What is CI teaching? If you’ve been in the ecosystem of world language teachers for more than five minutes, you’ve heard a couple of these terms:

• proficiency-oriented instruction
• comprehensible input
• communicative approach to language instruction
• comprehensive input
• traditional or even legacy instruction

What does all this even mean??? Let’s sort it out and figure out what the terms mean for you and your class.

We’ll talk in this post about some of the sources of this confusion, why comprehensible input is a vital component of your classroom approach (but isn’t in itself a teaching method), and the main differences between the more common/traditional approach and where world language is headed. Let’s talk about CI teaching!

A note about terms when comprehensible input comes up

I’ve now been a world language consultant, instructional coach, and conference host for CI teachers for a few years. An important distinction often comes up when the discussion inevitably turns to the subject of comprehensible input.

In world language classrooms (but not SLA), this term has become very muddled.

With love, and to borrow a term from a favorite peloton instructor, it’s time for some tactful pettiness. 😉 For a group of language experts, we world language teachers sure do struggle with our own terms.

In just a few short years, several confusing variations for similar ideas and philosophies have popped up: CI, proficiency, communicative approach, TCI, to name the ones I’m familiar with.

Although I agree it’s important to clarify these, I feel it’s much more important to look past small differences in similar enough paths forward.

Let’s instead as a community recognize the uncomfortable truth and elephant in the room of every world language conference:

You can argue the nuances and nitpick the differences all you want between these very similar terms. None of that will change the fact that the VAST majority of teachers in North America are forced to use traditional (outdated) instructional methods because they don’t have the resources and necessary support to update.

You’re a Dang Miracle Worker as a World Language Teacher

P.S. If that’s you, and you find yourself still bound to traditional methods or just-anything-that-will-get-me-through-seventh-period-dear-lord, that’s OK!

We’ve all been there, and I see you. The fact that you still show up every day as a teacher for your students is in itself a MIRACLE. So give yourself grace and know that you’re still enough, no matter what your journey to proficiency looks like right now. We’re all moving forward – pretty slowly – together.

Anyone who antagonizes you for not being proficiency enough simply has too much time on their hands and should worry more about their self-care, because their cup is clearly empty. ❤️😉

Proficiency Oriented Instruction

If I had my way, I would say this is my personal favorite term for the direction world language is moving in:

Proficiency-oriented instruction.

Profiency-oriented instruction is defined by students using language in class, interacting with language as much as possible, and being assessed on their abilities to communicate ideas in the target language at certain proficiency levels.

The Research Behind Proficiency and Comprehensible Input

Proficiency-oriented instruction eliminates the emphasis on language features as the main vehicle to language acquisition. This usually refers to the grammar and simple memorization that everyone has probably done or taught as both a language learner and teacher.

Much research over decades has now shown this to be untrue.

Instead, meaningful opportunities for understanding and interaction with the language is what leads to more language in our heads.

Find out more about the research to support proficiency-oriented instruction and second language acquisition here:

• The Research Behind Comprehensible Input
• Second Language Acquisition
• The Role of Grammar in Spanish Class
• The Role of Grammar in French Class
• What is Universal Grammar?

In addition, all major outlets that guide world language instruction : the CEFR and ACTFL to name the ones many work with, advocate for this view.

So what do we do with grammar? In this new lens, grammar and other features of language are treated as tools to help students polish their language and better understand the language they already have. But it does not help add new language – this is the crucial difference.

In a nutshell, grammar isn’t bad, it just isn’t nearly as important or as useful as most of our current practices make it out to be.

So Where Does Comprehensible Input Fall Into The Discussion?

A huge misconception (that districts often request training about) is the difference between what CI is and what it most certainly is NOT. In the simplest terms, comprehensible input is merely this:

Comprehensible input: any input a learner understands and finds compelling.

That’s it.

It’s a term that comes from SLA, second language acquisition research. Although it’s actually an element of many rather successful approaches in proficiency-oriented instruction, it’s become a way that like-minded teachers find each other in a crowded online space, conference, or district.

CI Teaching and CI Teachers

Comprehensible Input quickly morphed into CI, which although is definitely NOT a teaching approach, became a calling card for a community of teachers who shared a similar philosophy:

input is the magic of language, not rules and repetition.

So when you hear teachers identifying both themselves and various activities as CI, what they mean is that it shares the proficiency-oriented philosophy that input rules the day.

