Laurie offers a perfect image to help us understand what our students experience in our CI classrsooms:
For [our] students, students, [L2] is a giant green screen. [L2] is green. “New” [L2] and “old” [L2] are all green and cannot be separated in their minds. On the other hand, acquired [L2] is now a recognizable color.
When these words/structures [are acquired], then real images start to appear, and to connect and begin to form something recognizable! When too many “green” words appear in a story or a reading, they are invisible and the story gets lost.
It is like a person wearing a “green suit” in front of a “green screen” who is virtually invisible to the television audience. When a story is made up of “visible” words, it is comprehensible, visible, and best of all useable !
The problem is that, because we ourselves have acquired so much more language, we can “see” all those images appearing on the screen as part of the story, but our students can only see the images that they have acquired. It is hard for us to see their screen. That is why it is so important for them to tell us when they are lost, and for us to do frequent, useful comprehension checks.