Where Did Krashen Get His Ideas? Maybe From Simon Belasco?

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Anyone into conspiracy theories will enjoy this post. It raises questions about whether Krashen’s work is original. It also completely supports my NTCI concept vs. “targeted” CI.

This entry is from 2007. One of my middle school students – “K”  – wrote 21 posts here in 2006 (back when it was just “the blog”) about her experiences in going from my then-TPRS middle school classroom into an IB traditional high school program in Lakewood, CO. By the way, she had cerebral palsy and on the first day of school in Lakewood had been re-directed by her French teacher to the special ed room. (This was a level 1 class, where all middle school kids were placed, in spite of the fact that she had had the second highest score in the state of Colorado on the level 1 National French Exam the year before.) In this post, “K”, who was also in my Theory of Knowledge class and had gotten very interested in how people learn languages, found in her high school textbook a reference to Simon Belasco’s work that pre-figures Krashen’s work. She went to explore it. The actual report is not below – I lost touch with K before I could get it. So below is K’s “summary” of the report. Here is K’s observations on the Belasco committee article from 1963, something well worth reading by any teacher interested in how we have arrived in the 57 years since at where we are now in WL pedagogy:

Let’s be more honest. I am making the point here that this 1963 report didn’t just “prefigure” Krashen’s work. Rather, I am suggesting that it may possibly have been the basis of” his work, or could have been. Not only that, it also lays down precepts that inform both the work of Blaine Ray and much of the position statements of ACTFL that endure to this day. An example of the latter is the recommendation (that I don’t agree with) that teachers use the TL 90% of the time in class. Everything that raised my eyebrows in this report is bolded below, to assist the reader in following my main point here, that it wasn’t Krashen that invented Krashen’s ideas, but Belasco’s committee ten years before Krashen even began his research, way back in 1963. I could be wrong and it is not my intention to throw shade on Krashen’s enormous impact on our profession. Indeed, without Krashen I’m not sure there would even be a comprehensible input movement, and we would still be back in the dark ages with the textbook, but it’s still an interesting coincidence, or whatever one would call it. Find the eyebrow raising points in bold below:

Hi Mr. Slavic,

I was looking at the book that traditional teachers use to teach “advanced French” which is when they begin doing reading outside the textbook. [ed. note: Ouch!] This book was a collection of short stories. I found the note for teachers at the beginning interesting. It was written all in capital letters. The book, published in 1965, got its inspiration from the 1963 Northeast Conference on Teaching Foreign Languages, where introducing reading was discussed. They state that the the beginning reader is a different type of reader because their vocabulary is limited and new words must be repeated many many times. New grammatical structures must be introduced slowly and repeated frequently as well. In addition, the introduction of new structures must be natural to the reader. Apparently, there is, or at least there was, a list of vocabulary that new readers should know, according to le Ministre de l’Education Nationale. This list is called “le français fondamental” and the first list has 1,300 words, most of which the book uses. It calls this type of reading Programmed Reading because of the vast repetition:

