ironlady, if I wanted to really sink my teeth in some of this “theory” stuff, where would be a good first place to look? Any books, journals, articles, or websites you could refer me to? Hell, why not make a comprehensive thread and get it stickied. Everything you write is so interesting, but my measly 100 hour TESOL course only scratched the surface.
dash: For Krashen’s stuff, go to his website. The top left corner of this page has books you can download for free. Below that are articles.
ironlady: I forwarded a reply I got from above about you doing the workshop in Taidong. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already got it though.
Is Krashen the only theorist worth reading? There must be more.
Well, what would you like to know more about?
Just teaching theory?
Teaching theory would be great.
For practical means of putting CI theory into use, I’d go with Susan Gross. If you want a step-by-step guide to doing this in your classroom (realizing that the book was written with a US middle or high school classroom in mind) then Ben Slavic has a couple of things out that would be of use. They do not go far into the theory – rather, they assume that the reader believes that massive CI leads to acquisition, that the action research shows that we want output but not forced output or pattern drills, and that the reader has some degree of freedom to implement these things in his classroom (and there’s the rub, quite often). But they are very practical and many teachers new to TPRS find them useful.
There has not been much written in the literature about this approach, probably because most of the teachers implementing it are at the secondary level. Those people typically do not write research, or have the time or money to do so. I offered a “Research designs you can manage in a real school setting” session at NTPRS one year and it was, ahem, sparsely attended. It would be good to have more real research out there both for credibility purposes (for the citation-wavers) and for the pure reason of finding out what really works in multiple settings.
The biggest free resource is the Yahoo groups “moreTPRS” list but beware that there are so many subscribers that not all of them are knowledgeable about what they write about. Of late there have been a lot of elementary teachers writing in and suggesting things that are just not CI-based, but people are pretty polite over there and no one has come out and said “Come on, take it over to FL-TEACH!” (that’s the “traditional” teaching listserv – and that one gets very heated at times.) Most of the really big names in TPRS are on there frequently, as well as many experienced people whose opinions are worth listening to in that regard.
I’ve been beating around the bush, but I’m finally going to get the Ben Slavic DVDs. I’ll probably order them today. After I get them and watch them (I believe they’re seven hours’ worth!), I’ll post a review here, if people are interested.
ironlady: I would be very interested in trying to set a study up here, at least just at my school (though if I could get some other teachers on board from the schools in Taidong City it would be great), and I’ve thought about grabbing the bull by the horns and doing this myself. I did a major in psychology, so I know how I would go about setting up an experiment.
The two really big problems though are the samples and the amount of contact time. For the former, if we were talking about running a control group and an experimental group, we’re talking about very small numbers. My school has somewhere in the vicinity of 140 students. The two current 7th grade classes, for instance, have 27 and 19 students respectively. They’re also taught by two different Taiwanese teachers. I could possibly talk to my supervisor to try to deal with the latter issue, but we’d still be talking about a very small experiment and we might not be able to really cancel out any difference between the two classes. For instance, the class of 27 has 16 girls, but the class of 19 only has four. Some of the students have attended buxibans, and others haven’t. Also, there are at least three elementary schools that act as feeder schools to this junior high school. Their levels of English and prior experiences with it are all over the place. Obviously, we’d pre-test them in some way to try to establish a baseline, but just trying to set up the two groups so that they had roughly similar students would be an absolute nightmare, especially because of scheduling issues (I couldn’t just grab a few extra girls from one class and move them into the other class’ English lesson because then they would miss their Chinese or mathematics lesson or whatever they have at that time).
With regard to the amount of content, I basically get the students less than once per week (because there are events throughout the year that lead to missed/cancelled classes). So, out of a possible 40 weeks of instruction, I probably end up with closer to 35, maybe not even that. I theoretically have them for a 45 minute lesson, but both of the 7th grade classes are scheduled right after the daily school sweeping, and you know I have those constant issues with their homeroom teachers (one in particular) sending them to me late. By the time I actually get everyone in the classroom and the lesson really underway, I’m lucky if I have 30-35 minutes for a class. That means that the kids get 35 lessons x 35/60 hours = 20.42 hours of teaching from me per year. My current 7th grade class will have received approximately 61.25 hours of teaching (not all of which is optimal input) from me by the time they graduate in just over two years from now.
Even if I had started a study like this on my current fourth grade class (and there’s only one class at every grade level at my elementary school, so I’d have to do it across two schools!), and run it all the way until the end of ninth grade (assuming all the kids, or enough of them, were to come to my junior high school), I’d be looking at 122.5 hours of teaching over six years (and actually, the elementary classes miss way more lessons with me and I’m lucky if I will see them more than 28 times this year). Is that even enough contact time to make it worth conducting such a study? I couldn’t really rely on getting the Taiwanese teachers involved because they have to spend virtually all of their time covering the textbook and teaching to the test.
