There was a girl who was failing all her classes. She dressed in black everyday with black lipstick. But she was thriving in my CI classroom – actually she was the class superstar. She told me, when I asked once if I was going slowly enough, “Mr. Slavic, do you know how you can ride a bike so slowly that you end up falling over? That is how slow you are going”.
This was not true, however, as this girl was a very fast processor, even though I’m not sure all her teachers knew that. It felt really slow to her but not to the slower processors. I could see that. Going slowly and teaching to the eyes guarantees that the slow processors stay in the web of connectedness of what is going on in the classroom.
When all the kids experience the language sufficiently slowly, their affective filters go way down, and all of them in the class, not just the fast processors, acquire the language.
Luckily, this girl who was such a fast processor has a very kind heart, and she agreed to my request to just listen anyway, because I was able to convince her that no matter how slow I went, she was still learning French.
