Unlocking Language Proficiency: The Role of Comprehensible Input in the World Language Classroom
Comprehensible Input is a term that all World Language Teachers should be familiar with. I remember first hearing about comprehensible input when I was an undergrad student majoring in French. In my Master of Arts in Teaching program, I took a Methods of Second Language Acquisition course that focused heavily on Dr. Stephen Krashen’s work, including his research around comprehensible input (CI). And in my own teaching practice, I would consider comprehensible input to be a part of my “core beliefs” that guide my philosophy of World Language teaching and that inform the decisions I make regarding planning, instruction, and assessment.
In this blog post, I’m going to talk about what comprehensible input is and how to begin using it effectively in your World Language classroom so that you can begin unlocking your students’ innate ability to acquire language and increase proficiency.
What is comprehensible input?
Comprehensible Input is language that is communicated to students—either orally or through written text—that is mostly understandable to them. Students are able to interpret meaning and gain a global understanding of the message when they are receiving comprehensible input. Here are some examples of CI in a level 1 French, Spanish, or Italian class:
Students decipher an infographic about favorite sports and hobbies of the target culture. There are plenty of images and cognates, as well as verbs that students have previously seen.
The World Language Teacher tells a short story in the target language. There is an accompanying Google Slides with pictures, target language words, and translations (when appropriate). The teacher delivers the input slowly, uses an abundance of repetition, and uses numerous comprehension strategies to help students understand.
What is NOT comprehensible input?
Unfortunately, we cannot simply speak to our students in the target language. Certainly not in the same way we would speak to a colleague, friend, family member, and/or native speaker of the target language.
Language that is not understood by our learners is mere noise.
I’m sure we have all heard of, seen, or experienced World Language classes where the instructor speaks a mile a minute in the target language, assuming that students are magically understanding every word that comes out of their mouth. This is a highly ineffective practice at best and a detrimental one at worst, as it can raise the affective filter in the classroom, increasing student anxiety and frustration and decreasing student motivation and self-confidence.
Every time you communicate to students in the target language, I want you to ask yourself the following questions:
Am I using vocabulary and grammar structures that students will mostly understand?
What percentage of my language is actually comprehensible?
I don’t think there’s a magic number here! But if your students only grasp 10, 15, or 20% of what you’re saying, that’s incredibly frustrating and can lead to disengagement.
What techniques and resources am I using to help facilitate comprehension? (e.g. writing words on the board, using gestures, images, translations, comprehension checks, etc.)
Am I using language in an interesting way? Are students compelled to listen and understand my messages because they want to know what I am saying?
What are the benefits of comprehensible input?
Using comprehensible input in your World Language classroom can have myriad benefits. First, we know that comprehensible input is an essential ingredient in language acquisition. In order to acquire language, students need to receive massive amounts of input in the target language, and so we should be providing input that is both comprehensible and compelling as often as we can!
In addition to the clear language proficiency gains your students will experience by receiving targeted comprehensible input, students will feel more motivated and confident in their ability to make progress in the language because when students understand the language they are learning, their motivation and confidence will skyrocket as a natural consequence.
How to get started with CI
If you do not already use CI-based strategies and are looking to get started, my recommendation would be to start off simple. Don’t feel compelled to create a “CI classroom” like you may see from CI practitioners on social media. Start off with one CI-based lesson and see how you feel.
Using CI strategies effectively is a skill that takes time and practice, and in my experience, it is unfortunately not a skill that is developed in teacher preparation programs. So my advice would be to start off small, be realistic, be patient, and give yourself grace. Languages aren’t learned in a day, a week, a month, or a year, so don’t expect yourself to be a proficient user of CI by tomorrow!
To start, maybe you use a Picture Talk strategy where you project an interesting or thematically-relevant image on your whiteboard and spend 5-10 minutes of class time talking about it, and then 5 minutes or so of asking students questions about the picture.
PRO TIP: It’s helpful to plan out the language you want to expose your students to. When I first started using CI intentionally, I created bulleted outlines of the language I wanted to target. I’ve even heard of teachers using a script - I say go for it, until you get competent enough to where you can speak comprehensibly without much effort.
Another idea: maybe you decide to find an infographic about the thematic unit your students have been studying. You give students some time to read, process, and analyze the infographic, and then you spend a couple minutes explaining it in the target language and asking comprehension questions to see how much students have understood.
Start off with “true or false” or “yes / no” questions to gauge understanding, and if appropriate, move on to more open-ended questions to elicit student feedback.
You could also start off with a simple story in the target language accompanied by comprehension activities that will help students feel empowered because not only can they read in the target language, but they can also answer questions to demonstrate comprehension!
If you’re interested in short, comprehensible texts that relate to thematic units that you are probably already doing in your French 1, Spanish 1, and Italian 1 classes, check out my Reading Comprehension for Beginners resources below. Each resource comes with four comprehensible texts that are relevant and relatable to students’ lives. Each text comes with differentiated question types: true/false, multiple choice, and short answers, so you can easily differentiate by choosing whichever question format works best for your students. Oh, and did I mention that all questions come in English AND in the target language?!
Check out these resources by clicking on the thumbnails below:
Using CI in the World Language Classroom
I think there is a spectrum of CI usage in the World Language classroom: on one end of the spectrum, some teachers don’t use it intentionally at all, and on the other end of the spectrum, some teachers design most, if not all, of their lessons exclusively around comprehensible input. (These folks might self-identify as “CI Teachers” or describe their classroom as being a “CI Classroom.”)
For me and my teaching, I have found myself ending up somewhere in the middle: I use CI as a prominent feature of my instructional goals and activities, but I don’t necessarily design every single lesson around CI, either. I want my students to reap the benefits of comprehensible and compelling input, but there are so many other goals that I have for my students which, if I am being honest, are incompatible with the CI philosophy!
For example, when I am talking about the target culture or sharing an experience of mine living abroad, my communicative goal in those instances is to teach about culture. It’s often way too complex to accomplish this goal in the target language—or a quick, 2 minute story ends up taking 10 minutes if I am telling the story comprehensibly in the target language, which is not ideal either.
I am also not someone who believes that you are either a “CI Teacher” or a “Traditional Vocabulary and Grammar Teacher.” I think there is a healthy, balanced space where we (and our students) can thrive, in which we successfully blend communication, comprehensible input, culture, vocabulary, grammar, proficiency, and all of the other overarching goals we hope to accomplish in our World Language classrooms.
Comprehensible Input is a critical element of language acquisition. As World Language teachers, we should all be infusing CI into our lessons in compelling, engaging, and motivating ways. The research is clear that students need CI in order to progress in the target language. With that being said, I think that there are many other goals and objectives that we need to account for when lesson planning, so I do like to think of CI as a tool in my teaching toolbox rather than the whole toolbox itself.
I will be writing more comprehensive blog posts in the future in which I describe the specific CI techniques and strategies that I have found to be effective for my language learners. Do you use CI? What, in your view, are the most easily-seen benefits of using CI in your World Language Classroom? I’d love it if you could share your experience using CI in the comments below!
Happy language teaching,
~ Michael