THESE REPORTS OF THE WORKING COMMITTEES OF THE 1963 NORTHEAST CONFERENCE ON THE TEACHING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ANALYZE PROBLEMS CONFRONTING LANGUAGE TEACHERS AS THEY PROGRESS FROM THE AUDIOLINGUAL ORIENTATION OF THE ELEMENTARY LEVELS TO THE INTERMEDIATE PHASE IN A CONTINUUM OF LANGUAGE STUDY. IN AN ATTEMPT TO DISCOVER WHETHER BILINGUALISM CAN BE ACHIEVED IN AN ORDINARY CLASSROOM SITUATION AND, IF SO, WHAT CAN BE DONE TO MAKE IT A FACT IN A “COORDINATE SYSTEM” WHERE THE NATIVE AND TARGET LANGUAGES OPERATE INDEPENDENTLY, SIMON BELASCO’S COMMITTEE DISCUSSES IN THE FIRST REPORT SUCH FACTORS INVOLVED IN A WELL-DESIGNED INTERMEDIATE SYSTEM AS THE DETERMINATION OF LANGUAGE ACHIEVEMENT, THE COMPLEXITIES OF THE MORE ADVANCED GRAMMATICAL PATTERNS, AND THE NATURE OF ANALOGIZING AND AUDIO-COMPREHENSION. THE SECOND REPORT, PRODUCED BY GEORGE A SCHERER’S COMMITTEE, INCLUDES A DESCRIPTION OF THE DOMAIN AND THE 5-STAGED LEARNING SEQUENCE INVOLVED IN READING FOR MEANING, AS WELL AS DISCUSSIONS OF ITS AUTOINSTRUCTIONAL POTENTIAL, PROGRAMED READING WITH GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY BUILD-UP OBJECTIVES, THE ADAPTATION OF LITERARY SELECTIONS, AND THE DETERMINATION OF READABILITY. FOUR APPENDIXES DEALING WITH CULTURAL MEANING AND ITS COMPONENTS, COORDINATE AND COMPOUND BILINGUALISM, AUDIOLINGUAL BACKGROUND FOR READING, INFERENCE, AND FREQUENCY LISTS AND ASSOCIATIVE NETWORKS PRECEDE A BIBLIOGRAPHY. THE FINAL REPORT, DEVELOPED BY MARINA PROCHOROFF’S COMMITTEE, NOT ONLY CLARIFIES THE SERIES OF STEPS THAT LEAD TO THE LONG-RANGE OBJECTIVE OF WRITING AS EXPRESSION, BUT ALSO GIVES EXAMPLES IN FRENCH, GERMAN, RUSSIAN, AND SPANISH OF SUCH WRITING EXERCISES AS MINIMAL CHANGE, DIRECTED AND CITED NARRATION, FILL-IN, CHANGE FROM DIRECT TO INDIRECT DISCOURSE, PARALLEL WRITING, RESUME OR PRECIS WRITING, AND WRITTEN DESCRIPTION FROM VISUAL REPRESENTATION.

K continues with a comment:

Sounds somewhat similar to comprehensible input reading, and they had it figured out in 1965….. I find it very interesting that traditional teachers refuse to teach CI or use the Poor Anne books because the methods are crazy and don’t provide enough grammar or writing yet, here it says on the inside cover of the book that they will use reading etc……

[ed. note: K also has the list of vocabulary and I will ask her for it. I also had asked her, after the above email, to clarify what she was reading in that book a little. So, a week later, I got the following email, in which K has basically broken down the content of the report into her own 15 year-old words. (Shouldn’t she be studying for exams? I guess not. I think that she should be giving them! Here is her second email):

Hi Mr. Slavic,

It’s taken me over a week to read through that report – sorry [ed. note: You’re forgiven]. I’m still processing a bit so I might send more emails if I find more information. I can’t seem to find a complete online copy which is too bad. Here’s what I’ve found so far:

I. Observations About a Beginning Student

a. Limited vocabulary
b. Slow processing speed
c. Must feel safe in classroom
d. INPUT based learning only for the first two years (at minimum)
e. Young students (age 7 or younger) can process new languages faster
f. Transition between spoken language and new language must occur for there to be progress [ed. note: I don’t agree with this point]

[ed. note: I have always tried to make the point for (d) above. But, even among my CIcolleagues, I have gotten ignored on that point. It has frustrated me , because then I find myself teaching stuff  like writing to first year kids, but I know in my heart that it is just plain too early for output – except what I call celebratory output, when the kid wants to write or speak from the joy of it only. Besides being too early, there is also the time lost away from the input when we have so few actual minutes for the nitty gritty of early language learning. So this point (d) supports my work of the past 15 years. It is the first thing I have read that supports me on this position. So, if for no other reason, K, I owe you on that one. Awesome!]

K continues her summary of the report:

II. Designing a Curriculum for Beginning Students

The curriculum for a beginning language student must fully account for all observations in section 1.

Observations “C” and “D” are the most important. [ed. note: again, thanks for making me think I’m not crazy, K]

Subpoint 1: Curriculum must be focused on student input and teacher output in beginning levels. This can be achieved via:

A. verbal output from the teacher more than 90% of the time as specified below:

[ed. note: we must be very clear here that when Belasco’s committee uses the term “output” here, they mean “input”. The output refers to the teacher’s output in class, so we are talking about the teacher providing comprehensible input here.]

a. This output must be SIMPLE
b. The output must be repeated  (Ideally 50 times- see graph 1)
c. In order to meet the above requirements output should be limited to current vocabulary and combined into 3-5 phrases (see graph 2)
d. The output must be INTERESTING to students – this helps them transition into thinking in the new language faster
e. Ideally the output will be PERSONAL to students to make it the most interesting
f. New grammar structures need to be LIMITED, introduced SLOWLY, and REPEATED [ed. note: I am opposed to the introduction of ANY grammar before Year 3]
g. The introduction of a new grammar structure must not interrupt the output
h. Most importantly students must UNDERSTAND the output – check their comprehension (see section 3)

[ed. note: now this is ten years before Krashen got started and yet it prefigures his work, and that of Blaine Ray, to an uncanny degree in describing simple – (a) above – repetitive – (b) above – output by the teacher – means input – that is limited to certain known words – (c) above – and that is interesting (d) above – and personalized – (e) above – with limited presentation of new grammar (f, g) above – and, as they say at the end of the list (again, this is 1963), the output by the teacher – input – must be understood – (h) above – by the students.]