I’m equally guilty of this – my conference for proficiency-oriented instruction often uses the term CI and CI -identifying teachers, although we try to move further and further away from this rather confusing term. But the truth of the matter is this, and language teachers know better than anyone:

once a term sticks and people start using it, it’s part of our language. And it becomes really difficult to reverse that.

So what does that mean for the field of world language?

Well, dear teacher, many brilliant colleagues are trying to reverse this trend by being as crystal clear as possible about their approaches by nuancing their terms. This is how many new ones have appeared.

Teaching for communication, TCI, teaching for comprehensible input, teaching with comprehensible input, and my personal fave, proficiency-oriented instruction through CI rich methods.

But it’s way too long. I’m still workshopping it.

The Difference Between CI Rich Proficiency and Legacy Instruction

Are you ready to get into the good stuff? Now that we’ve covered the confusing terms you’ll see in CI teaching, we’re ready to talk about what this approach actually looks like.

Also, note again (in case you skimmed above – no judgement) that the terms vary and are not nearly as important as the heart of the approach. You may see communicative teaching, teaching for communication, my personal fave proficiency-oriented instruction through CI, or even just teaching with comprehensible input. They are all very similar. They can vary on how people feel about the silent period and output activities. But for the big picture, we’re looking at these approaches versus legacy.

Legacy Teaching

So let’s take a look at legacy teaching. When I refer to legacy teaching, I’m talking about the things that you’re probably used to in a classroom setting that maybe you grew up with or that you were taught.

It’s things like practice, present, or drill and kill.

Some people even say like a heavy grammar focus, but proficiency can also have a grammar focus. It depends on how you do it. Legacy teaching is like more traditional practice. Proficiency practice (and CI teaching) is where we have a different mindset and focus on what we’re doing in class and why. 

Please also note that legacy teaching is not necessarily bad teaching. There are a lot of good elements from legacy teaching. They’re just borrowed from other academic disciplines. And if you look into the record historically, they’re borrowed from some research and practices from really like the 40s and 50s. So you should be thinking already in your head – well we’ve moved beyond that. We have a lot more neuroscience.

Many elements of legacy teaching come from the Greek legacy in the 1800s of being very proficient in a classical language. And this is world language. So we’re working in a whole different area. 

So legacy teaching is not bad persay, it’s just not all of those things work for what we’re trying to do, which is proficiency.

CI Teaching vs Legacy Teaching in Units – Example

Legacy teaching, here’s the difference in an example with units. When a legacy teacher is prepping units, they say:
“we need to prepare students for all the scenarios that we as teachers experience while we are traveling.”

Sounds very sound, right? That’s a not a bad thing to work towards. 

Here’s the difference in proficiency style or CI teaching:

CI oriented teaching says this:

“Let’s prep students to use the language right here right now with us for a goal, to learn more about themselves, to learn more about the people around them, to learn more about the world around them.”

More vocabulary will equal more learning. If we put more words in their heads, they’ll be able to express themselves more. And the point of view for proficiency is actually, let’s give students the tools to figure out unfamiliar things. Let’s focus more time on that. 

They will learn words as they hear them in context. 

The other example that I have for you here is let’s make sure that students know most words to talk about and understand breakfast. Then they will be prepared for everything that breakfast has for them. This is the main difference in proficiency, especially from the intercultural aspect. 

CI Teachers Personalize Lesson Plans Instead of Covering Content 

If you teach week to week, it’s gonna be different, and you flesh that out. So how does that work? Well, let’s make a mindset shift for cut, cut, cut. Instead of covering content, don’t cover content, let’s personalize content, and let’s equip students for exactly what they need to be able to do the skill that you’re looking for.

What I mean by that is instead of, we’re gonna use the example of meal times and breakfast, because breakfast is my favorite meal time, for all of the examples that we use today. And if you’re talking about breakfast, instead of covering all of the different things that you could put on a breakfast table to say, like, I need to cover breakfast. They need to be ready for everything that might be on a test about breakfast. 

CI Teaching Equips Students Rather than Covering Everything

Switch your mindset into saying, how can I equip students to talk about what they eat for breakfast?

• How can I make sure that when somebody else is talking about what they eat for breakfast, the student understands? 
• What are those words that they need? 
• What are the in-between connector words that they’ll need? 
• What are the things that they’re probably going to hear the most? 

Because I bet the process that’s going in your brain right now is, well dang, they’re going to hear the word eat a lot.

They’re going to hear it in a couple different ways instead of the legacy usual dilemmas:

oh I need to teach them a lot of foods. And am I going to have time to talk about the cutlery? And what about the plates?

