Most language teachers continue to think quite naively that if their students can translate some words in the target language into English, or spell a verb, then they know the language. But what they do they actually know, having memorized such lists?
Students who memorize lists of words or verb conjugations and everything connected to memorization know next to nothing about the language. Why?
It is for four reasons:
1. When students memorize words, they soon forget them.
2. It is not incorrect to say that languages only exist in contextual settings. Language is like a forest, but memorizing individual words is like focusing on the trees and not the forest.
3. The history of teaching individual words in the form of lists has an abysmal track record in terms of language gains. Abysmal, Jerry….
4. The research strongly indicates that people acquire languages only via comprehensible input.
So memorization of individual words is in direct conflict with the way people actually acquire languages. People acquire languages not by memorizing single words, but via comprehensible input, and it all happens at the unconscious, non-thinking level. The human brain is wired to learn languages automatically, as per this divinely-inspired statement by Noam Chomsky:
“Language [is] acquired by virtually everyone, effortlessly, in a uniform manner, merely by living in a community under minimal conditions of interaction, exposure, and care.”
Then, when we test for memorization of words in traditional language classrooms, we divide the classroom along lines of privilege. You will see that if you grade your students in a completely different way – with less big tests, more easy quizzes (up to five in one class period), and more attention to how the student’s non-verbal yet observable behaviors show up in class, then you will be more effective with CI.