I wish to clarify what is going on in this discussion, because it has gotten so big, spilling over to other lists. It is a discussion which may involve Helena Curtain directly.
What is going on is that Eric Herman has turned one of the most pivotal and foundational assumptions of traditional language teaching on its ear. By asking questions based in research, in order to clarify assumptions that are not based in research, he has called into question decades of received ideas, which are never a good thing, and which even drove Gustave Flaubert to make a list of them (in the 1870’s and later published in 1911) as a warning to others in his 19th c. France. (Dictionnaire des Idées Reçues*).
The close reader of Herman’s articles will see clearly that much of what Curtain has claimed to be true over the decades has, in fact, been false, because it was not based in solid research. Yes, my claim is that much of Curtain’s work is nothing more than a collection of clichés (the best translation from the French of the term idée reçue, in my opinion, is cliché.)
I have my own reasons to explain why Helena Curtain was even considered important. Many of them are described in articles written and published here over recent years (see the Helena Curtain category on the right side of this page). Simply put, in my opinion Helena, bless her heart, was considered important because the textbook companies needed her to be. They needed someone (she and Miriam Met spring to mind but there are others) to shill their ideas. They needed Curtain and Met to sell books and those two ladies (this is not an attack on their character) were in the right place at the right time. It was a marriage of the normal desire of anyone to become famous and useful to colleagues (no blame!) and the abnormal desire of large corporate book companies to make millions and millions of dollars.
I have no quarrel with either of these things, except when it is done at the expense of children. Without the fact that the work of Curtain and Met happens to promote the agenda of people who publish books, it is quite possible that we would not know of them. Everything in the entire world seems to be upside down and backwards right now. Those who should be known remain somewhat unknown and largely ignored and certainly misunderstood (Krashen), and those who shouldn’t be known and should be ignored are not. Why? In my opinion it is because what they say, though housed in grandiose terms, just doesn’t make a lot of sense in classrooms. More to the point that Herman makes about thematic units, Curtain’s work does not honor how people actually learn languages, how the brain learns a language.
Curtain and Met’s speech, their reasoning, is flawed. It is all about supporting the use of materials. I once suffered through a day long training with Miriam Met, during which Dale Crum and I were convinced that she knew very little about comprehensible input and at the end of which she walked to her car in the company of her day long companion (flight from the East Coast paid for by?), a representive of Realidades who was selling books at the back of the venue, answering the many questions about how to use Realidades by the over 300 teachers there, who rushed and crowded his desk at every break. It’s an odd image- Met talks for a few hours and all these teachers run for space at the Realidades table to put in their orders. That’s called shilling.
When I joined her on the walk to the parking lot, and asked her about TPRS, Miriam tossed off a dismissive comment that has stayed with me over the years, “It’s just another tool in the tool box.” That statement fits the Curtain/Met agenda. Whether they are aware or are not aware of their shill status for textbook companies is not the point. If they can get people to think in terms of a “toolbox” of strategies, whether that idea is based in research about how the brain learns languages or not, then they get to have their ideas largely accepted world-wide, and this has happened, and lots of books have been sold, at an average of thousands and thousands of dollars for each classroom set.
How did Realidades deal with the TPRS juggernaut plowing the seas at that time? (2005). They gave Karen Rowan a bunch of money, a big bunch, and told her to write up a bunch of little factoid ideas that were then put in the book as TPRS ideas. Each idea in each chapter was just about a paragraph long and in my opinion did not lead to CI. But that wasn’t the point. Their goal was not CI but to convince teachers that they were at the front of the curve on pedagogy. TPRS was placed in their toolbox. It was neurtralized, and if I may say so, grossly misrepresented as well. Grossly misrepresented.
The idea of a toolbox/textbook/computer program approach to teaching languages puts the teacher firmly in control of the classroom, and that may have been the point all along. Trying to actually communicate in the language with the students can be messy. Why do it when the book is there? And that is wonderful, when speaking about any other subject, because the idea on teachers being in control allows schools to function.
The only problem in that way of thinking, as we in this group have been discussing for many years now and as Krashen has stated over and over and over again, is that the human brain does not learn a language out of a tool box. Nothing needs to be fixed. Everything in language acquisition is under the control of the unconscious mind, and the brain does not need fixing. The teacher need but speak the language in the classroom in ways that are interesting to the student and the language will be acquired over a large period of time. No tools are needed. Curtain and Met are the tools.
