Well according to my son, CI is ‘Central Intelligence’ as in the movie with Dwyane The Rock Johnson and Kevin Hart.….
I shouldn’t be too hard on him. I had no idea what CI-or Comprehensible Input- was either until about 6 years ago.
So what is CI and why is it so incredibly important in a language class?
Stephen Krashen, Linguist and Educational researcher says "Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language-natural communication-in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding."
Comprehensible Input is, put simply, language that is embedded in communicative events that our students listen, read, and understand. That’s it!
Comprehensible Input is not a strategy or a special curriculum, or a different way to teach grammar. Comprehensible Input is language used to communicate with students that they understand.
I’m reminded about how my own children learnt English-they received loads and loads of input (listening) from my husband and I and our friends and family before they even began uttering a word. We were constantly reinforcing the language through our communicative exchanges and gave immediate feedback through modelling rather than error correction, drills or grammar explanations. As author and researcher Dr Sandra Savignon says, "Try, just for the moment, to forget you are a language teacher and to listen instead as an interested participant-to be a language parent rather than as a language teacher." 1976, p.16.
I just love that quote!
Below are several videos I found fascinating-lots of food for thought here. These concepts became even clearer to me when I began learning additional languages as a total beginner-a very sobering and valuable experience! I thoroughly recommend ALL language teachers to put themselves in the shoes of their students. It was incredibly insightful! You can read more about that experience HERE.
Do you remember how your loved ones learnt their first language? What are your takeaways from the videos below?