The report goes on to describe the role of reading in curriculum design and K continues her summary. As the above text prefigures Krashen and Ray, so does this section on reading. K has the entire report with the graphs and all but I don’t have it yet – she will send it to me]:

B. READING:

a. must address all observations, just as teacher output does
b. must be SIMPLE, SLOW, REPETITIVE
C. must use fundamental language vocabulary
d. scripts of verbal output may be used as well [ed. note: I’m not sure what that means until I get the full report from K]

III. Evaluating Comprehension

A. Quizzes (verbal or written)

a. must be based off verbal output from teacher
b. SIMPLE (often yes or no questions)
c. should occur any time a new idea or phase is introduced or anytime students look confused
d. do NOT continue if students look confused (see report 27)

[ed. note: hmmmm – that sounds familiar…this describes my Quick Quiz format]

B. Formal Testing

a. do not use unless mandatory [ed. note: again, this makes me feel not so crazy. I have always been as strongly opposed to formal testing as I have been opposed to output in the first two years]
b. “See problems with formal testing”

IV. Problems with Formal Testing

a. Test anxiety
b. Covers both student input and output which is unfair for beginning students

V. Student Based Output is Unfair

A. Violates natural language learning

a. Fully understood and fluent speech does not occur until 2 or 3 years of age
b. Each year of life in the natural model is 1.5 years of school based learning
c. Writing is not introduced until age 5
d. Writing is not widely taught until second grade

VI. Achieving Student Safety

a. Students must know the teacher and classmates
b. Students must be able to express their opinions
c. Students must feel that their views must be respected by others
d. Students must be in a safe environment
e. Students must be relaxed

K goes on to explain about her summary of the report:

This is not the actual language used in the report. This is the less formal version, however the essence is the same. I’ve not finished processing all of the graphs or “report 27” yet. At the end the report says that this curriculum is ideal but will never happen because of district state and national standards…. Guess they were wrong there. I’ll send the graphs once I finish looking at them.

[ed. note: Well I think that is is interesting. As far as K’s observation goes that this kind of foreign language instruction now has a chance to happen in spite of the state and national standards, I have to disagree. I am personally firmly convinced that as long as the standards are written to focus on the output skills equally with the input skills, teachers will use the way the standards are written to justify teaching and focusing on output in the first two years, which completely dismantles the potential changes that could have come from this report had not the standards mentioned the four skills in the way that they do. Only standards that say that output should be completely avoided in the first two years can lead to the embracing of what Belasco’s committee wrote, but it will never happen. The book companies, in short, won in 1963. This report was essentially ignored, and, if we wanted to stir up a little intrigue, we would want to ask why it was ignored. Simon Belasco is no lightweight, and yet the findings of this report, so potentially damning to the interests of the  corporate book lobby, and so clearly brilliant, never got any serious discussion until now.]

I would also observe that the similarity between Belasco’s report and what became the subject of Krashen’s research not long after is remarkable. I was never brave enough to ask Krashen if back in the early 1970s he had ever read this material in the publication of the 1963 Northeast Conference on Teaching Foreign Languages. My guess is he had. Read what you wish into that. 

The reader is invited to read the points below that align quite nicely with the points made in the Belasco report above:

