#45 - You Don’t Need A Theater Degree to Use CI: Common Misconceptions About CI Teaching

We push back on the myth that comprehensible input only works for charismatic teachers, and we reframe proficiency as a guiding philosophy rather than a single method. Practical, low-lift strategies take center stage to show how any teacher can build high-impact, student-centered classes.

• defining proficiency as a north star for outcomes 
• separating CI philosophy from specific branded methods 
• why social media highlight reels skew expectations 
• examples of low-lift, high-yield CI routines 
• student-centered interaction over grammar-first planning 
• assessment focused on what learners can do 
• inclusive paths for different teacher personalities 
• invitation to share experiences and questions

Blog post on CI terms: https://lalibrelanguagelearning.com/what-is-ci-teaching-proficiency-vs-legacy-for-world-language-teachers/

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Transcript

Proficiency As A North Star

CI Beyond Labels And Acronyms

The “Personality” Myth In CI

Highlight Reels And Social Media Bias

High-Energy vs Low-Lift Strategies

Practical Low-Lift CI Examples

Student-Centered Classes Over Grammar-First

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Hey, welcome to another episode of the Practical Proficiency Podcast. I'm Devin, and today I want to do something a little different. We're going to talk about a common misconception in the world language proficiency sphere, which I feel is a big part of why there's a lot of teachers who have a hard time getting on board with what a very large body of research is showing to be effective, but it can feel like there's only one way to go about it, which of course is not good for any profession. So let's go ahead and address this misconception about comprehensible input and CI. Let's dive in to this idea. There's a lot of teachers that I feel have this preconceived notion that a lot of stuff about comprehensible input is based on personality, which is like the heart of the problem, right? That a lot of the things that we're doing, if you subscribe to comprehensible input, if you've read the research, if you've seen how well it works in other people's classrooms, that whenever I'm talking to somebody who is not sure about whether this is the way they want to move, that it usually comes down to, well, that's only going to work for that teacher, and it's not going to work for me. So I want to tell you a little bit about why I believe that comprehensible input is can be for every single teacher, I would say, but not as it's currently described or promoted to new teachers who are new to the concept. Here's what I mean by that. Here's my hot take. It is definitely my opinion. If it helps you, take it. If it does not, forget about it. I am not prescribing this to be the, you know, the way of teaching for anyone here. In many of my podcast episodes, we are using like research-based concepts and things that um we've seen to work and be very effective in a world language classroom. But this one is straight up off the hook. This is just my opinion on why I think a lot of the proficiency movement has stalled out in certain quarters of the United States. Well, that's a that's a misleading statement. I should say that no matter how much momentum proficiency is gaining, there are still certain teachers and teaching philosophies that will feel incongruent with what CI is asking teachers to do in classrooms. So that's what I wanted to talk about today, is the fact that this whole idea of proficiency is not really about your specific activities, strategies, or even your teaching methods, which is why it's so hard to pin down. Proficiency is a guiding North Star concept for me and for any teacher or school that I work with that it's a philosophy of what language really is and how we can help students acquire it. So here is what I love about using comprehensible input concepts under the umbrella of having personally a proficiency-oriented philosophy of language. To me, CI is a philosophy that allows language to be what it truly is, no matter how you choose to do it. It is a method of communication. That's what language is. In this method of communication, I can learn with my students. We're going to use language as the way that we learn about ourselves and the world around us and how we are connected. I can authentically learn about students using a lot of the ideas, philosophies, and strategies under the umbrella of comprehensible input because everything about comprehensible input focuses on things being interesting and relevant. When this is the key phrase though, when it comes to interesting and relevant, I feel like this is where a lot of the misconceptions are around CI. And let's not dance around it. What is the real big misconception here? For me, it seems to me that lots of teachers who are looking for what is the simple, clear-cut, best practice approach, CI is not going to be the answer for them because a lot of times comprehensible input ideas, activities, and strategies that focus on comprehensible input because it's more of a concept and not really a, you know, methodology by any means. But well, let's just go ahead and address the fact that it's a bit of a dicey area when it comes to clarifying what exactly comprehensible input is. I have a blog post on this topic where we talk about the frustration that many of us in the proficiency and CI space feel about the labeling that happens a lot. Like there's a lot of acronyms floating around there, you know, ADI, all of that. So it's okay. We're all under the same philosophy of we believe that language should be treated for what it is, which is a skill, something that students can acquire, not necessarily something that students should be learning about, in quotes. That's all that means. But if you want to get into the specific