Teaching with Comprehensible Input and wondering if students are listening when they look disengaged is a universal language teacher experience.

Take the CI Proficiency Quiz to assess where you are in your CI journey: https://imim.us/ciquiz.

In this episode of Comprehend THIS!, we talk about blank stares, sneaky signs of comprehension, and why students don’t need to look engaged to be acquiring language — with real classroom stories, humor, and teacher honesty.

Looking for ready-to-use CI resources that actually work? Check out the CI Survival Kit: https://imim.us/kit.

comprehensible input, language teaching podcast, CI teaching strategies, student engagement myths, world language teaching, CI classroom, language teacher podcast, trust the process teaching, comprehension based instruction, teacher humor

Hosts:

1. Scott Benedict - https://www.instagram.com/immediateimmersion
2. Darcy Chase - https://www.instagram.com/@darcychase207
3. Pamela Parks - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXHEK-1ra4IyzO5avtqEkmQ

Resources & Links:

1. Assessment Academy - https://imim.us/academy
2. CI Survival Kit - https://imim.us/kit

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Host: Scott Benedict — Immediate Immersion

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Hello everybody and welcome to season 3!

Glad to have you all

here with us this morning!

Okay, let's be honest.

Have you ever looked out at your class

and thought, "Wow, I am

speaking fluent Spanish

or French or German or Mandarin to a room

full of mashed potatoes."

Today's episode is called "They're Not

Listening, Or Are They?"

Because if you teach with comprehensible

input long enough, you

eventually learn that blank

stares don't actually mean blank brains.

I'm hanging out with Darcy Chase and

Pamela Sparks, and

together we're unpacking the

sneaky signs of real comprehension, the

lies our teacher brains

tell us mid-lesson, and

how to tell the difference between their

lost and their processing life champs.

Darcy brings 20 plus years of classroom

experience, a deep CI lens shaped by

conferences, institutes

and mentorship, and the perspective of

teaching high school French in rural

Maine, after working

with learners from preschool to adults.

And Pamela comes in hot with a background

as a professional

translator on over 150 film

and TV projects, now channeling that real

world language

expertise into teaching Spanish

and French and Japanese

at the high school level.

So if you've ever slowed down, repeated

yourself, or re-explained

something that absolutely

did not need re-explaining because the

vibes fell off, yeah, this one's for you.

Spoiler alert, sometimes the best move is

to stop panicking and just keep talking.

And we'll be right back

after these short messages.

And if my buttons will work.

Ever feel like you're clinging to the

edge of your teacher

planner, just hoping today's

lesson magically appears?

Enter the CI Survival Kit, a monthly

membership made for

teachers who love comprehensible

input, but also love not reinventing the

wheel every Sunday night.

Each month you get fresh, ready to use

lessons, time saving

tools, and just enough structure

to keep your teaching life together.

No stress, no guilt, just monthly help

from someone who gets it.

Sign up at mm.us.us.

Let the Survival Kit do

the heavy lifting for once.

Welcome to Comprehend This, Real Talk for

Real Language Teachers.

No drills, no dry theory, just honest

stories, practical ideas,

and a reminder you're not

alone in the CI trenches.

Let's dive in.

And we're live.

Welcome everybody.

How's everybody doing?

Hello.

Thank you so much for

having us here today.

Very excited to be here.

We're so welcome.

Glad to have you both.

Darcy, let's start with you for a second.

Is there anything you'd like to know us,

like us to know about

you that I didn't mention

in the intro?

I think just one thing that I've learned

over the years is

that you don't have to be

a native speaker in order

to be an effective teacher.

And that's something I didn't really know

as a young woman just choosing my career.

I didn't start out as a French teacher

because when I was really

young, I thought, "Well,

I'm not a native speaker.

How could I possibly be a

good teacher of French?"

And I've learned over the years that

native speakers are not

necessarily good teachers.

Often they're not very good.

So I sort of came at teaching French a

little bit sideways.

I started as a regular ed teacher and

then moved into ESL and

then finally came back

to my first love, which was French.

So I've been a teacher for over 20 years,

but just teaching

French, I think I'm about

seven years in and probably six of those

I've been focusing on CI.