  1. NTCI is easy to learn. It doesn’t require a lot of expensive training in the form of workshops and conferences. The majority of teachers who start doing it (via ANATS – Year One – A Natural Approach to Stories and ANATTY – A Natural Approach to the Year) report great results right away.
  2. The big focus of NTCI on building community goes a long way in solving the big problem in American foreign language classrooms that the vast majority of students don’t know how to interact with their teachers or peers in class.
  3. The vastly simplified data gathering and grading procedures in NTCI are in harmony with the soul of comprehension-based instruction.
  4. By not aligning with and pushing high frequency verb lists, interest in NTCI classes is not constrained. When the interest is not constrained, there is more flow of language.
  5. By not aligning with thematic units or semantic sets, interest in NTCI classes is not constrained. It is one thing to talk about language flow, but another to teach in a way that guarantees it.
  6. The purpose in NTCI is not to teach words from lists but to teach language from images. This keeps the focus of the learner on the language as a whole, and not on pieces of the language so that the students can pass a test on the words for the rooms in a house. Thus, there is a greater alignment with the pure research in NTCI. Instead of pushing the language into a corner of the bedroom, or a kitchen or a living room, or down the staircase, or into a list of any kind for the purpose of testing the semantic set to grade the child on her ability to learn words out of context, we expand language into the whole house. The results are: (1) a more interesting story, (2) less conscious focus on words to learn, (3) more and easier focus on meaning, (4) no planning for the instructor, (5) a more expansive and less reductive language experience, (6) more fuel for the Din during sleep, (7) more contextualized learning, (8) a lowered affective filter, (9) language instruction that aligns more with the research, and (10) more authentic Communication. Neither does backwards planning of chapters in novels doesn’t work because it is impossible to teach the vocabulary in an entire chapter – there are too many words. The idea that one could prepare a novel by isolating vocabulary from a chapter and doing stories to prepare for the reading of that chapter is a flawed idea and should never have been allowed into the pedagogy.
  7. By not focusing on targets, interest in NTCI classes is not constrained. Focusing on lists of any kind, in my view, has little positive effect on language gains.The ACTFL proficiency guidelines are “holistic” and not specific to learning certain words or grammar concepts. NTCI reflects this point exactly.
  8. There is no consensus in SLA research of when something is “acquired” because we don’t really know what is going on in our students’ brains. To try to measure acquisition is therefore impossible. This fact is fully respected in NTCI instruction.
  9. When I was using the TPRS skill called circling, I would very often get an automatic, almost predictable eye roll. But I would keep up my fake smile going like I was enjoying it but inside I wanted to scream. This does not happen in NTCI because circling is not used. One thing about circling is that it demands a certain natural ability to communicate on the part of the teacher. If the teacher has that quality, the communication will take place even though circling as a CI instructional skill tends to water down the level of interest. But if the teacher lacks this natural communicative ability – and there is no blame nor any reason to expect them to have it if they were trained in the old way – circling can be a real problem and throws light on reasons that TPRS hasn’t caught  on with many language teachers.
  10. Allowing students to ask grammar questions during class when the non-targeted language is flowing is not done in NTCI. In my view, the short interruption back to L1 (a) throws off the flow of language of the rest of the class, (b) is often in many kids nothing but a way to draw attention and (c) goes against Krashen and the concept of FLOW, which is at the heart of NTCI.
  11. In NTCI there is no class reading of novels, which practice allows a few faster processing students from more privileged backgrounds to skew the discussion of the book in their favor. In NTCI, the students read novels at their own pace. This is in keeping with the research.
  12. In NTCI the students are not asked personalized questions, which causes tension. Rather, questions are asked about images they have drawn, which process is far more interesting and less personally intimidating to them. They create these images individually or as a class and it is wonderful.
  13. In NTCI we don’t need to establish meaning and then practice certain words or word chunks. What I mean here by “establishing meaning” is the practice of saying what words mean before starting the story, because of course in truth we are always establishing meaning as we go along through the story. We are not teaching individual words – we are teaching the language as a whole. The brain does better with language as a whole than language in parts. The process is a natural one. Krashen’s Natural Order of Acquisition Hypothesis states that acquisition is not dependent on the ease with which a particular language feature can be taught. The deeper mind is in charge and makes its own decisions about what sounds it turns into meaning in the growing language system, in sleep, after hearing input that is interesting/compelling and understandable during the day. We’re not in control and we should act like that in the classroom. The language should be in control. We merely deliver the CI. We do not deliver “instructional services”.
