THE 50% RULE

Here’s a post from 2007, still applicable today. Those using the Triangle, Square and Star approaches know about the 50% Rule already.

Very little in our new WL teaching model jives with the old model. The old model offered a controlled, planned, fragmented, now-do-this/now-do-that approach to language classes. The new model says, “Let’s explore new vistas in whole language! Let’s see what we can create together! Let’s work together and communicate fun ideas and laughter to each other!”

This idea of working cooperatively with students to create entertaining language, makes me think of the “50% Rule”, which will soon celebrate 20 years now as various iterations of my CI posters over the years as Rule #4 below:

If the instructor is not holding the students 50% responsible for the success of the class, then the class cannot work. Teachers rarely do this and it mystifies me. In my recent efforts to fully understand and define classroom management in the CI classroom, I have come to realize that few teachers actually hold their students responsible for much of anything (except for useless memorization), taking way too much on themselves. They think that they are the only ones in charge of making learning happen in the classroom. But that in my view is the old model of what a language teacher is.

In the new model, the kids get deeply involved in class. Not only must they listen with the intent to understand (Rule #1), but they must help co-create the tableau or story. Contrast that with the old model, where the teacher is the center of everything spouting out rules that no one cares about, including the 4%ers who only need the A for college and so feign interest.

Can it be that CI doesn’t work for a lot of teachers new to it because they are applying old ideas to a new model? The new model of language instruction simply doesn’t work with all the old ideas about how students interact with teachers in foreign language classrooms. It is an entirely new paradigm of teacher/student interaction.

And the new paradigm is an intelligent option for any teacher - it will help them keep their jobs. The coming changes in foreign language education can be summed up in one sentence: teach for auditory and reading competence or hate your job because of bored students.

The new model requires rewriting pacing guides around the Communication Standard that is driving people who are tied to the book nuts. The successful language teachers of the future will teach their kids through their ears and then - through their eyes - make them read what they just understood through their ears.

The teacher’s 50% is:

• to ask good quality questions.

• to convey a sense of happiness, of lightness and a quality of fun to the instruction. No kid wants to offer cute ideas to a grump (teachers seem to become grumps when they think that what they are teaching is more important than whom they are teaching.)

• to back off on all the planning. How is a good story going to fly if all the creativity is limited to the teacher? The last thing kids want to hear is a one man band kind of teacher.

• to make sure the kids do their classroom jobs well.

The students’ 50% is:

• to sit up, squared shoulders, clear eyes.

• to suggest cute answers.

• to listen with the intention to understand.

• to be visible and conscious.

• to make sure that the instructor knows if and when they don’t understand.

When both the teacher and the students do their 50%, a CI class can work. Again, the old model where everyone just fakes listening to the teacher waiting for the test and only the 4%ers participate, contrasts starkly with the new model, where everybody participates. Soon the old model will only survive in the minds of those who still think that they ought to teach in the same way that they were taught.

In 2007 Amy Catania went to a WL teacher conference and reported:

“The weird thing at that (Rochester, NY) conference was how you could spot the (then TPRS) friendlies from a mile away. There was a crew of youngish hip NYC types that came on by and just ate it up. They were all over our books and ready to slam the grammarians big time.”

That quote is great. Twenty years later, strict grammarians ruined that youthful energy by claiming their method is Comprehensible Input (CI). Because of this, the young CI hipsters left the field. Now, new teachers must believe a false version of what CI really is.