[quote=“Tetsuo”]The silent period will only really be effective if the student is in a total-immersion environment. It’s generally a reaction to an entirely unfamiliar environment rather than a tool, although it is a valid method, when used right.[/quote]Not if it’s silent period as in Krashen’s use of the term. He’s famously NOT an immersion advocate, yet the concepts which surround his use of the ‘silent period’ idea are vital to the rest of his theory. By the way, the term at least in Krashen is not supposed to indicate some kind of enforced, rigid silence but rather the freedom for learners to respond using single-word answers or even some L1 until they have the confidence and capability to form phrases and sentences.
I worry that Shengmar, in his use of “lots of listening” as a method, may be trying to create a kind of immersive environment without due care to the comprehensibility of the material. While there are many questions which can be raised about Krashen’s theories, surely most teachers and language learners would agree that mere exposure to L2, with insufficient modulation of the material to enable comprehension, is at best an inefficient teaching method and at worst completely ineffective and disheartening. Rapid progress due to immersion as posited here;
[quote=“mesheel”]put yourself into a Chinese only speaking environment and you’ll learn fast[/quote]is unlikely unless the input is rendered mostly comprehensible in one way or another.
Krashen’s theories are pretty much summed up in this online book if anyone’s interested:
sdkrashen.com/SL_Acquisition_and_Learning/