  14. In NTCI, the students enjoy the right to listen in a quiet and relaxed and focused way and not have to perform. Having kids supply cute answers puts stress on them and is linked to privilege because it favors the louder, bolder, and more socially gifted students, and thus tends to divide the classroom along socioeconomic lines, as is happening at all levels of American society today and yet is un-American.
  15. NTCI rarely uses gesturing as a group. Gesturing as a group brings the conscious part of the brain into play. It also invites copycatting. In NTCI the students’ minds are freed up to concentrate fully on turning the sounds they are hearing into meaning without all the pressure.
  16. In NTCI the stories last less than 30-40 minutes. Once the students know that in class they will most likely know what is going to happen at the end of the story in that class period, they focus better. The students need for the story to end that class period. Very early on we were trained (at the national conferences) that the stories were not important, that the content was not important, and that we were supposed to be doing reps of targets. But the students cared a lot about the stories, because they were invested, and they wanted to know what happened. The stories were theirs and not ours. But after roughly October or November each year when the students had learned that they probably wouldn’t find out what happened by the end of class that day, the air came out of the storytelling balloon.
  17. No planning is needed in NTCI. This greatly reduces stress which enhances our mental health right at a time when mental health issues are, like really big spiders in really big spider webs, taking over our profession and turning it into a dark forest, wrapping teachers up in big cocoons, taking all the fun out of life, and making what should be an enjoyable job into a form of mild mental torture.
  18. In NTCI with the Invisibles the students create images that become their own wonderful sources of non-targeted discussion. In that way, if a student does not know who a particular celebrity is, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want a section of the class – the cool kids who know the celebrities – running the class. Making up our own characters is so much more fun!
  19. In NTCI we have lots of alternatives to stories, so we don’t have to do a story when we aren’t having the best day. Stories in the Star Sequence curriculum take on a minor role to set up the other nodes of the star. Now we can work the reading options, extend things out with the Word Chunk Team Game, etc. It doesn’t have to be all about stories.
  20. The Seven Step Questioning NTCI process to create a story provides a safe set of golden rails for the CI train to go down. It is a safe process for the teacher, and highly structured. The teacher can literally stand on the laminated cards of each of the seven story creation steps while creating the story in her classroom and work with the Story Driver to make sure her class never goes off the rails.
  21. NTCI prevents dominance of the classroom by the few. Observe a non-targeted classroom. Classes based on images are not just interesting, they are very often compelling, which naturally involves everyone and not just the few. It’s what we want.
  22. NTCI allows teachers to bring their own personality into the classroom. NTCI teachers don’t have to be cute and entertaining all the time, because the NTCI process based on the creation of images is intrinsically cute in itself, and because the class content is generated by the students. Interesting input drives the class, not the lion tamer thing.
  23. In NTCI when creating stories, we don’t require students to draw complex images with lots of panels right away. The artists in level 1 classes create two panels (problem and solution); in level 2 they create 4 panels; level 3 creates the six panels, and level 4 does 8 panels. Of course, there are no rules on this. Each class does it the way they want. But in the NTCI classroom the role of artwork/drawing assumes a much greater role in the development of the story. The class galleries stimulate student interest in ways I personally have ever seen in a language classroom. Images drive the learning. It’s fantastic.
  24. In NTCI we don’t TPR words. TPR always seemed artificial and kind of lame to me, keeping interest for only a few minutes at the most and pulling the discussion out of the waters it really wants to always swim in – context.
  25. In NTCI, the teacher doesn’t always have to try to be the dynamic, in-charge personality with star quality. She can be self-effacing and quiet if she wants. She can be herself. She can listen to her students carefully, and effortlessly roll in whatever direction the conversation goes. The model of the lion tamer, master of CI ceremonies, person on stage is not in line with Krashen, Vygotsky, etc.
  26. According to some CI experts, “breakdown” is a concern. Breakdown is when a student answers a question but shows hesitation and the teacher, upon seeing this in the student, says to herself, “we need to practice the sentence more”. But students are there to listen and absorb what they can, not to be taught a certain sentence. It is in their ongoing flow that we learn languages, not in the focusing on any specific parts of the flow. We do ask yes/no questions in NTCI but we don’t continually monitor their responses, preferring rather to let the Din happen as per Krashen. Do we break contextual messages down when learning our first language? Looking for breakdown is like hammering the input in one nail at a time when no nails are needed.
  27. In NTCI, it’s just waves and waves of pleasant comprehensible input (easy on the student and the teacher both) and some goes in and some doesn’t and then when the students sleep the process of parsing out some words as “ready to be accepted” (acquired) into the growing language system or not happens. The process is under our unconscious command and so why “practice” it? Why look for things that the kids can’t yet do? Doing that activates conscious thinking and awareness of the possibility of being wrong and the affective filter kicks in and that is not how the research says it happens. In fact, it is exactly the activation of the affective filter that causes the student to lock up, to “breakdown”.
