If there is one piece of advice I could give to a CI newbie, it is SLOW DOWN.
I’ve been reminded of this recently in my own classes. Due to a teacher leaving at the end of first semester, several of us have had to scramble to cover their classes. That means I have a whole new crop of level 2 students to introduce to CI mid-year. Mind you, this is not a bad thing in my opinion. I mean, I get to deliver more CI to more kids! All of them will eventually end up with me in the upper levels, anyway, so this is a win-win situation. Less work in the future!
However, it has been an excellent reminder that I need to GO SLOWLY. This is not a race. Acquisition doesn’t follow a pattern. I can’t rush them through the basics. We can only go at the pace we can go.
Why go slowly?
1. Well, first of all, their ears can’t hear as fast as you can talk. There is so much involved with hearing:
- listening for distinct sounds
- hearing spaces between those sounds
- making meaning of those sounds
- making decisions about what to do with those sounds
2. If your students come from an environment where they previously memorized lists of words, you need to remember that doesn’t mean they can hear those words.
Seeing them on paper doesn’t mean they can hear them.
3. Hearing a word doesn’t mean you can understand it. I hear songs in English all the time that I have to listen very closely to, sometimes multiple times, to catch and understand all the words.
4. If they don’t understand you, YOU AREN’T DELIVERING CI.
I’m going to type that again, just to make sure you’re paying attention:
IF THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU,
YOU AREN’T DELIVERING CI!
I know going slowly works because students recognize the value. Recently, one of my new, amazing students reported to their mom (who kindly told me) that they finally “got Spanish.” This student said that we use so much Spanish in class but that they understand because I go really, really, slowly. And I repeat what I’m saying so they have time to process it. (I also pause, point to words, and act!)
If you go slowly in the beginning – and sometimes the speed is so slow it’s painful for us teachers – they will eventually start to process faster and faster. By the time they reach level 4, you won’t feel like you are going slowly at all. And when these now super-fast processors of language witness a lower-level class, they often ask if we went that slowly when they were in levels one and two. When I tell them that yes, we did in fact go that slowly, they always report that it sure didn’t SEEM like it (because their brains were busy processing language!).
It really works, people!
Yesterday I had a nice conversation with a student who graduated last year. I always talk to my students in Spanish out in public so they have a chance to show off what they can do to their friends and family. I struck up a conversation with him. Initially, he struggled a bit, had to search for words. But pretty quickly, he was up and running as his friends stared at him wide-eyed. He told me how surprised he was that it came back to him so rapidly. I’m not surprised at all, because….
THAT my friends, is the power of CI!