The differences in philosophy between CI and traditional language education:
- CI is a student-driven methodology. It responds to the linguistic needs of students, to their wishes to speak about things interesting to them.
- This necessarily changes the nature of how we plan. We can’t plan by putting the language first in a linear curriculum to check off concepts and words, but by putting the students first in a cyclic curriculum. The research demands this. For more, search the term Star Sequence Curriculum on this site.
- CI believes that we should shelter (limit) vocabulary using grammar naturally, and defining grammar for what it really is, not a bunch of grammar terms and rules, etc. but rather properly spoken language, which properly spoken word order in CI (real grammar) we impart to them simply by speaking to them properly using properly spoken language.
- When we do this, we shelter vocabulary to make it easy for them to understand.
- CI believes that linguistic features are acquired in a natural order and that the brain cannot be forced to acquire a feature out of sequence or before it is ready. If you are reading this doubting CI, that sentence alone should assuage your concerns.
- CI believes that each learner acquires knowledge at his/her own pace – that no two students are at the same point in learning at the same time. So how can we grade a class on their common progression through some left brain dominant stuff they memorize?
- In CI we believe that student output cannot be forced. Students need thousands of hours of repetitive input before they are ready for unrehearsed, spontaneous output. This is much like a baby hears his/her first language for thousands of hours before being able to produce meaningful language. We believe that activities practicing output – before students have reached this point – is counter-productive and leads only to short-term learning goals of the kinds schools adhere to, but not to long-term acquisition.
- CI adheres to the Monitor Theory – we believe that direct instruction of grammatical rules is not even helpful at upper levels of instruction, because students have not had enough time to acquire these grammatical features through sufficient and rich enough context.
- For example, we have 500 hours of instructional hours available to us in a four year program. Our students need far more than that to really dive authentically into how the language is structured. And yet some of us still teach textbook grammar and demand writing and speech output of their first year students. This is unpardonable professional malpractice in my view.
- CI believes that language instruction should be practical and focused on communication in areas that currently interest students. In my experience, the best way by far to do that is to focus on drawings they make.
vs.
- The Pacing Guide bases instruction on the textbook curriculum, and are therefore not student-driven no matter how much effort goes into making the book appealing to kids.
- The reason for this is that the goal of the textbook companies is to make money, leading unavoidably to a curriculum that is not especially responsive to student needs.
- The Pacing Guide does not shelter vocabulary. It shelters grammar (properly spoken language). Students are expected to learn copious amounts of vocabulary for each chapter. Yet, students are exposed to one discrete feature of grammar at a time. This hurts their confidence because it confuses almost all the kids in the classroom.
- By sheltering grammar the Pacing Guide does not allow for Natural Order of Acquisition. It does not provide adequate exposure to late acquired features early on and expects mastery of some late acquired features in beginning stages.
- The Pacing Guide exists to make learning uniform across the district. Every student in the district is expected to learn the same material at the same time. This conflicts badly with the Natural Order of Acquisition.
- The Pacing Guide and accompanying benchmark exams are filled with output-oriented activities. The dreadfully incorrect philosophy is that practice with output rather than time of input produces accurate spontaneous output in students.
- The Pacing Guide, benchmark exams, and department teachers assume that students will know technical terminology and will be able to discuss the grammatical features in a metacognitive fashion. But the students aren’t language technicians and care little about the motor. They just want to drive the car down the road.
- The Pacing Guide etc. assumes that language acquisition is an academic activity that will result in preparation for college and perhaps eventual communication in the language. Areas that currently interest students – like something they create in the form of a drawing – are not included if they do not fit into the long-term goals of academic study.
An analogy: In a way, the pacing guide is like the old practice in manufacturing of ordering and stockpiling a bunch of materials on a rigid and pre-set schedule – it might sit there for a long time without being used. CI is like the more modern practice of ordering “on demand”. As something is needed, it is ordered and used. The second way is simpler, more efficient, and more economical. The pacing guide is an attempt to recreate the old style factory production line. Why try to do that when factories don’t even do it anymore – at least the ones that aren’t shut down!
It is no wonder that students find much of their school experience boring, irrelevant, mystifying and unengaging; it is almost diametrically opposed to how they learn on their own. Early 20th-century methods in a 21st-century world leave everyone behind, trying to catch up with the new CI juggernaut.