. I’m a researcher and I can do it. I will tell those teachers once and for all to “Stop muddling and SLOW down so you don’t piss off your kids and ruin your careers! AGH!”