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Tools or trust: what does a CI-newbie need?

When I started to learn Spanish (or English, for that matter), I first learned simple things. Simple ways to ask directions, find products in a supermarket or talk about where I'm from. I craved to be able to say things with more nuances, but at that time, I couldn't even understand the nuances in other peoples' utterances yet.


I started to read books, most of them too difficult for me. I would understand the words (or look them up), but not get the meaning of the way things were put. I remember many instances where I suddenly realized that X actually meant Y, and found more subtle, more nuanced ways to say what I wanted to express.


It still happens to me often, and sometimes, these newly discovered nuances seem so important to me, that I feel tempted to teach them to my students. Sometimes, I might even try. But my students are not ready yet. They are still acquiring basic, down-to-earth language, and will need to read and hear much, much, much more before they will start to get a 'feel' for the deeper layers of the language. The best thing I can do is offer them lots of language, especially the language that is 'hard to get', like the subjunctive. They will need to hear that many times before they can start to feel what meaning a subjunctive adds to a sentence.


Every now and then I will hint at the beauty and depth of the language, hoping that they will become curious enough to continue acquiring and discovering for themselves. And to accept that some will do so, and many will not.


When a teacher starts with TPRS or CI, after a training, a workshop or just after reading one of the TPRS-books, s/he will think: "delivering CI is all about establishing meaning and circling". After a year or so, s/he may think: "no, it's not about circling, it's just about asking good questions". Later on, s/he will realise: "How didn't I see this before, it's not about asking questions, it's about interacting with the students." And the next insight may be that it is not just about interacting with the students, but about really connecting to the students. And so on and so on. The more experience a TPRS teacher has, the deeper the levels of insight will be about "what it is all about".


When an experienced TPRS teacher is also a teacher trainer, however, there is a risk that s/he will think that their personal newest insight in "what TPRS really is about" is also the way newbies should be trained. But newbies are not ready for that level yet. Even those of us who started with TPRS feeling intuitively that "this is it!", and who felt comfortable teaching with TPRS almost right from the beginning, have needed years of experience to find deeper levels of insight.


It is my firm conviction (i'm not saying it's true, but it is what I believe) that newbies need to learn the basics, both skills and knowledge, before they can start working towards a deeper level of insight and a deeper level of skill.  Telling a teacher that they need to 'just talk to the kids', when this teacher has no idea of how many repetitions are needed or how to establish meaning or how slow s/he needs to speak, may lead to a very discouraging result.


Don't get me wrong: I do not mean to say that we can't say to a newbie 'just talk to the kids', because hearing deeper levels of insight is like hearing the subjunctive: you need to hear it many, many times before it starts to sink in. However, it will only sink in if they have the proper tools to make CI work in the first place.


So... tools or trust? A newbie needs both! 


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by Kirstin Plante

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