  28. In NTCI we don’t go for language correctness, correct points of view, SV agreement, etc. from students. This includes from actors. When we ask students to repeat after us mechanically, we are really judging the student. What we really do in NTCI is get a kind of smile on our faces and invite them to play, maybe repeating the sentence histrionically, for the purpose of laughing. It’s all about keeping the affective filter down so that acquisition can occur by osmosis and via the Din, which the research says is how it happens.
  29. In NTCI we don’t ask new teachers to “dive right in” to stories after one conference. Instead, we bring them along slowly from tableaux to stories and finally when they are ready, we give them the 7-step questioning process which is not random but structured about how to create a story.
  30. In NTCI, the primacy of the physical presence of the teacher as kind and inviting, soft and not judging, is key. In NTCI relational dynamics are the cornerstone to comprehension, engagement and maintaining attention.
  31. In NTCI there is not a long list of pedagogical “to-do’s” that prevent the teacher from doing the only thing they need to do – conversing in a light-hearted way with her students.
  32. In NTCI reading, we don’t teach specialized vocabulary beforehand so that a class can read the chapter in the novel. If we are tasked with teaching a group of foreign nurses who need the medical vocabulary before they can start working in the profession, they will not learn the terms they wish to learn until the bedrock of their language system is more established in a general way. The terms cannot be learned unless the overall language system itself in each nurse is strong. It’s like trying to put cargo on an unfinished boat – it will sink. It’s like building a stadium for a soccer game but forgetting to put in the field. The nurses will only learn the vocabulary they need when the field is finished.
  33. In NTCI it is less about collecting funny details, and more about getting the group together to showcase each child. Because of the community building that is done in NTCI classes before even trying stories, shy students become automatically more engaged. Thus, NTCI classes don’t revolve around the 5-7 most talkative kids in class.
  34. In NTCI teachers don’t have to instruct in a certain way. The message in their training is not that if they don’t do what they are told at a conference, they will fail. We are all different individuals with different teaching personalities. Diversity in instructional strategies, choosing what strategies we resonate most with, is a strength of NTCI. There is no one way to teach languages. What is required is that we simply be ourselves.
  35. In NTCI we downplay summative assessments. If we are forced, we weigh them lightly and we make them easy. We don’t give summative vocabulary tests on specific vocabulary to see if it was “learned”. How could we know what has been acquired, since it is all in the unconscious mind where things can’t be measured? We don’t kill motivation in kids by unfairly asking for translations of certain words that we think they “should have” learned, because doing so provides false results about what has been acquired, since what has been acquired lies hidden in the unconscious mind. Why do we keep ignoring the findings of the research?
  36. Students in NTCI classes should experience low levels of conscious engagement when reading. They read easy texts that some might say are below their ability but in my view are just right. We read “down”, which means we always read texts that are simple enough so as not to engage the conscious faculty of the student. Challenging readings are suspect in NTCI classes.
  37. In the upper levels of NTCI classes, we do not ask students to do expository writing. They can write in college, because they will have had so much listening and reading input that they will be able to write effortlessly, in an unforced way. Moreover, writing is one of the favorite things of college professors – it keeps them in their minds where they live, so we can save it for them. Input precedes output, so we must give them all we can before they get to college.
  38. I don’t like the use of the term “There is…” to start every story. It gets tiresome. What if the students don’t want to be told in each and every class that there is a girl or a boy? Perhaps they would rather decide, via the Invisibles process of working from images, what there is by designing their own classroom experiences themselves.
  39. There are not two kinds of “natural”. The research as I understand it doesn’t talk about having conversations that are supposed to contain words from a list somewhere. In fact, when this happens, you lose your center of gravity, as it were, and you can’t feel relaxed and natural in the classroom. And if a story doesn’t emerge naturally, so what? Who really cares? One can either be a language teacher or, far more desirable, merely a deliverer-of-comprehensible-input. There is no in-between area. We deliver CI. That’s it.
  40. NTCI has the ability to reverse expected outcomes in language classes for many “ordinary” kids. Installing any kind of CI curriculum in a language classroom should be done with the concept of equity in mind. NTCI can bring equity into a language classroom where other approaches cannot.  If everyone can learn a first language, then everyone can learn a second and third and fourth language.
  41. I don’t use timers anymore. (Bogus. The kids who times doesn’t hear a word. I know that TPRS teachers like to make class competitions on who stayed in the TL longest that week, but the loss of five students, one from each class to time, is not justifiable. There they go lost in their phones.)