Comprehensible Input is the Great Equalizer.
When I was teaching via traditional textbook methods, kids liked me but they didn’t like my class. They had zero desire to learn Spanish. And who could blame them? Conjugating verbs and memorizing vocab lists. Yawn. Who wants to do that? BOR-ING.
No stories to engage them, no real context to make learning the language worth their time. Just vocab and grammar, grammar, grammar. Reading and understanding paragraphs was a chore, let alone an entire novel.
Sure, there were a few grammar nerds (like me!) who liked that. They actually found comfort in knowing they could dissect a word and get it right. It was clear cut. No mess. But that’s not what language is. Communication is messy. We don’t always get it right. We don’t always mean what we say and we don’t always say what we mean. There is so much negotiation that happens in real communication, and you just can’t do it with learning about a language.
The old me was proud when I saw my students studying and learning long lists of vocabulary words. I was proud that I could teach my students the preterite, the imperfect and a few direct and indirect object pronouns. That was progress! If they could spit those out at me at the end of the year by filling in few blanks, conjugating a few verbs, well, that made them superstars! And by extension, I was too because I had taught them to do that. Yay me.
But, then at the beginning of the following year, I had to spend a full 9 weeks reviewing what we had covered the year before. Seriously. Nine whole weeks. So, was I really that superstar teacher if they hadn’t retained what I taught? If I was honest with myself the answer is a resounding NO. It was boring. And nobody was interested in learning that way.
Then I went to a TPRS workshop in Indianapolis, Indiana. I’m not kidding when I say that it was career altering. It opened my eyes to the world of input. And not just input, but comprehensible input, which is very simply the art of making everything you say and do 100% understandable to the students in your classroom. And not just the ones who love the grammar (let’s face it, they are going to get it anyway) – but EVERYONE.
In TPRS you specifically teach to the “barometer student” – that student who maybe isn’t processing everything you say quickly, but who is trying to process what you say. And you know what happens? Your classroom suddenly becomes equalized. Suddenly, students who were tuned out before are paying attention. Students who would not have survived the Spanish-2-preterite-vs.-imperfect are staying until Spanish 4.
Why? How does that happen? Why are those students staying?
I’ll tell you why and how – because they can understand and use it. From day one, they are able to go home and use words in a second language that they never could do when I taught from a textbook. They are not afraid to use their Spanish in public. They become engaged and interested in the culture your classroom provides. they can not only read paragraphs, but they can complete entire novels. And understand every word! They are able to make connections between Spanish and other content areas. Students see the value in the time they spend in your class. They become excited! And suddenly, students who would have struggled before, are doing it. And they are proud. So, they stay and they build on what they acquired the year before.
And speaking of the year before… remember that 9 whole weeks of review that I, and likely you, had to wade through before moving to new material? No longer necessary! In fact, I had planned about three weeks of review materials at the beginning of this school year but it became clear very quickly that students hadn’t lost anything over the summer. They had retained almost everything from the previous year. We sprinted through that review material in about THREE DAYS. Yes, three.
Why? Because CI is the Great Equalizer.
