A question for IronLady- can you give me a run-down of a typical two hour class? I’m hearing ‘input’ a lot but god I think if I talked non-stop for two hours my head would freaking explode. Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean by input. I want to understand- it sounds like you know what you’re talking about.[/quote]
The short answer (the one that doesn’t involve a three-day workshop, that is) is that first, two hours is a long class (I don’t care WHAT you’re teaching or how passionately your students care about it in the first place!). Usually we’re dealing with 45 or 90 minute slots in the US. But anyway – that just means you should sort of divide up the activities, maybe use some physical movement in between to give “brain breaks” and sort of reset their attention.
CI-based instruction feels that spoken input and reading input are both important and valuable for acquisition. So, basically, for a 120 minute class, I might start out with some sort of opener (like having set questions for a number of students: the date, weather, fashion report, news item of the day in 10 words or less, whatever). This really isn’t an input activity, BUT it does give a good way to get through many sets of words (colors, patterns, months, days of the week, weather, all that stuff) that doesn’t always come up in class otherwise, and it doesn’t take long. Plus – this way when the students come in, they know what to start doing right away, which maximizes your input time later on.
For the actual input, I’d decide on an item for the day, and then start asking questions using it. Question a student, check comprehension, repeat the answer, question another student about the answer, repeat the answer, check comprehension, ask a follow-up question, check comprehension, ask another student about the answer, [for 2nd and later students] compare/contrast with answer from previous student(s). This gets repeated until someone gives an answer that seems “story-worthy” – you’ll know because you’ll get a vivid mental image all of the sudden just based on that one sentence or answer or idea.
It’s possible the whole class can go by and there never is a story-worthy answer. That’s okay. They’re still getting input, and they’re still listening because you’re giving a quiz at the end of X minutes based on what’s been said. That holds them accountable for trying to understand. You also constantly ask comprehension questions or ask them to translate into Chinese to make sure they do understand everything. If anyone does not understand everything, you need to make sure they do. Usually that means you’re going too fast and/or adding in words that are “out of bounds” (not solidly known by the class or in the day’s item, which is on the board right in front of them in English and Chinese all the time.)
If you get a story-idea type answer (and part of the art of TPRS-style CI is training your students to provide the sorts of answers that will make good stories, even if they are egregious lies), you just fish for a detail, repeat the answer, ‘circle’ the new statement by asking randomized repeated questions about it, check comprehension, fish for an additional detail or event, ‘circle’ that…etc. You know your students, to know how long you can keep their attention and keep them engaged in this. Since they have ownership of the story or the conversation, and it’s about them, not someone in a book, it tends to be easier to keep them on board for longer periods of time. It’s not as though they are simply trying to listen to English for 40 minutes straight, because you are really giving them micro-bites of English and always checking that they understood bite 1 before feeding them bite 2. Lots of repetition as well, and teach to the eyes so that you know if they are not understanding even though they do not admit it.
If you are going as slowly as they need – this will take more time than you think. Teachers new to CI always go way too fast. Teachers experienced with CI always go too fast then slow down then go too fast again. ALL of us need to slow down a huge amount in our delivery.
OK, you’ve finished the little episode up – now give a really simple T/F quiz on it, maybe just 5 questions (be sure to write down the answers as you do, it’s easy to forget and then you’re SOL when grading it!).
For the remainder of the class, you would do input through reading. It’s a little tougher on the block or with 120 minute classes, since you can’t say “see you tomorrow” and have a reading ready to go then. But you can manage. Either give them a prepared reading from the previous class period’s oral input (write out the story they told, a similar story with changed details but using the same structures, or a different story but using the target item) or use a graded reader. ESL teachers are fortunate in that there’s a lot available. There are a lot of techniques you can use in delivering input through reading: SSR (independent reading), class reading, teacher reads and class/student translates, teacher reads and asks circling questions about the reading, teacher reads and asks compare/contrast questions about students in the class as compared to the characters in the reading.
Break up the 120 minutes into more manageable, smaller “periods” with physical movement of some sort: Simon Says or other movement games. There are lots of “brain break” things that aren’t specifically language teaching related that can be used for this. It’s easy enough to “fill” 120 minutes with CI, but it’s harder to keep folks awake for it – especially if you’re teaching sleep-deprived students in a required general studies class.
I could go on for days, but that’s a workshop. 
I hope this gives you an idea.
[quote]Also- can anybody give me any tips on good reading materials for high-intermediate to advanced students? Here’s the problem I’m running into- My students are reading magazines/newspaper articles, and they can understand them pretty well. But then they turn around and try to WRITE IN THE SAME STYLE which leads to garbled sentences. Can anyone point me to a high-quality, interesting publication that won’t lead my students astray when they try to mimic writing?