Sorry, what did you teach before EL?

You were a gen ed teacher.

What were you teaching first?

I taught English, I taught in language

arts, social studies, math.

Even though my major in college was

linguistics, I sort of, I

don't know, I had a little side

side gig there for a while.

And then I came back to language

teaching, which I really, that was what I

really wanted to do.

Awesome.

You brought up a couple of point I'll

talk about in a minute because you talk

about native speakers

and I have my little

perspective on that as well.

What about you, Pamela?

Well, I'm going to dive right into the

native speaker thing

because that I think is such a

common misconception.

I work with a few international

professional learning communities like

the Duolingo Educators

Network and a couple of others like that.

And I'm always coaching people who kind

of fall into the job

because, oh, I'm a native speaker

and so I got hired and I

don't know how to teach.

There is a lot of puzzle solving that

goes on with teaching.

You have to know how am I going to

present this information?

How am I going to

present it in a different way?

This student's missing something.

What am I going to do for this student?

This student's ready to move on.

What am I going to do for this student?

There are so many moving

pieces that fit together.

And you think about the

students who come to you.

A lot of people always come to us and

they have never thought

about speaking English.

They're a native

English speaker in our class.

They haven't thought about speaking

English since they were

two years old and they said,

"I got two feet and

everybody laughed at them."

And now they don't

think about it anymore.

And so if you're someone who hasn't

thought about the

language acquisition process,

how are you going to convey that to 35

little faces in front of you?

So I am 100 million

percent on board with you.

Just because you're a native speaker does

not mean you have the qualifications.

Right.

Even something as simple as going slow

and repeating things.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And I'll kind of add on to that.

That here's my thing

with native speakers.

I never liked, no offense to native

speakers, but I never liked having a

native speaker as a teacher.

And it wasn't because of their skills.

Obviously they had much better skills

than I could ever hope to have.

But the problem was I'm a Y kid.

And I would always ask,

"Why? Why does it do this?

And the answer that they would give me

was the same answer that I

would give an English speaker.

That's just the way it is.

I don't know why it does it.

Why does go go to went?

Who the hell knows?

It's just, I can't explain it.

But as a learned

person, we learn these things.

We learn why the things happen.

And so if when a kid asks

me, "Why does this do that?"

I can explain.

Like I can explain, what's coming up in

my classrooms now is the change the Z to

a C before when you're making a plural.

Well, I tell them it's a spelling rule.

Has nothing to do with plurals because

the textbook always teaches it in pieces.

It says, "Here it is and how it does it

in verbs when the verbs come up.

Here's how it comes when

it does it with plurals."

But it's a spelling rule in Spanish.

You cannot have a Z before an I or an E.

It must change to C.

Always, always, always.

And in Spanish, there are spelling rules.

There are no exceptions.

Once you have a spelling

rule, it's a spelling rule.

So any word where a Z would come before

an I or an E, like, why do we spell Zebra

with a C in Spanish?

Because you can't have a Z before an E or

an I, it must be a C.

So I could explain that where a native

speaker would say to me, "I don't know.

That's just the way it is."

Like, I can't explain why our Y goes to

an I E before S when

we pluralize in English.

So that's my one beef.

My second one is, like you said, they

don't know how to teach it.

I remember when I first started teaching,

my neighbor was a Chilean.

She was from Chile and she

was going, the book says,

"I have to teach an AR

and an ER and an IR verb.

I don't know what those are

and I'm a native speaker."

I'm like, "Well, have you noticed that

like 75% of all verbs end in AR and

another like 15 to 20%

are in ER and then the

last five to 10% are IR?"

Well, I never thought

of that, but I guess.

And so we have these constructs that we

do as a non-native

speaker to make it easier to

comprehend or sometimes complicate things

that shouldn't be complicated.

And we can work with those kinds of

things where native speakers

haven't had to deal with that.

So I think they have an advantage in the

language fluency part,

but in the explaining the grammar and the

whys and the where tos of things,

they lack behind us.

So we compliment each other really well.

Because I know when I started speaking

Spanish, my major was German.

And so my Spanish was not as

fluent as it is now speaking.

I could read it, I

could write it, no problem.

