Reed Riggs is working in the area of research at the University of Hawaii and so I put him in touch with Eric and I like where the two of them might one day take the topic of CI research.
Eric explains:
Thanks for putting me in contact with Reed. We talked a bit today and I think we are on the same page. He’s sent me a lot of research to read. Wouldn’t it be nice if FL teachers had access to the research that university students have?!
Reed makes a good point. How researchers talk about SLA has evolved (e.g. Krashen’s distinction between learning and acquisition was always controversial and was never accepted by the majority of the SLA field – the terms we should use are implicit and explicit learning). There may be better ways to talk about and label what we do in TPRS, ways that are less controversial. I’ve said it before, and Reed also sees it, that we in TPRS actually do a lot more than teach with CI. His idea is that if we talked about what we do in ways that concord with current SLA researchers and if we are less dogmatic (less Krashen is right and everyone else is wrong – after all Krashen’s ideas are only hypotheses still open to continual testing – even the Natural Order is only a hypothesis and far from universally accepted), then we may get researcher interest in TPRS and attract more teachers to our movement.
I responded:
Perhaps you and Reed and others can push this ball up the hill on research, maybe even establishing a website for that discussion. Then we we can keep our discussion here on how to get better at CI. I want to keep the focus here almost entirely on ways to get better at classroom teaching using CI, and to include the research only to the extent that it can help us do that. Getting better at CI and helping each other maintain an even keel in what is now a storm remain the major goals I have here on this site.