The Classroom if for Acquisition

[Niko]

The classroom is for acquisition. Learning is done somewhere else. The function of the classroom is to provide students with comprehensible input. Your goal as a teacher is to make students understand. When students respond in the classroom, errors really shouldn't be corrected unless there is a breakdown in communication.

The idea is that talk helps us get more input. That is it: get input. Comprehensible input. This allows speaking to emerge. Homework is grammar: standard, old-fashioned, discrete-point grammar to be used in monitoring. And it is given so that it can be used under appropriate conditions: when you have time, when you have the rule and occasions when the focus is on form.

The results of this approach have been quite encouraging. People understand fairly complex things right away. It handles individual variation. In a college class you may have a lot of homework. In adult education or a class for children, you may not have any. In junior high school, you may have some. In any case, acquisition is central in the classroom and conscious learning is not the goal.

Children do this in picking up a second language. They are quiet for about 3 or 4 months before they say a word. They are building competence through listening. The new pedagogical strategy is to allow adults learners to have a silent period. Give them comprehensible input, and natural language will emerge on its own.