But using it orally, but teaching with CI

made my oral

proficiency skyrocket for doing it

for 25 years.

You get that proficiency

that you didn't have before.

So I agree with everything

you both have said about that.

But it's a key idea because a lot of

people think that I can't do this

because my language

ability isn't this high.

It might only be intermediate low or

sometimes in the middle school sectors,

they say, oh, you've

got a minor in French.

We need you to teach our French program.

And you're like, what?

And then you might only be

at the novice high level,

but you can still do it and you can

develop your skills.

So I think, as you said, there's the

accidentalness of it.

And the worryness of not being a native

speaker should not be a hindrance to it.

I do want to say, first of all, hashtag

not all native speakers

because there are plenty

of really good native speaker teachers.

I mean, I taught English, you know, and

so I can pick English

apart, you know, but

you bring up a really good point here

because I don't know if

you guys remember taking

the AC TFL test to

get your certification.

That is a really high bar.

And I am coaching a lot of people.

I mean, I remember my class of cohorts,

half of them did not pass the test.

And in a world where we're short on

teachers and we're

short on good teachers,

that AC TFL test is often a career killer

I have seen because they're

looking for native speaker

fluency, not can you explain the concept?

Can you slow down like Darcy was saying?

Can you say it a different way?

Can you circumlocate?

Can you teach the students to

circumlocate and communicate?

They're not looking for that.

They're looking for I remember when I

took it in Japanese,

I memorized all the I was

like, this is gonna be hard.

So I memorized a bunch of terminology for

the theory of relativity.

I can't explain the theory of relativity

in English, but they

thought that I could in Japanese.

So that's the only way I got through it

in my 20s, you know?

But I think this is a real problem that

the world doesn't recognize the skills

involved in teaching.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's an art and it doesn't matter if

we're teaching language,

if we're teaching math,

if we're teaching history, there is

classroom management

that you have to learn.

There is a bunch of logistical stuff.

How are you going to

arrange your classroom?

There's so much involved

in the art of teaching.

And this is so I have to go ahead Darcy.

I was just gonna say I had a professor in

my education program once said,

remember, you don't actually teach the

content area, you teach students.

Always remember that.

And so I do have to remind myself like,

okay, I'm all about this French stuff,

but I need to look at this kid in front

of me and change what I'm

doing based on what they need.

That is such a true statement.

And you brought up the college.

So I was gonna say not having teaching

skills is so apparent in

college because they don't

require them to learn how to

teach or go through education.

So there are some, like you said, there

are some excellent

college professors out there,

but there are some who just know how to

talk and that's all they know how to do.

And absolutely.

And they're professors.

And I love this.

We don't teach content.

We teach students.

It is so true.

And I'll give you an example from a math

teacher's perspective.

I'm not a math teacher.

I'm allergic to math,

desperately allergic to math.

But he was like, I'm supposed to start

here for ninth grade algebra.

This is where I'm supposed to start.

But I have kids from like six different

feeder schools coming in and they're all

at different skills.

If I started here where my page one is

where I'm supposed to start,

I'm going to lose half my kids in the

first month and they're

never going to catch back up.

So he goes, I've got

to start where they are.

I've got to teach the

kids in front of me.

And that's why I'm not

a fan of pacing guides.

And you know, where teachers go at the

copy room, what page are you on?

What chapter are you on in the book?

Because that's not important.

It's not important.

I'm on chapter six.

If I've left half my class behind,

they're still in chapter two and they

don't know anything beyond

that at this point.

So we got to teach

the kids in front of us.

And I think that's so important.

Yes, we have a curriculum.

But it doesn't matter if we cover the

curriculum, if none of our

kids acquire it or learn it.

So we have to teach

the kids in front of us.

And that's why I'm always on

the advocate of less is more.

I base my curriculum off verbs.

Yes, do I need nouns and adjectives and

adverbs and

prepositions to be able to do that?

Absolutely.

But I say if I focus on the verbs, I get

all the rest of that for free.

It has to come in because I can't teach

without a subject and a verb.

You got to have, you know,

so it all comes in for free.

If I target on verbs, then everything

else comes in instead of

piling my curriculum with

a hundred useless nouns like pushpin and

paperclip that the kids aren't really

going to have a need for.

