Posted in My languages

Last fall in my Methods of Teaching Romance Languages class, I first learned about the concept of "comprehensible input."  Input is language that learners hear or read, and the "comprehensible" part means that the language learner must understand most of it in order for acquisition to take place.

A few months ago when I ordered my homeschooling things for next year, I also got a little booklet called "Tips for Learning World Languages at Home" by Chris Roe.  I have been developing a presentation on homeschooling foreign languages and wanted to see what the booklet recommended.  One of the interesting points it made was that, at the beginning, their family regarded NOT being in a language class as a disadvantage, but later as an advantage.  Why?  Because the girls never heard incorrect Spanish from the other students.

Later I was thinking about how so many Americans (me included) can say, "I studied (insert language) for (insert number of years) in high school and can't speak a word of it."  I started wondering how much actual input those years represented, and then how much of that time was wrong input from the other students. 

I know that in my case, I had French for 3 years in eighth, ninth and tenth grades.  I took an inventory a month or so ago and came up with about 5 things I could say in French.  I can read it okay, but that's mostly because of its relationship to Spanish.  I had no other input besides my French classes.  Even in French 3 Honors, my teacher didn't speak much French and neither did we.

Contrast this with my Spanish experience.  I don't remember if I have ever mentioned on my blog why I started studying Spanish.  In the summer between 7th and 8th grade, Menudo released their first English language album.  I heard one of their songs on the radio, liked it, and bought the album.  I wanted more of their albums, but they were all in Spanish.  I bought them anyway.  My family made fun of me because I didn't know any Spanish but listened to them all the time. I went to see Menudo twice in concert (the first time I had third row seats! and saw a twelve-year-old Ricky Martin way up close!) and listened to them in Spanish a lot.  So for two years I listened to Spanish music - I believe we could call that "input" even though it wasn't "comprehensible."  Then I started studying Spanish in school and did very well.  I remember once telling my teacher that I listened to Spanish music, and she exclaimed, "That's why you have such a good accent!" I also remember the first time I completely understood a Menudo song in Spanish.  I was driving, so it had been at least 4 years that I had been listening in Spanish.  As the song ended, I realized that I had understood the whole thing, and I was very excited.

I have gotten a bit off track, but my main point was that I had additional out of the classroom input in Spanish that I did not have with French,  and this probably made a huge difference.

I have also wondered if the concept of "wrong input" could contribute to the speech delays that twins commonly have. When a child is born into a family, everyone in the family normally speaks better than the child.  Even if older siblings don't speak fluently yet, they at least speak better.  But with twins, they spend the majority of their time with someone else who cannot speak better. 

This is something I struggled with in teaching this year.  Some of my students had such atrocious pronunciation that I would cringe.  But I could not make them repeat everything over and over again or read everything myself - then my class would be annoying and too teacher-centered.  When we read things out loud, I ended up asking students to read a couple of sentences and then, when we went over it, I would read it again several times.  But how damaging is it for the students to repeatedly hear things said wrong or say them wrong themselves?  I don't know.

I just find this concept of "wrong input" interesting.