I’ve taught a language that uses the same alphabet as English, and then cringed as, after giving in to students’ pleading to supply written material, I heard them junking all the carefully (taught and) learned sounds and replaced them with English sounds. Another good reason for not introducing written materials – especially since easily distributed recordings are so easy to make now.

Now that I’m learning a language that uses a totally different writing scheme, what you’re saying makes even more sense.

There is much discussion on several blog forums about the posting of “word lists”. High frequency verbs and conjugations seem to be the most popular choices for those “posters”. I disagree. I have found that posting the connector words is far more valuable to my students. In my classroom, there is an entire wall (called the Connector Word Wall), with every connecting word I can think of, alphabetized in the TL (large), and English (smaller, underneath, to the side).

My students use this CONSTANTLY and comment every year that is one of the MOST useful things in class. The kids vie for the Vanna White job of finding and elegantly pointing to the words when they come up in class. These are words that are ALWAYS necessary. Some of them seem easy to acquire, but most are not. My students need massive repetition embedded in pertinent context to really acquire them and use them appropriately and naturally. I don’t ever teach them outright, but notice that by the end of the year(s), they know them all. Thank you for talking about this.

I did not say that you said that comprehension should be delayed. I am contrasting the linguistic situation of a child who is a native speaker with students who are not. We need to remind ourselves (and OTHERS, like non-CI colleagues and admin!) constantly that there is a qualitative difference. That’s what makes TPRS distinct from (and far more effective than) immersion. A person could certainly not realize that he does not understand, but if we’re doing frequent comprehension checks, that student pretty much has to commit and give a meaning in response. That’s our snapshot into the brain. There could certainly be problems if one is judging only from “how they look” or by asking “do you understand?” or relying on them to stop us “if they don’t understand”, because those are all less accurate ways of judging comprehension. But immediate comprehension is crucially important, since if the student doesn’t comprehend the sentence, he can’t link it up to the meaning, and acquisition will falter.

Thanks for your answer & extended post on your blog. But please let me rectify: I did NOT state that maybe input shouldn’t be 100% comprehensible!!!!!
I did NOT propose that maybe comprehension should be delayed!!!!
Please read more carefully next time.

All I said was what I have seen happening with my son AND with my students. And I think maybe the only thing that changes for me personally is that, when a student appears to have spent some time not understanding something, I will from now on not ask him/her anymore “why didn’t you tell me before?” – because I know that maybe he or she hasn’t even realized he/she didn’t understand. Maybe because he/she has been working hard to get the meaning of the whole structure and only after some time realizes what a specific word means. Whatever.

I’m only saying that comprehension appears to be more complex than just “making the input comprehensilbe” through translating & going slow (etc.).

Thanks,
Kirstin
From the Netherlands, with love

Thinking about older students,I would venture to say that most Spanish 2 kids are still not at an intermediate level. I have my doubts about many Sp 3 kids I’ve met, too.

From the reading I have done, Dr. Krashen encourages self-selected reading at INTERMEDIATE levels–not at novice levels. (I have a couple of quotes that I have guarded carefully in my Evernote on the subject when people give me a hard time.)

I agree wholeheartedly with your stance that we need to look very carefully at how we use our time in the classroom. It is such a scarce commodity that to use it for one more non-CI activity seems so counterproductive to our stated goal of fluency and literacy in the target language.

Once again, thank you for writing this article. Your articulate expression makes the ideas easy to understand.

OT-Do you have enough people interested, yet, to offer the differentiation webinar? Looking forward to it when it happens.

with love,
Laurie

My students use it, but they never “learn” it. They first hear the language in large amounts, which puts the spoken form and its correct sound into their long-term memory. Then they see the word in Pinyin, using TOP (triple-marked tones, using color, capitals-and-small-letters and tone marks over standard Pinyin). When they see that word, it’s no different from a native speaking kid learning sight words in English. The spoken form of the word, and its sound, is already safely acquired, so there’s no sounding out based on Pinyin.

The teachers who devote a lesson (or a week, or a unit!) to “the sounds of Chinese” are IMO the ones who are producing accented students in large part, because that sort of practice encourages students to use the rules of their native language (or other languages they’ve learned literacy in previously) to handle this new writing system they’re seeing. They don’t know any Chinese words yet — there’s no language in their heads — so really, what else can we expect?

I’m not advocating Pinyin as anything other than a learner’s tool. But I do think there is considerable unfounded fear of its use as a learner’s tool. Used judiciously, it is a powerful way to provide more language to learners in a very accessible way. If you handle the reading of characters the way we do — emphasizing that all the language must be completely acquired and effortless in the spoken form prior to having the novice learner read it in characters — the use of Pinyin is really quite separate from the question of reading in characters.