That shift alone, make sure that you’re covering the essential terms, the essential functional chunks, instead of stuff that your students probably don’t need. Not everybody needs all the same things. 

Proficiency Approach to a Breakfast Unit: 

Let’s use language to spark curiosity about others and then help students be introspective about their own culture by doing a deep dive into one location’s:

•  breakfast routines
• breakfast habits
•  perspectives on breakfast
• The products behind breakfast
• how people feel about breakfast
•  What they usually do with breakfast

All from one city, cultural group, or place with a shared identity, so that they get the full iceberg of culture. And that contrasts a great bit with Let’s make sure students understand breakfast in the Francophone world (a massive undertaking).

This is the most significant difference that you’ll experience though, with legacy teaching, the perspective is accuracy leads to mutual understanding. When you have interlocutors, there’s an L1 speaker and an L2 speaker, accuracy will make sure that they understand each other.

Interculturality & The Proficiency Perspective on Culture

But with proficiency, the perspective is interculturality.

Interculturality: Being able to understand each other’s culture, as well as they’re being able to interact appropriately with people and using communication skills, not just language proficiency, but also all communication skills available to them will lead to mutual understanding. It will just lead to it at different levels.

 That’s the main difference. Looking at this, you can see this has a very different goal. Proficiency through comprehensible input (and all the various terms) wants students to be a part of the process, wants personalization, and wants the here-and-now value of the actual classroom context.

It does not seek to be the expert for teachers, and it doesn’t feel the pressure to make sure that students know everything and that they’re just a bucket that we’re filling things into. That’s more a legacy thing.

This one is more the, how am I equipping students to do this cool thing, the skill that they can then develop on their own and they can be in charge of.

The importance of personalization and empowerment

I want to make sure that you’re seeing here the ties that you have to culturally responsive pedagogy. This is why I make the argument that proficiency is the most culturally responsive teaching method for world language because it challenges the role of being a knowledge gatekeeper.

Our role as teachers here is to spark curiosity, equip students, give them the tools to do things right here, right now, and give them communication skills. Whereas the legacy method is very much all about, let’s make sure that students know these things that we think are important, which very much sets you up for a limited lens view.

With legacy methods, you’re ignoring all of the value that students have in the language acquisition process everything that they bring to the table, and all of the power of personalization. 

CI Teaching = Culturally Responsive and Relevant Pedagogy for World Language

Culturally relevant teaching in world language respects the value-add that students have and recognizes that they are 50% of the process. The teacher is there to help them get there in the fastest way possible and move along the stages of proficiency faster. We help them feel awesome about language learning because motivation is the number one factor for success in acquisition time and time again, research and research study again. 

My #1 CI Teaching and Proficiency Tip You Can Do Right Now

So all of this boils down to this one important thought that I have for you. Cut your list, cut your list so that you can focus on student contributions, because when your vocabulary list is jammed full of things, your students don’t have room to share with you what’s important to them, and that’s why it’s so important.

So if you do nothing else, if you have time for nothing else with your units, cut your list, cut your vocabulary down, and leave space and room for your students to show you how interesting they are, how cool they are, how much they have to add to your classroom.

In Conclusion & Resources for Proficiency Oriented Instruction

It’s a lifestyle.

Kidding!

However, most of the terms we discussed related to CI teaching and any relationship to proficiency can be united under the shared philosophy that:

• the learner is the center of class, not the teacher
• input (and depending on your camp, meaningful output) opportunities lead to language growth, NOT practice or memorization of language features
• language acquisition is a community-oriented process and the teacher is the facilitator rather than the gatekeeper of knowledge
• presentation and practice is too slow to bother with
• comprehensible input leads to significant language acquisition

This is a big shift and a big ask for teachers. Want some support with this journey? Don’t worry, I have resources for you.

Roadmap to Proficiency

Transitioning to proficiency is HARD. Let this guide show you how to choose small, doable steps that actually make your classroom practice easier instead of harder. Yes, proficiency can shorten your planning with the right approach! Download the roadmap to proficiency and read the guide here to see how.

Free Conference for World Language Teachers 

If you’re ready to jump in and get started with proficiency and teaching with comprehensible input, I have another resource to help you on your journey below:

Sign Up for the Next Practical & Comprehensible Free Virtual Conference! Every year, I gather together the best and brightest in the field of world language to share with you how to switch to proficiency through comprehensible input. All with practical ideas that you can use tomorrow. It’s a FREE virtual conference – join the waitlist and find out more about the speakers here.

Thanks for being here!

Rooting for you,