Right.

And it's like,

Yeah, that's what I'm going to say.

And it's like, you know, the idea of, you

know, how they used

to tell you, you know,

try to be 90% in the target language or

100% in the target language.

You're doing, you know, you're a very

virtuous language

teacher if you're doing that.

But what if the kids have

no idea what you're saying?

You are in the target

language, they're somewhere else.

So it's all about the kids,

what the kids need in the moment.

And that brings us to our topic today.

How do we know that they are actually

understanding and paying attention?

Because I always introduce my classes.

I'm like, you guys, it's so important

that you let me know

when I'm going too fast,

especially because right now,

me fighter 1304 just says hi.

Hello, me fighter 1304.

My way we teach now I

teach on a semester system.

So we teach a whole school year in a

semester and I get

new kids every semester.

So it's not really good

for language teaching.

I don't recommend it.

But because of that, when I come back

after winter break, my

brain is still at the end of

last semester.

So I'm at that speed of where my kids

ended up after 20 weeks of language.

So slowing back down, it's easier in

August when I haven't spoken

the language with students in

two months.

But right after the semester, after two

weeks, I'm still in that brain.

So I tell them, you have to let me know

and I have my kids stomp on the floor.

Because if my back is turned to that

section of kids, and they've got their

hand up, I don't see

that.

Or if they've got the

timeout symbol, I don't see that.

So I like them to stomp.

But I'm like, it's so important that you

have to stomp and let me

know I'm going too fast

or too slow.

Because if I'm looking at you, this is

what you look like when you understand.

And this is what you look

like when you don't understand.

And for those of you listening on the

podcast, my face did not

change from one to the other.

Because that's what they look like.

They're just staring ahead.

And how do we know if

they really understand?

I do trick them.

I will deliberately say something they

know they won't

understand to see if they're

stomping or not.

And I've even gone into a completely

different language before to

really know that they really

couldn't see it.

They really noticed.

Because I can speak a little bit of French.

A little bit of French.

I can speak German.

I can speak Spanish.

And I can speak English.

So I'll do that just to kind of test

them, especially the

beginning to train them.

That I written it how

important that it really is.

What are your strategies for that?

Scott, can I ask you really quick?

How long are your

classes two hours long then?

Hour and a half.

How are you squeezing a year?

An hour and a half.

Okay.

We have an hour and a

half and five days a week.

So we see them for five days

a week for an hour and a half.

Okay.

But you really can't.

Our level one teaches the

first half of the level one book.

And our level two

teaches the second half.

It's not even a half.

We only cover four chapters in a year.

And it's really three and a half.

We don't really get to the

fourth one of our textbook.

So our level twos don't

even touch past tense.

Wow.

So don't get past tense into level three.

And it's too much language at once.

Because although I'm having

double the classroom time,

I can't teach two lessons because it

needs to settle and dry.

I call it like paint layers.

It's got to dry in between.

They need an overnight processing before

I can add on another

aspect of the language.

And so it's really not just an extended

one period is really all that it does.

I keep telling my students, you cannot

stay up all night and cram French

and wake up fluent in French tomorrow.

That's not the way the brain works.

Exactly.

Go instead and win the race.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I definitely have the...

I'm starting to rethink my strategy

because I do the timeout symbol.

I teach that on the

very first day of class.

I tell it's one of my rules.

It's on my wall.

It says you must tell the teacher when

she is not being clear.

Not when you don't understand because

then it kind of makes

them have to out themselves.

Like, "Oh, I don't understand.

I'm not as smart as the kid next to me."

Instead, I try to frame it like you're

giving me information

that I need to do something differently

because my job is to

make sure you understand.

You know, the kids have to meet me

halfway, of course, but I

really try to frame it like,

"Okay, when you do this, that

means slow your roll, lady."

And then I do the same thing.

I'll say something really fast that I

know they don't know.

And if nobody does

the symbol, I go, "What?

You all understood?

Who's going to translate?"

And I kind of joke around with them to

train them that they do

need to give me this symbol.

And they're getting better at it.

Absolutely.

That's a good point.

Bryce Headstrom said,

"My job is to teach.

