The “TPRS/CI” lists and groups these days are filled with suggestions about activities. Activities you can do with no preparation. Activities you can do to teach this or that. All kinds of activities. But activities are good, aren’t they?
Maybe.
IMO, what these lists and groups should be emphasizing on EVERY post and EVERY activity and EVERY suggestion is the Lens. The Lens is what we look through when we think about any activity or the use of any minute of our very limited class time. The Lens is what we use to evaluate how well that activity or use conforms to what we believe about how language is acquired. The Lens evaluates whether the language used during the activity will be comprehended, personalized and repeated.
Every activity potentially has value for language teaching. Even activities that are silent and have no text associated with them could potentially be valuable as brain breaks or for some other purpose, such as satisfying an external power’s requirement. But potential is not realization, just as “comprehensible” doesn’t mean “comprehended.”
And we need that realization. We need to know and be aware, at all times, why we are doing what we are doing. There is not enough class time to waste on simply hoping for the best.
In a perfect world, where teachers were focusing on providing comprehended input that is personalized and repeated, our posts would list activities, sure. But those same posts would be discussions of how well the activity serves to provide CPR input, how a traditional or pre-CI activity or game should be modified to maximize the CPR input it provides, or the reasons the activity does not provide a particularly high amount of CPR input but still has value on some other dimensions.
Much of the argumentation and divisiveness in the community of late can, IMO, be traced directly to people abandoning the basic lens of what we are doing. Is the input comprehended by the students? Is it personalized? Does it provide high levels of repetition in unexpected contexts? There is so much to be said about everything simply in relating activities and uses of time to this lens that, if this most basic thing were done well, there would literally be no time to argue about trivialities.
How do you provide adequate repetition while maintaining student interest? The danger with repetition is that it can result in student boredom.
The danger with unexamined repetition is that it causes boredom. This is the same as English. Abuse of English in the classroom is bad. Thoughtful use of English is very beneficial.
Repetition does not mean simply repeating the same word or phrase over and over. It means providing multiple (very, very multiple) opportunities for students to process and comprehend that word or phrase within the discussion or story or whatever kind of input is being used. There are a number of techniques to do this — most of which are things teachers already do in the classroom, but may not be “turbocharging” to get the full CI bang out of. One easy example is the longtime TPRS mainstay of parallel questioning (there are probably other names for this, I’m not aware of one standardized one). Essentially you bring other characters into the discussion or story so as to have a chance to compare and contrast. So if the discussion has gotten around to where Sue, a girl in the class, has said she wants to have a pet dragon, the teacher doesn’t stop there and go on to someone else or something else, but rather expands the questioning to include others. Does Bob (another kid) want a pet dragon too? Does Famous Celebrity All the Kids Like have one? What kind of people tend to want to have pet dragons? It goes on and on and on.
It’s important to recall that any topic that is of general enough interest to be used in the CI classroom should be extensible to more than one person, even if that person gives a negative answer. It should still make some sort of connection. I don’t want a dragon, but I can certainly express that and maybe even give some reasons why not, or be asked about how I would feel if I had one, or whatever.
I have an example that might help Matthew. When I first started teaching (1980’s…yes…I’m old.) “people” were concerned that low-achieving students weren’t learning anything. At that time, tracking was the norm….so all of the low-achieving students (or those who wanted to be seen as low-achieving) were in classes together. Often, they were taught using the same methods, approaches, activities as the upper-achieving students experienced.
In order to solve the achievement problem, schools went from homogeneous grouping to heterogeneous grouping. All students of all achievement levels were then mixed together in their various classes. But again, the same approaches etc. were used. So, in many places, if not most, the change did not benefit anyone.
The “people” making the decisions were focusing their lens on only one thing: grouping. However, one (at least) of the real factors was the way in which these students processed new information and retained it. Since no one focused their lens on that issue (which was way more important than grouping), in time it became clear that heterogenous grouping was not the answer.
What was the resulting decision? Go back to homogeneous grouping of course!!! The problem was determined to be the students, not the approach.
Before we make changes, as CI teachers, it is important to make sure that we are focused on the right thing. There are a LOT of ways to get repetitions that aren’t boring at all!!!!! There are many ways to do it that sound natural, generate humor, AND keep students focused and interested.
Before tossing repetition out with the “bathwater”, it’s important to remember that it isn’t the baby that is in control of the water temperature. We are…and we can provide amazing ways to bathe our students in great language without eliminating what is helpful.
with love,
Laurie