General Thoughts on CI - 9

This article first appeared in The Big CI Book (2014). I republish it here because at this time of year it is so critically important for language teachers to know what their real goal in class should be – simple conversation, and not “teaching”.

I have said many times that you cannot teach a language; you can only share pleasant conversation with your students, from whence derive the immense gains in proficiency when you take trips around the Star with your students.

There is a French term, “L’Art de la Conversation” – leave it to the French to label conversation as an art form. But isn’t it true? Shouldn’t we be trying to converse with our students in our classrooms artistically instead of teaching them about how the language is structured?

The following two passages (my translation) are taken from https://bit.ly/3Ppcy0U:

1. “Conversation differs from other forms of interaction (interview, debate, symposium, negotiation, consultation) by its familiar, improvised and free nature: nothing that make it up is decided in advance and it has no other permanence than its own practice, it is divorced from any planned outcome. Its principle motivating force is pleasure.”

2. “Conversation is made up of a linguistic tissue thanks to which the members of a community not only communicate on a daily basis, but also guarantee their membership in the group.

Through conversation, the individual constructs her social place in the group.”

The passages say that conversation:

1. has a familiar nature (i.e., people who converse are familiar with one another; they want to be together)

2. is improvised (i.e., not forced – it is made up as it goes along)

3. is free (i.e., is not limited in scope to any predetermined idea or scripted text) has pleasure as its goal (i.e., we enjoy the conversation first and foremost) as per this quote from Stephen Krashen: “The path of pleasure is the only path. The path of pain does not work for language acquisition.”

5. is made up of linguistic tissue (i.e., the target language) guarantees a person’s membership in the group (i.e., building a classroom community is key to what we do and we need to do it consciously.)

The passage reveals things that we would do well to think about while trying to put CI into our classrooms:

1. We shouldn’t try to force our students into conversations.

2. Our communication in class with our students should feel as if it has a familiar nature.

3. Our communication in class with our students should feel improvised.

4. Our communication in class with our students should feel free.

5. Our communication in class with our students should feel pleasurable.

6. Our communication in class with our students should feel that it is made up of an unpolluted linguistic tissue – the language we are teaching them – and not some random daily mix of English and the target language.

7. Our communication with our students in class should guarantee their place in a community.

We would do well to ask ourselves:

Have we ever actually been in a conversation with our students, however simple, in the ways described above? Has that ever even been one of our goals – to communicate in meaningful ways with our students that guarantee their membership in the group? Do we even speak in those ways with other adults? Is just enjoying conversing with our students enough or do we also have to worry about the test? Do our conversations guarantee our own membership in the group? Do our conversations bring us the happiness of meaningful communication with others?

Personally, my goal as a language teacher has always been to be able to just relax and communicate with my students by using interesting and meaningful, relaxed, agenda-less language.

A lot of us have probably had that goal. We’re tired of trying to force kids to learn our language. It never worked.

Can you see yourself teaching in a natural and lighthearted way where the conversation uplifts everyone in the room, even visitors? Can you see yourself standing in front of your students interacting with them in a back and forth, reciprocal, participatory sharing of meaning that reflects the ground-breaking research of Lev Vygotsky over 100 years ago?