Your job is to tell me

when I'm not doing my job."

Oh, I like that.

Yep.

And I like both those aspects because it

puts the onus on us.

Because I always tell them, too, when

it's a quiz, I go, "I

don't give you a quiz,

I'm pretty confident that 80% of you will

pass it with an 80% or

better, not just passing.

And if I get it wrong and I see that

everybody's screwed up,

that's my fault, not your fault."

So I'll tell them that way

because I do pop quizzes.

I don't ever announce my quizzes because

I don't want to know

what they studied for

because that's going to leave their

brains within 24 to 48 hours.

I want to know it's

actually stuck in their brains.

So that's why I do it that way.

But I say, "I'm not the gotcha teacher.

I'm not the teacher ghost.

I assigned two

chapters last night to read.

You guys didn't read it?

Fine.

We're having a quiz right now.

What's the point of that other than to

rub their nose in it

because the point of a quiz

is to let you know what they understood

and what they didn't understand.

If you already know they didn't do the

work, you already know

they don't understand.

There's no reason to rub

their nose in it type of thing."

That kind of teacher is a gotcha teacher.

That's not me.

And so I explain because they always get

fear and I say all

quizzes are unannounced.

They get that little fear in them because

they've only

experienced pop quizzes in the

form of the gotcha teacher when they know

you didn't do the work

and now they're trying to

get you.

So I tell them why I do it.

But I like that we're putting the onus

back on ourselves in that

comprehensible part too.

Because I know Dr. Terry Waltz, she

always says, "It's not a point to be

comprehensible because

we might be comprehensible, but if we're

not comprehended by the students,

then how comprehensible

doesn't even come into play."

Right.

So she likes to call it, you know, that

we're comprehend-- you

want to be comprehended

because you could be talking really

simple, but on the first day,

really simple might

still be too complicated.

Absolutely.

You could be using all your

strategies going really slow,

but maybe you aren't pointing to any

visuals or maybe you're not using a

little bit of English

as a bridge and, you know, you're not

doing anything to guide

them toward understanding.

And visuals are also

a very cultural thing.

I know we've always had this discussion

about the culture, about, you know,

you have a picture of a

guy eating a hamburger.

What is that mean?

And different people

interpret that differently.

Is that the verb eating?

Is that the noun hamburger?

What is it?

And I-- this is the experience I had when

I tried Rosetta Stone,

that, you know, they don't use any

English translation at all.

And so I'm watching Rosetta on Korean.

I wanted to learn Korean, so I wanted to

take a language I had no background in,

so I really was experienced in it.

And they were showing me pictures of a

guy on a horse and a plane

and a car and all of this.

And I thought-- this is the

lesson number one, by the way.

So I thought, oh, great.

I now know how to say horse and man and

car, and I'm excited.

And then I watched

the version in Spanish.

It wasn't a horse and car and man.

It was the

prepositions on top of next to--

who's number one starts with the

prepositions, number one?

Right.

And number two, out of

context, I had no idea.

So my brain for that whole lesson thought

that's what I was learning.

And I learned

something completely different,

because although they were being

comprehensible, it was

not being comprehended.

I could go on and on about Rosetta Stone

and what a horrible company they are.

And the pictures, although they're

photographically gorgeous,

they have nothing to do with anything,

and they're not cultural.

And they're sexist, and I never would

have thought I would notice this.

But for to run, they always have men

running a race, and for women jogging,

like talking in the

park while they're jogging.

So no, Rosetta Stone is just terrible.

Yeah.

I did not find that method to be helpful,

because you don't necessarily need

English translation or native--

the common language translation.

But you need some kind of context to be

able to understand what's going on.

And I do speak 100% target language on

day one, even in level one.

And I don't orally translate, because I

don't want to break the

illusion of immersion.

But I subtitle myself with a Google--

I use a Google Doc because it's much

better than my handwriting.

And I'll just type the words as I go with

the English translation.

So they'll see the English

translations on the board.

But I'm not stopping my speaking.

I'm speaking slow.

I'm taking time to write them.

I'm pointing.

But I do do that in the beginning.

So I can tell them right away, the

language of instruction

is going to be Spanish in my classroom.

