TEACHING WITH CI – Grant Boulanger

Teaching with Comprehensible Input (TCI) and TPRS®

Discussion, Products and Training

I teach with Comprehensible Input, an artful language teaching process based on Dr. Stephen Krashen’s Compelling Input Hypothesis.

I choose to teach with TCI because it’s highly effective, equitable, and joyful for my students and me. It’s artful. When I’m skilled, in the present moment, and willing to share control with my students, together we make magic. That magic is highly engaged students interacting with me in Spanish acquiring language without even realizing it.

But, it’s a serious challenge to engage with novices in language that is simultaneously interesting and easily understood.All language teachers provide some CI sometimes, but rarely hit the sweet spot. TCI strives to flow in that sweet spot.

Join me on this path if you are a professional language educator interested in reaching (not just teaching) your students. Read my blog and others’ to begin understanding TCI instructional practices and improving the art of your own practice.

We’re all on our own journeys. Let my mistakes inform and improve your practice.

Some of the Beliefs that Guide My Practice

ALL students can acquire a second (or third!) language
Language acquisition occurs as the result of receiving comprehensible input
Compelling input can eliminate the need for motivation
Comprehension Precedes Production
Students will not invest in IMPROVING their second language unless they OWN it. (John DeMado)
Immersion can be inefficient
We learn grammar from language, not language from grammar (Kato Lomb)
Interaction is a driving force in acquisition

My Personal Mission as a World Language Educator is to DESTROY the WL “achievement gap” by ensuring ALL students:

understand how languages are acquired
confidently see themselves as language learners
enroll in upper level classes
achieve intermediate proficiency by end of HS
are empowered to continue acquiring through deliberate practice wherever life takes them

What is TCI?

Teaching with Comprehensible Input (TCI) is a process – a body of approaches, techniques and strategies that prioritizes the delivery of understandable messages that are personalized, meaningful, interesting and relevant to our students.

These approaches, techniques and strategies adhere to the most sound findings of Second Language Acquisition, i.e. Dr. Stephen Krashen’s Compelling Input Hypothesis, and make language acquisition possible for nearly ALL students, bringing language learning to life and leveling the playing field for a larger proportion of our students.

While there can be a steep learning curve, TCI is simple – provide compelling, comprehensible input in huge doses.

With TCI it is now easy for teachers to:

Reach and exceed the ACTFL-preferred goal of 90%+ in the target language from day 1
Read and discuss authentic material that is both meaningful and relevant to our students’ lives

And it’s easy for students to:

Develop real, measurable fluency with the highest frequency, most bang-for-your-buck words of the target language
Understand and speak using natural language – past, present and future – from day 1

Increases in achievement and enrollment are natural results of a program that transitions to this instructional practice.

Teacher Training

I am driven to provide meaningful and relevant language acquisition instruction to ALL students.

If you’re looking for training in methods and strategies of Comprehensible Input and, further, have a desire to increase enrollment and achievement for ALL your students, together we can spark fire in your world language teachers and rekindle that sense of awe achieved when we see ALL our students achieving.

I offer a variety of reasonably-priced workshops to train world language teachers at any level in your school or district. Click here for more details.

Products

I believe that we should speak with our students in natural language. By that I mean, using whatever tense or structure that is called for in the moment. After searching current teacher resource catalogues and websites, I couldn’t find any posters that contained past or simple future tense verb conjugations on one poster. So, I made them.