teasings of terminology and labels and acronyms and stuff like that, I'm gonna link that blog post below to further dive into that topic. But let's get back to the task at hand, which is thinking about this big misconception that comprehensible input ideas and strategies are often revolving around the personality of the teacher. In no more, no less words, I would say that there's a lot of people who think that you have to have something equivalent of a theater degree in order to teach with these ideas and activities. And I'm here to tell you that from my own background of the past couple years with my company, for what I do is I work individually with a lot of teachers in a program called the PPN. And I also work collaboratively with a lot of other folks in my space through the conference that I do every year, which you should definitely come to. It's free, it's every summer. And I've worked with many of the larger presenters in the world language space who are really, really into proficiency and into CI and all of that, just like I am. And let me tell you right off the bat that not all of them are people who are doing a lot of the things that you might associate with CI teachers. They're not doing readers' theater every day, which, no hate on reader's theater. It's awesome. But I will tell you that I never personally use this in my classroom for a specific reason. We'll talk about that later. Let's put a pin in that. There's so many teachers who love to share about their classroom because they are charismatic people that you just cannot help but be like, oh my gosh, I wish I was in their classroom. They're doing these really, really fun activities and they're kind enough and taking the time out of their day to record those things and share them. And it's so cool and inspiring. However, as consumers of information, especially in the social media age, nowhere on this podcast are you gonna see me or hear me telling you that how dare these creators, because I love those creators. I work with them all the time. I think they're amazing. And something that we need to be a part of in this conversation when we're talking about social media is being responsible audience members and responsible consumers. It takes a lot of work to share what you're learning about your classroom, right? Takes a lot of work to be a presenter, takes a lot of work to share about your classroom. And the people who are inclined to take on that extra work, which is a huge service to our industry because we get a nice little peek at what they're doing in their classroom. Many of those people enjoy sharing. They have that type of personality where they're just excited to shout from the rooftops about what they're doing. I am half those people, meaning that I do love sharing about what's going on in my classroom. Hello. Podcast. Um, or at least what used to happen in my classroom. I am no longer in the classroom now. But when I was sharing things about my classroom, uh, the things that I would share would be the things that I knew would be the most exciting, the most, you know, the fun things that you share. You know, you don't like, if you're an artist, you don't share your sketches on a day-to-day basis. You are probably going to share like your nice finished, polished products of the good stuff. It's what a lot of us are calling the highlight reel. And guess what makes the most exciting highlight reels? The videos of students that are in a high energy, sometimes high prep, but not always a high energy, high engagement, high-ask activity where maybe they're doing something that's very theatrical, like they're doing um story asking or something that's really creative, because like those are really great to share. And it's great for all of us to see that. But just know that there's just as many teachers, if not more, who are following CI principles with very low prep, low lift, low student-ask strategies. I was one of those teachers. For me, the classroom was a very taxing space. I loved being with students, but it was overwhelming every day. And so, in order to make that easier, and because I also worked with high school students who, I don't know about you if you're a high school teacher, but I have yet to meet a high school teacher who's like, oh yeah, I definitely do TPRS with my high schoolers. They love it. I have yet to meet one. If you are one of those, oh my gosh, please excuse me, and let me know immediately what is your secret, because my kids hated it. It has so much to do with the age group of the students that you're working with, exactly how much high energy or what I'm gonna call really charismatic and theatrical, like high teacher-asque activities you're doing. With these types of activities, what exactly am I categorizing them as? Well, if you are doing anything that asks students to speak a lot, or to, and not necessarily like in difficult long paragraphs, but things like the short burst responses, like when you say a rejoinder, they respond back. Or when you're doing some type of story asking and you're asking for ideas from students, and perhaps for students to act some things out, or if you're reading a story and you get some students to like do a performance about it, all of that. Those are the things that I'm talking about, as well as those really high-energy, high activity games like mafia, which by the way, I love. My high schoolers loved mafia. Um, obviously, it's gory and involves mystery and blaming people. What high schooler doesn't love that? So, but those things were like my high-energy, high-ask, CI-oriented activities that come from the CI community. Um, because that one, I believe the origin of the mafia activity is Martina Bex, pretty sure. So, with that, these activities that involve a lot of student ask, like you're asking them to be really engaged and involved in the activity, that's not the everyday experience for the everyday CI