But I will make it comprehended by you.

And this is one of the ways that I do it.

So it makes it really important.

You guys use any other

strategies to help to make--

not only to make it

comprehensible and comprehended,

but to know whether or

not they actually are.

I know Darcy said, like I

do, she kind of tricks them.

And she'll say things really fast to kind

of get them to see if they really are.

Letting her know when

she's not speaking quickly.

I mean, speaking slowly enough or

speaking comprehensible enough for them.

But what are some other

strategies that you guys implement?

Well--

Go ahead.

As a language teacher, we are constantly,

constantly, formatively assessing, right?

I mean, we're going to have a story for

maybe five, 10 minutes.

And then we need to make sure the

students understand.

During the story, we've got our barometer

students that we're watching.

If we're having them corally repeat,

we're listening for that.

We're walking around

the room and everything.

But then because we're

memory experts, right?

We need to get this

foreign word into your brain.

And we need it into

your long-term memory.

For me, a lot of my

formative assessments are also

doing double time as I'm moving something

from your working memory

into hopefully your long-term memory.

Like, chunk and chew, we'll do a little

story or a little activity or something.

And then maybe I'll do a Harvard Project

Zero thinking routine where I'm like,

OK, grab a sheet of paper, write down

everything you remember from the story.

Now pass it one person to the right.

What did they leave off?

OK, pass it one person to the right.

Look at any of those words you like and

draw a little doodle next to it.

Pass it one person to the right.

So they're getting more contact with all

the vocabulary that we have just used,

all the grammatical

structures that we have just used.

They're getting more contact with it and

they get to use it in a

slightly different way.

So my hope is it gets

deeper into their head.

But I've got at the front of my

classroom, I've got a lot of puppets.

I've got my smart board

that I draw on constantly.

I've got props next to me.

I'm very hammy.

Aren't we all like really?

We're thespians, right?

It's not just about talking.

It's about kind of over enunciating and

you were gesticulating wildly.

I didn't gesture until I

started learning languages.

You got the gestures and everything and

walking around the classroom

and getting in the face

of the kids and everything.

So you were constantly formatively

assessing and making sure that the

students are with us

each step of the way.

Sometimes that's harder

than other times, right?

But yeah, we've got giant bag of tricks.

Absolutely.

What about you, Darcy?

So on my rule display, one of my rules is

you must answer all of

the teacher's questions.

And when I tell them that rule in the

beginning of the

year, they look terrified

because they're like, "Oh my God, she's

going to ask us something in French

and we're not going to know how to say

the answer in French."

And I try to tell them, "I'm going to be

asking you all kinds of

really dumb questions,

really obvious questions."

Like, "Does so-and-so

have one dog or two dogs?

Did so-and-so say

they were happy or sad?"

Really, really obvious questions.

And you're going to know

the answer to my questions.

And I use questions in

both French and English.

So sometimes I'm asking

them a question in French

and I'm asking them to show that they

understand by maybe a gesture.

If I'm asking how many of something and

they don't have the number words yet,

they could show me with their fingers.

Sometimes I just stop really quick and

say, "What did I just say in English?"

And then somebody answers and then I

know, "Okay, they're with me."

And then I get back into the French of

the story or whatever we're doing.

So I just use a lot of little questions.

And I don't mind sticking in a few

seconds of English here and there

if it's going to be a bridge to 10

minutes of comprehension.

That's my philosophy.

If I can ask a quick question in English,

get a quick assessment,

and then move on and get back into

French, I still feel like I'm winning.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I do a lot of what you say.

And one of my big things is if there's

hesitation in the answer,

because I tell them like you, they've got

to answer all my questions.

I go, "This is what's telling me.

I need to know whether you're

understanding and this is important."

So you've got to

answer every question I ask,

because if not, one of two things happen.

You didn't understand or

you weren't paying attention.

And I'm going to assume

that you didn't understand.

I'm going to assume that

you're all paying attention

because I am the most fascinating thing

on this planet right now.

So I'm not going to assume that you're

not paying attention.

But I'll ask if I get any hesitation,

even a fraction of a second,

where I'm like, "Okay."

So I go, "What did I just

ask to take the pressure off?"