The ideas of Curtain and Met, it turns out, are not as knowledgeable as everyone thought. They have fooled most teachers. They have skewed the argument away from what I believe to be true and best for children. How do we know that? Because of the non-responses (not based in actual research) of the members of the ACTFL list in the current thread started by Eric.
Unless the members of that group can prove Eric Herman’s citing of the research as flawed, and produce counter evidence, their position in support of thematic units becomes weaker with each passing day. As each new comment in the tread by increasing numbers of people who also want to be shown some research on behalf of thematic units, the position in favor of thematic units weakens. Now would be a good time for them to defend their position.
So to restate: no one has made things on this topic so clear as Eric Herman in the two articles that precede this one on thematic units. No one has found the man behind the curtain (the textbook companies), until now, but the evidence has been presented in these two new articles by Herman. Let us not miss this point. Who could call themselves a professional in a field, any field, without being fully aware of all of the research? Eric has laid it out in these articles. What is going to be done in response? This is a moment in which someone needs to act. Being “too busy” is not a valid excuse on this one. It’s time to act to protect the continued use of thematic units in our nation’s second language clasrooms.
So this is a watershed moment. It is not just another of the 5000 posts and 30,000 comments here. It is special and different, because it calls total bullshit on one of the most onerous received ideas in the history of language teaching. When I say onerous, I mean injurious to the self esteem of children and teachers alike.
To restate: in the current thread here, Eric Herman has cited much research to back up his position. He then asked the wider community of language teachers as a whole, not just those in our tiny group, requesting from anyone who could provide it research to support the points in favor of thematic units. He has received, at this point a bit less than a week after approaching the ACTFL group – where ostensibly 18,000(!) language teachers read and share ideas – nothing of substance. Not one of those 18,000 professionals has ponied up a shred of credible evidence.
Here is just one of Eric’s point citing research, taken from his two articles:
This from Nation, 2000:
…this research shows that learning related words at the same time makes learning them more difficult. This learning difficulty can be avoided if related words are learned separately, as they are when learning from normal language use….
And here is what I consider the tour de force anchoring statement of everything that Eric is saying, the conclusion to the Thematic Unit – 3 article:
…my main point is that in order for ACTFL to be recommending thematic units and authentic resources, it should be made clear that it is the hands-down best way to develop proficiency and I’d expect to see plenty of research showing it is the superior means to develop proficiency….
How many times and with what emphasis do we have to say that this is a watershed moment in language acquisition pedagogy? Go read Eric’s articles again, which yes he posted on the ACTFL, if you are not convinced of the importance of what is going on right now. Those articles should, in my opinion, be posted on a lot more lists, and yet, to repeat the point again, have received no credible, research-based responses in that ACTFL thread. So this is a big moment in support of SLA truths, not fantasies. Herman bases his statements on research, does Curtain?
Diane Neubauer pointed out a fundamental discrepancy in the response to Eric on the ACTFL list of an associate professor of linguistics at Carleton College in Minnesota. She realized and shared with us that Catherine Fortin stated that Curtain did in fact have research backing up thematic units, but couldn’t cite the actual research (rare for a PHD in a field as academically rigorous as linguistics) and was even incorrect on the name of the book by Curtain, as per Diane writing here on Monday:
…I thought Helena Curtain’s book was called “Languages and Children – Making the Match.” I just checked on Amazon. That is the name of her older edition. There’s also a newer edition: Languages and Learners: Making the Match: World Language Instruction in K-8 Classrooms and Beyond (5th Edition).
At the risk of seeming picky, I find imprecisely naming the title on the only book cited as including research showing thematic units are “necessary” disconcerting. It makes me think the writer just had a general idea in mind, not precise research – not even precise citations in a secondary source. Does this feel like the emperor has no clothes to anyone else?…
*from Wikipedia: The Dictionary of Received Ideas (in French, Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues) is a short satirical work collected and published in 1911-3 from notes compiled by Gustave Flaubert during the 1870s, lampooning the clichés endemic to French society under the Second French Empire. It takes the form of a dictionary of automatic thoughts and platitudes, self-contradictory and insipid. It is often paired with the Sottisier (a collection of stupid quotations taken from the books of famous writers).