teacher. Teachers who use a lot of comprehensible input in their classrooms are usually using low lift strategies on a daily basis. Low lift things would be like, let's look at a picture together. I'm gonna ask you questions about this picture of this really cute raccoon, and I want you to tell me what color is the raccoon? What is the raccoon doing? Is the raccoon digging through the trash? Is the raccoon stealing some food? Is the raccoon crossing a street at night? What is the raccoon doing? Those are the types of things that are low lift, that are much more manageable on a teacher's energy and are much more the foundation of somebody's practice. So a lot of people who are really into comprehensible input strategies are really into it, including myself, because it builds a really strong, vibrant, and enjoyable classroom experience every day. When you are a huge part of CI principles, is that you are walking into the room every day, insatiably curious about your students, asking them a lot of questions about themselves. It's a really, really personalized teaching approach, which is pedagogically sound under many different educational theories. We all know that the more you can bring students into the curriculum and a part of the classroom, the better everybody will be. So to do that, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to put on a giant dog and pony show in order to do that or play really elaborate games. It just means that you're attempting to have conversation with your kids every day in a way that they can respond back to you. So if you have heard through the grapevine, or like many people have, that doing something like proficiency can be pretty fad-oriented, you're absolutely right because there are a lot of activities, just like in teaching, that they come in and out of fashion and in and out of favor. And when you start getting into the realm of proficiency and comprehensible input, you'll notice that a lot of acquisition-driven strategies involve taking everyday party games and taking everyday activities because and just turning them into fun, short ways to converse with your students because that's the point of a language class, right? So it's a lot less of the very, very well-documented legacy and traditional style of teaching where we have oodles and oodles and oodles of information and resources about how to teach a grammar concept and how to practice it, because that's common. That's everywhere, that's in every textbook. But what's not common and what's not everywhere, but is gaining a lot of momentum, is the idea that students are the focal point of your class. Conversing with them and interacting with them is the goal of every lesson. So you're gonna find that in this space that you might just be diving into or you may have been in for a long time, that there's a lot more to it than just the different teaching personalities who really excel with this type of style. But do know, this is my my hot take, my personal opinion, that there's there is a space and a niche for everybody in proficiency because proficiency is just downright best practice based off of the research we have access to now. That could change. But right now, it's the best thing that we have to move our global world language programs forward. Comprehensible input as a concept is simply a concept that everything that is done in a world language classroom should revolve around providing high-quality input that is understandable and also something that students want to interact with. So, as these concepts evolve, the methods around them are going to evolve, and so are the activities. Right now, and definitely in the space for a while, what you've probably seen is a lot of like the most fun teachers on the planet who are doing really awesome things. But do know that if something like asking your students to do something that feels really theatrical and even has theatrical terms to it, you do not need a theater teaching degree to use proficiency in your classroom. It's merely a shift of your focus. It is not a set of activities. Yeah. That is why I love this whole concept of teaching for proficiency, is because it doesn't matter how you get there. What matters is your purpose and your focus. Is your focus to help your students acquire more language and teaching language as if it's a skill and not a set of rules to be memorized? That's what we're working towards. That's the whole goal. It's what students can do with the language, not what they know about it. And there's so many different ways to do that. And there's just as many teachers who are using pretty low-lift strategies to do that. So, what are your takes on this? What do you think about this uh teaching community that we've developed here together, that I know I'm a part of, you're a part of. Looking at the proficiency world, we are trying to do less of the divisive nature that we see all too often in America right now. We are all teachers and we're all trying to move forward to help our students progress together. We are falling under this umbrella of what is through research and through SLA, we know to be the best option that we currently have. But that doesn't mean that at any point, just because you do something that promotes language acquisition in maybe a more quiet and demure way, it's still just as valuable and it's still you. It's still you. So thanks for attending my rant. I'm wondering if you like this style of podcast episodes. This is just my unfiltered opinion on what's going on, my observations in the proficiency world right now. And I will see you for the next episode where we are going to be diving into some more learner, not learner, teacher questions about proficiency and how to actually do the dang thing. So I will see you in the next episode. And thanks for being here for me. Thanks for being a part of this community. It's a really awesome one. All right, bye for now.