Because obviously, at

least one kid didn't understand

if I'm not getting a good response back.

And so then I can go right there and then

somebody will say what I said.

And if not, then I go, "What?

Nobody stomped their feet? How the heck?

What? If you didn't understand what I was

going on, I'm going to keep going.

And if I lost you in minute

10, and we're now in minute 40,

you guys have lost 30

minutes of instruction.

And that's, you know, we've got to...

I'm not doing my job right."

So we go back and do that.

Now, you said something about the...

I love the stomping feet thing.

I like that too.

I like it just because, as I said,

sometimes my back is turned to one

section of the classroom or another.

And so I can't see it.

I don't want that poor kid sitting there,

having their hand up desperate.

And I don't see them

for two or three minutes.

And I also tell them if

one kid stomps their feet,

everybody stomps their feet.

So no one gets singled out that they're

the only one stomping.

Right. That's smart.

That's what I was thinking.

I was thinking that

for the effective filter,

this is probably really good because your

legs are under the table

and maybe you think nobody else is going

to see you stomping your feet.

That I think that's really going to lower

the effective filter.

The student isn't

going to feel singled out.

Yeah. Darcy, I absolutely love

what you're saying about that.

Your first rule is you

have to answer the teacher.

Because again, I think this goes back to

what we were saying about

just because you're a

native speaker doesn't,

just because you can play piano doesn't

mean you can teach how

to play piano, right?

There is an art to it.

And of course there's Doug

LeMoff, teach like a champion.

And he talks an awful

lot about no opt out.

And by golly, we are no opt out.

You cannot sit there.

We're going to drag you with us learning.

Yeah.

We're going to make sure we're going to

keep circling back to you.

We're going to, I mean, this is what

circling is all about, right?

We're going to keep circling back to it

until you know the answer.

And then you're going to feel this real

sense of accomplishment

because now you know the answer.

And I mean, that's the

whole point of learning, right?

Is to get you to that

position where you know the answer.

So yeah, I really love that, Darcy.

Absolutely.

And I was going to touch on when you said

about the English

translations that you use.

And this is something that I was not part

of this conversation.

I got a preface.

This happened at a

national TPRS conference.

And if you've never been, one of the key

cornerstones that they do

is one evening during the week,

they have immersion dinners.

So all the French speakers go to one

place and the rule is only French.

German teachers, French, Spanish

teachers, just like,

or if you're learning the language and

you want to practice it,

you go with that group.

So I always went with the German ones

because I don't get as much practice

speaking my German anymore

since I don't teach German.

But my friend and

colleague went to the Spanish one.

Blaine was there and

Dr. Krashen was there.

And Blaine and Dr. Krashen

agree on 99.9% of everything,

except for one thing where

Krashen was absolutely not.

There should never be

English used in the classroom.

No English translation.

No, do not do it.

Do not ever.

Well, of course not.

He was of the natural approach.

He was one of the

co-founders of the natural approach.

And they don't use translations for that.

Again, that's like Rosetta Stone.

I don't know.

When someone goes like this,

what that is, is that hair?

Is that long?

I don't know what that

gesture is supposed to mean.

And if there's not a correlation between

the gesture and what that means,

and everybody agrees that that gesture

now means that, there's a problem.

So here they are.

They're speaking in Spanish

the entire lunch, the dinner.

And 45 minutes in, everybody's speaking

Spanish, no problem.

But then I don't even

know what context it came in.

But the word spark came

in, chispa, in Spanish.

And Dr. Krashen was lost.

He didn't know what a chispa was.

So they tried circumlocuting it.

They tried describing it.

They tried doing everything they could

and drew pictures on napkins even,

trying to get him to

understand what this was.

And he kept thinking, fireworks.

He just couldn't,

everything that he couldn't do.

And one teacher finally said, a native

Spanish teacher says,

chispa.

It means spark.

Can we possibly please move on?

Because he spent like 15

minutes trying to make this clear.

It's not efficient.

It's right.

Let's extrapolate now

to a kid in a class.

Like you got your top kid

and your slower processing kid.

And the top kid is frustrated because

we've been on this stupid word

for like 20 minutes and they don't know,

can we just please move on?

