Mark Church is consulting here at the American Embassy School today. He is actually giving his first (full faculty) session right now. As part of his session, he showed a ten minute video of a Spanish teacher giving a traditional lesson and is now asking the faculty questions about the admittedly gifted teacher.
I don’t expect Mark to know all about Krashen and TPRS. His focus is not on language pedagogy but rather on studying the culture of classrooms. But he chose his example badly. The kids in the video were reciting memorized dialogues. They were all saying the same thing, over and over, going around the room. It was a fake lesson in futility, which in the hands of a naturally gifted teacher like the one in the video, can look real.
The cheerful (excellent in the old way) teacher told them how great they were. I started to feel nauseous. Mark was up there in front of 15o teachers talking about how great this teaching was.
Luckily I was up in the balcony in the back row. (The only person further behind me was Doug Asher, Linda Li’s husband who is one great and fine person.) Anyway, in order not to throw up, I had to leave to get some air outside, and I never do dramatic stuff like that, but I didn’t want to throw down my breakfast in the school venue. The only problem was that there is no air in New Delhi, so expecting some relief, all I got was a worse feeling of nausea.
So I ducked into the nearest classroom and prayed that I didn’t toss my cookies on that teacher’s floor. (I didn’t.)
I don’t know, y’all. When I start having such strong feelings about Krashen’s research and Ray’s most brilliant application of it in the classroom that it starts making me physically sick, maybe it’s time for me to get out and hang up my spikes. I’m old now anyway.
I better go back to the workshop. I might get into trouble.