Pacing Guides

The differences in philosophy between comprehensible input instruction (CI) and traditional language education typified by pacing guides are:

CI is a student-driven methodology. It responds to the linguistic needs of the students at any given time. This makes it a free-flowing curriculum.

In CI we believe that grammar is “properly spoken speech” and is learned over years - long periods of listening to and reading the language first before studying how it is built. That is the way we learn our first languages.

We think and the research strongly indicates that it is more effective if the learner hears the language most of the time before studying its structure as opposed to studying its structure before hearing it most of the time.

There is really no difference between what we are trying to do in our CI classrooms and what traditional grammar instructors are trying to do in theirs, so there is no blame on either side. We are both teaching grammar - one (CI) teaches grammar through the ears and the other one through the eyes.

When you teach a language through the ears it is an unconscious absorptive process. When you teach it through the eyes it is a conscious analytical process. The first one is easier because you don’t have to think about it.

In CI we believe that linguistic features are acquired in a natural order (Krashen) and that the brain cannot be forced to acquire a feature out of sequence or before it is ready. This conflicts with how textbooks teach linguistic features.

In CI we believe that each learner acquires knowledge at his/her own pace – that no two students are at the same point in learning at the same time. This is in conflict with the pacing guide model found in traditional language instruction.

In CI we believe that student output cannot be forced. Students need hundreds of hours of repetitive input before they are ready to produce unrehearsed, spontaneous output. This is much like small children who hear their first language for thousands and thousands of hours before being able to produce meaningful language.

In CI we believe that activities practicing output before students have experienced enough input is counter-productive and leads only to short-term, testable learning goals, not long-term acquisition and is also big emotional challenge for kids when they have to do it in school because it makes them nervous especially when it is tied to a grade.

CI adheres to the Monitor Theory – we believe that direct instruction of grammatical rules in not helpful until upper levels of instruction, after students have internally acquired such grammatical features through context. At such a time students can use the analytical rules to polish their understanding, and to become truly literate in the language. Prior to this, overly strong focus on rules inhibits student production and acquisition – students end up focusing on rules rather than on meaning. That’s basically what I said above, however.

In CI we believe that language instruction should be practical and focused on communication in areas that interest students.

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The Pacing Guide assumes that instruction and pacing are based on the curriculum, that they are not student-driven. This leads to a curriculum that is not especially responsive to student needs, one that you could say is boring.

The Pacing Guide does not shelter vocabulary. It encourages memorization of lots of words, which are then forgotten.

The Pacing Guide does not encourage properly spoken language in context. Instead, it encourages the learning (and forgetting) of individual words. Instead of providing language in context, it provides language in little pieces. It exposes students to one discrete feature of grammar at a time, instead of providing grammar contextually in its natural form of properly spoken speech.

By sheltering grammar (properly spoken speech), the Pacing Guide does not allow for the Natural Order of Acquisition. It does not provide adequate exposure to late acquired features early on and expects mastery of some late acquired features in beginning stages.

The Pacing Guide exists to make learning uniform across the district. Every student in the district is expected to learn the same material at the same time. We said that above.

The Pacing Guide and accompanying benchmark exams are filled with output-oriented activities. The philosophy is that spending time practicing output is not a helpful activity, especially when time for input is so limited in the first place. And it makes kids nervous, which we also said above.

The Pacing Guide, benchmark exams, and departmental teachers assume direct instruction in grammatical rules. They assume that students will care about technical terminology and will be able to discuss the grammatical features in a metacognitive fashion. Neither of those assumptions seems particularly true to me.

The Pacing Guide assumes that language acquisition is an academic activity that will result in preparation for college and perhaps eventual communication in the language. Areas for discussion that currently interest students - like artwork they made in class - are not included if they do not fit into the long-term goals of academic study.

An analogy:

In a way, the Pacing Guide is like the old practice in manufacturing of ordering and stockpiling a bunch of materials on a rigid and pre-set schedule – it might sit there for a long time without being used. CI is like the more modern practice of ordering “on demand”. As something is needed, it is ordered and used.

The second way is simpler, more efficient and more economical and is the way of the future with AI coming into education now. The Pacing Guide is an attempt to recreate the old-style factory production line. Why try to do that when factories don’t even do it anymore?

It is of little wonder that students find much of their school experience boring, irrelevant and unengaging; it is in opposition to how they learn languages on their own. Early 20th-century methods in a 21st-century world leave everyone behind, not just the students but also their teachers. That blows.