Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
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University
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5 thoughts on “University”
Don’t forget that at the university level, there’s no prerequisite that the professors have any expertise in SLA. They could have gotten their doctorate in Post Modern Spanish Theater of the Absurd, and end up teaching Spanish 2 to college freshman. Dr. Bill Van Patten wrote an open letter to deans talking about the need for experts:
http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.aatsp.org/resource/resmgr/Hispania_Open_Access/Hispania_98.1_VanPatten.pdf
Thanks, Alisa.
I had read the open letter but not the rest of the paper.
His contention throughout is that “the vast majority of scholars populating academic ‘language’
departments are not experts in language or language acquisition.” This strong claim should put in perspective the big fear thrown out to us: But will they be ready for university?
Until the universities are in tune with language acquisition, the important question may well be: Will the universities be ready for students who are fluent and moving toward accuracy?
Your recent revelation about the change in the HS program is pertinent. Unlike many situations with a MS/HS disparity, your receiving HS seems to have decided that it wants to be ready for your students. I am hoping that my HS will follow a similar path as our MS teachers have turned from Grammar Translation to CI.
There is also the fear that their classes won’t be seen as being “academic” enough without all the charts and rules center stage.
As a former university language teacher myself, a lot of the lower levels are taught by Master’s students (at least at state universities).
It is important to departments that they know exactly what is being taught and that students will flow seamlessly between one teacher and the next as they progress too, so oftentimes a text is a must and scope and sequence is very inflexible. Also some of the professors themselves have worked to create these textbooks and it is important that their books sell too.
I was able to use some CI strategies in my class only because I went with a bit of a ‘flipped’ model as my students did all the ‘book work’ on their own and I did my very best to stay in the TL as we communicated in class, but storytelling itself was out of the question for the department I worked for.
I would say that the vast majority of my students could read/write with confidence, but the speaking bit was definitely not great even in higher levels.
“but the speaking bit was definitely not great even in higher levels.”
Sounds just about right for most of us, if not all 🙂