And so then crashing, the ding went and

crashed in his head.

Ah, sometimes English translation is the

quickest, fastest way to comprehension

with no confusion whatsoever.

And I love the idea of, and I forgot, now

I forgot what the term is.

But when they tell a story and they use

pictures, they draw on the board.

I forgot what they call that.

That's note or smash doodle.

Yeah, no, no, not that one.

Instead of doing comprehension checks and

all of that and all the circling,

they just tell like a fairy

tale in the target language.

Story, story, listening.

That's it.

Story, listening.

Yeah.

I brain lose it.

Yes.

And you're using images, visuals to help.

Right.

Yeah.

And that's my all

thing with that one too.

If you don't understand

what the picture is saying,

then how do you know that they're

understanding in there?

So that was always my

quirk with story listening.

And it's the same quirk I have with total

immersion where in schools,

like where they have

dual immersion schools,

where they're not allowed to use

translation to make it clear the concept.

And then they come into regular classes

in high school, let's say,

and they don't have as much fluency as

you think they would

because they've always

lived in this gray area.

I think I know what

they're talking about,

but I don't have any confirmation.

And so I think that sometimes English

translation or common,

let's use the word

common language translation,

because English might

not be the common language.

That sometimes is the

quickest, easiest, dirtiest way

to get them to understand, get everybody

clear on the same page without confusion.

And as I said, I prefer to do it written

on the board in some way.

Number one, it's lasting.

I like that.

They can go back and refer to it.

And I'm not breaking that illusion of

immersion that we have in the classroom.

And I think it just like, go ahead.

I was just going to say every, every

decision we make as teachers,

like we just need to remember the most

important question is

what am I doing to make sure

that they understand, right?

So like every single thing I

decide to do is about that.

It can't just be because I like the sound

of my voice or like it has to be,

you know, when I do choose to use

English, I'm doing it because

I want a very quick way to make sure they

understand a particular word or phrase.

And then I just move on.

Absolutely.

What were you going to say, Pamela?

Oh, no. Well, I don't even remember what

I was going to say,

but that's precisely why

we can't work out of a textbook is

because every decision we make

is so that the students understand and a

textbook doesn't have a

student in front of it.

A textbook is just right.

Right. So I don't even remember the other

thing I was going to say.

Oh, I know what I was going to say.

I was going to say that whenever I'm

introducing a new

game, I'm very game based.

Whenever I'm introducing a new game, the

first time I give the

instructions in English,

because my very, very first year teaching

this was Japanese, a Japanese for class.

They should have known,

but we're playing a game.

And I suddenly noticed that one of my

students is in the corner trying not to

show that she's crying

because she didn't

understand the instructions.

And I was like, oh, my gosh, I just

raised her effective filter accidentally.

And so I'm always

like balancing that now.

When am I going to use English so that

the students understand

what it is that they're

supposed to do and understand like the

key things going on?

And is it worth it to stress out my

students and now they're

shut down and they won't learn

versus the quick and dirty.

Okay, I'm just going to say

this in English right now.

Yeah, so you're absolutely right.

And my rule always is and for two

different reasons,

discipline and instructions always

need to be in English.

I don't do the target

language for that for two reasons.

One, I don't want the

parents to come back.

Well, my kid didn't

understand what you were saying.

So now you failed him because he didn't

follow the directions or

you punished him because

you told him to be quiet, but he didn't

understand that that even

though you know 100% that they did,

they're just using it as an excuse.

So yeah, I have my instructions are

always in English and my

discipline is always in English.

And here's a good example for native

English speakers in an

upper level Spanish class.

I put the instructions in

English and here's the problem.

They didn't understand them.

I said, I need you to

write this essay double spaced.

And these kids were 10th graders and had

no idea what double spaced means.

I didn't know they didn't know that.

So this is what they did.

They typed in a word,

put two spaces after it.

Another word, two spaces after it.

Another word, two spaces after it.

Because they didn't

understand the instructions.

They never heard the

word double spaced before.

And so it was like, oh my gosh.

And then my supervisor

used to be an English teacher.

She goes, oh, no, no, no.

When you give instructions like that, you

have to be so explicit.

So you write an example essay and you go,