So when I woke up I was having this illusive dream state idea that we really have screwed it up for about 20 years by shifting Blaine’s original focus (as per Russ Albright’s post here last week). And then I go and read this response to Steve by Tina in the Ryan McArthur thread on assessment:
…we have torn up the grammar syllabus. It is still haunting the CI world through word lists and backwards panning – why? Why target words when we could be just simply communicating? Is not holding a daily class discussion or storytelling session with students who do not understand doodley-squat without our hand-holding them, is that not enough? Is it not enough to exercise the skills of captivating students’ attention using few words, and looking them in the eyes instead of at the back walls like so many teachers do, and gesturing, drawing and all the rest? I had a recent realization. If we work from high frequency word lists (which I thought was the bees’ knees for a long time, the best compromise, to put three structures on the board and try to say them as much as possible while spinning a yarn to the kids) then we are basically doing a grammar-patterning exercise on “tener” or “tendre” in which we are providing massed reps of all the different conjugations of those verbs. It is more like the audio lingual method which is what Beniko told me in Agen. I will never forget that moment; light bulbs went OFF….
This is serious. We have taken a wrong turn. I just know it. We need to get away from the targets. It’s been crippling us. It’s like we’ve been trying to fly the CI jet on one engine for all these years now. And all those experts out there don’t want to lose their status as experts so they are starting to kvetch in the general direction of anyone advocating no targets. Like Russ said a few weeks ago:
…I feel like we are in a Post TPRS era. We are squabbling over how people deliver CI. Why do we not just accept that there is no wrong way to do this and call “Same Team”? I have not said much on here because of this reason. I feel like we get attacked enough by adminz, parents, community members, and grammar teachers….
If this is going to be a skirmish, or grow into a big battle or even a war, I want to be on Tina Hargaden’s side. She has proven that she can give as good as she gets. Ultimately, what she has written above is true. Blaine admitted it to me in an email last March. The thing is, we are not saying that everyone has to do it, we would just like to not have people get their pants in a bunch when we point to it as something new and worth looking into.