[quote=“ironlady”]
There are ways to incorporate CI techniques into a “traditional” classroom (assuming the CT doesn’t go nuts about it – which is another problem). I’ll be talking about those when I present in Taiwan in Oct-Nov. because while I would like teachers to be able to do TPRS and full-on CI instruction, unless those teachers are opening up their own school, or working at a very innovative place, it’s unlikely they would be able to use TPRS in an existing Taiwanese program. That’s just the reality of it. However, the more true acquisition can be insinuated into grammar-heavy test prep classes, the better for the long-term results.[/quote]
I think it’s a good idea. Having done some TPRS in one class, I’m finding that I want a response to everything I say in other classes, and am starting to realize that my students in fact listen to what I’m saying a lot less than I’d like to think 
I like this concept a lot and am starting to work with it elsewhere: “only three things you can do, answer, guess, or tell me you don’t understand.”
[quote=“Tempo Gain”]. . . am starting to realize that my students in fact listen to what I’m saying a lot less than I’d like to think [/quote] I know the feeling. 
Studies would be great…my own personal view, though, is that if it’s impossible to set up a solid one that really controls all the variables that could possibly be controlled, there’s no point in doing it. Poorly-designed (even poorly-designed-not-on-purpose) studies are only ammunition for the naysayers (and IMO this is becoming an issue in TPRS circles, but I am pretty much a lone voice crying out against such things. Everyone is so eager to have a study that shows that TPRS is better than traditional teaching that they’re willing to overlook the degree of rigor involved – and again IMO it is not possible to design such a head-to-head study and have it stand up to close scrutiny.)
It is possible to test whether there is significant improvement in one thing or another among a group of students being taught using CI methods, or to take your students and giving one class CI input and the other traditional instruction for your (huge chunk of 
) 20 hours of instruction. (There’s nothing like feeling like you ought to be able to make a difference and then figuring out how little time you truly have to do that. Sort of a losing battle from the start, no matter how great a teacher you are.)
Personally I support the first method. There are so many people teaching “traditionally” these days, and so many departments and programs are set up that way (most, in fact) that IMO solid evidence that this crazy new CI stuff works “as well or better” is okay for now. What most of us are fighting for is the academic freedom to use this method, and that often involves concessions from the department on those periodic (chapter) assessments, since CI is not intended for summative assessments of that frequency and specificity within the period of time allotted for the course. Even in departments where there is “freedom” to teach as one likes, if you’re tied to a chapter assessment every three weeks, there is no way you can really implement TPRS unless it truly doesn’t matter what those grades are. (Of course, it would be interesting to “force” the traditional teachers to give TPRS-friendly assessments, aka “proficiency tests”, periodically, but usually they don’t have to budge, just by force of sheer numbers. And they’re not easy to grade like multiple-choice grammar questions are.)
ironlady: I think a bad study is worse than no study.
In my situation, I really do exist entirely outside of what everyone else is doing. I have complete control over what I do in my classes. I don’t have to follow the textbooks and I don’t have to assess the students. That’s why I think there’s some sort of opportunity here, even if it’s just a small one (because of the low number of contact hours). That’s why I figure that even if I can’t get anyone else on board with learning and trying new things, I’ll do it all by myself if necessary. Hence, that’s why I’ve ordered the Ben Slavic DVDs, why I want to meet up with you, etc. (I know you and I have already talked about this, but I’m writing it for everyone else on the forum.) Maybe then if I set that example and appear to be making progress, others will become more open. That’s all I can do, plus try to keep myself sane.
Next semester, I’ve also discussed with my supervisor if I can do other things for “English Club” rather than just putting on more plays (which I don’t think are that effective, actually). Such options I’ve proposed include (all in English): teaching guitar, teaching martial arts, (more) cooking classes (I already run these for my special ed. students), having a garden, or outdoor education (and this year we’re trying to organise a summer camp (as in real camping and hiking) to Taroko Gorge (and if we get enough people, we can get a ranger to accompany us and talk about the flora and fauna, history, etc. in English). Basically, trying to make it real, and not in that crap English Village “real” way.
[color=#0040FF]Soap operas are pretty bad everywhere in the world?
I don’t know that that’s true. I lived 7 years in Mexico and found them to be quite engrossing. Also, some of the US viewership must agree with me because Mexican soap operas for several years now have been purchased, translated and shown on US TV. In this genre, many Mexicans feel that the some of the very best soaps are Brazilian, since many of those soaps are bought, translated into Spanish and shown on Mexican TV.
