Tina wrote this on the morelist today. It addresses the concern that Jeff brought up on Monday that non-targeted instruction brings us out too wide and thus lose the kids. It represents a good description of a reasonable position between the “Just Talk to the Kids” extreme and the Targeted extreme:
In my view the input can be narrow and not targeted. The teacher uses whatever language comes up within the context of the activity/story while still keeping it comprehensible with the “illusion of transparency.” The teacher must not overload the students though, so the language is narrow. You are not going off on every tangent that you would in real life. So you are confining yourself to a specific narrow topic that probably also has some visual support. Strategies like student artwork, drawings on the board, also Picture Talk and Movie Talk can help include visual support.
My conceptualization of T vs NT is really one of intent.
In T1 (as I understand it), the intent is to teach students the target words. The words/structures come from a list, many repetitions are made, usually in one sitting, and then students are expected to have some facility with those words/structures. The story exists to repeat the target words. The assessment is often at least partially based on the target words/structures.
In NT anything goes. This could overwhelm the students. It’s like trying to get a drink out of a fire hose.
In NT with T2, the intent is to do an activity – create a story, hear a story, fold paper airplanes, talk about a picture, etc. The words that come up, come up. The teacher uses T2 when needed when they sense (or know) that the students do not comprehend. For instance, you might be showing them a map of the USA. And they do not know the word “city” so you write it on the board and lightly circle/target it. “Tanya lives in a big city. Class, New York is a city. Portland is a city. Is McMinville a city? No class McMinville is small. A city is big. Portland is a big city. Right? Isn’t Portland a big city? But not as big as New York, right? Mcminnville’s not a city. It’s a town. So, Tanya lives in a big city not a town. So in the city of New York…”
But the teacher’s intention is not to teach “city” it just came up and there was some light circling to talk about it. Just to be sure that the kids understand Tanya’s living situation. The teacher moves on and expects nothing regarding “city” from the kids in the future. The story exists to provide linguistic data by conveying interesting (and hopefully compelling) messages. The assessment is most likely more like summarizing the story or taking a Quick Quiz asking one-word answers about the story.
Both can be narrow, scaffolded, and comprehensible. But yes I agree that NT input is easier to provide when one has a narrow structure to work within. Just “talking to the kids” easily veers off into incomprehensibility. Using a narrow structure like Story Listening (especially if you prepare a real simple story) Movie Talk, Picture Talk, Special Chair, One Word Image…these are ways to narrow the range of input and provide rails for the teacher to go down, instead of just widely talking about “whatever” which can quickly get overwhelming.