To each his own. Chacun a son gout.[/color]
I understand that CI has been shown in some studies to foster better reading comprehension than traditional methods. However, how does it fare in terms of more active forms of EFL use, such as public speaking, debating, chatting etc?
Most CI taught students are far more willing to open their mouths, because when they do the language ‘falls out’, rather than it being a case of them having to apply rules and think about what to say and how to say it. This will give better results on public speaking or chats that are “judged” by a native speaker, but as for Taiwan’s version of public speaking, I can’t say. From what I’ve observed, a certain (rather high) amount of formulaic predictability is necessary to win in those competitions, and CI wouldn’t foster that in particular. It shouldn’t be difficult to get students to use the handful of “must-include” quotations, though. (I am scarred for life after having sat through a MOFA speech contest among their diplomatic students. There were 50 entrants (it was required for all) and 43 of them used the “I have a dream” quote.)
Thanks! Any suggestions on simple, effective CI methods for Business English training situations? Also, do you believe that "learning"has any constructive role in the language class, combined with CI? For example, CI for acquiring language and then more traditional methods for learning useful language for presentations, for example.
CI (in my view, at least) is for acquisition. Acquisition means the unconscious mastery of the structure of the language – so that the student can automatically, without thought, use all the tenses, genders, number, and all that other icky grammatical stuff, and do it correctly, getting his point across. Learning is for people who have already acquired the language, though we do use some learning (grammatical pop-ups and so on) to jumpstart the CI. I’d focus on acquisition but be a little bit sneaky about it. 
The problem with large groups (like “Taiwanese students”) who have been taught from Day 1 using mostly “learning” instead of acquisition is that they are false beginners in terms of acquisition, but they don’t feel like beginners. They have acquired some language – the brain is pretty good at getting its way. They know some words (which may or may not be “correct” from the native speaker’s perspective – again, it depends on where they’re getting that input. Can’t blame them for thinking “welcome” is spelled with two “Ls” when that’s the input they get every day on the street, for example!
So I would assume that business students are older, and are thus false beginners in terms of actually acquiring English, though they will know quite a bit of English. They probably still need to acquire a lot of structure to the point of automaticity (and to build fluency and eliminate the halting speech that goes with applying rules on the fly), BUT they will need to be “tricked” into getting the input they need, because they believe they already know it. So, what I would do is use CI based instruction, but make sure that the topics are business-related and contain enough business language to keep them feeling like they’re learning new things.
All CI instruction consists simply of getting students to listen to and read correct language at their level. The trick is when it has to be disguised. I love tutoring Chinese one-on-one because all the students are motivated – very little trickery required most of the time, they will listen no matter how lame the content of our lesson ends up being.
Maybe you could create a set of characters with the class – Bob Businessman and Kathy Careerwoman, or something. Make it a semester- or class-long project. Then you can jointly create (through repeated questioning – good CI there) the world in which these characters live (and compare and contrast it with the Taiwan reality they know), the business(es) where they work or aspire to work, and have them move through all sorts of business-related events. Tell the story of what Bob does the day he goes to Formosa Trash Bags Inc. for his big interview to become VP of Drawstring Technologies. If you get in enough repetition, they will actually be acquiring the structure of the language. The fast processors and those who have picked up more English in the past will (hopefully) get drawn into the details and the specific vocabulary they can write down and memorize. Just assume that you have some weak students who will ONLY get the basic items and structure of English, and some stronger ones who will get that plus many of the business-related words you may be throwing out as funny details in the story. Remember too you can put in “realer” words as contrast – “Is Bob interviewing to be VP of Drawstring Technologies or VP of Marketing?” You could go on for years with this sort of scenario.
Remember to keep a list of a) the new items you’re really pounding in class (high reps, based on what you find to be the most pressing lacks of the class in terms of English structure) and b) the “optional” items and details that come up. Then you can use these for assessments and to write readings for them.
Taiwanese (older) students may be resistant to this if they perceive it as being just making up funny stories. Maybe you can present it as a weird sort of role-play. I think most of them are familiar with role-play and would probably have a positive impression of its utility. Also, be ready with a pile of details in case you get the deer-in-the-headlights look when you ask an open-ended question, or get the dreaded list of Predictable Responses. It will take some time to get them to realize what the TPRS game is – providing interesting responses.
Just some suggestions off the top of my head. It’s an interesting topic to think about. Almost makes me want to teach English again (and that’s going some!)
Thanks! 