Comprehensible input is language input (i.e. messages, either written or oral) that can be understood by listeners despite them not understanding all the words and structures in it. It is described as one level above that of the learners if it can only just be understood. According to Stephen Krashen's theory of language acquisition, giving learners this kind of input helps them acquire language naturally, rather than learn it consciously (i.e. learning grammatical rules and memorizing vocabulary).
My background as a language learner
Like many language teachers, I love grammar. No, really. I love morphology. I studied Spanish for six years from seventh grade through my senior year of high school and my favorite part was - no, not the songs "a la izquierda, a la derecha," not the camp edu-telenovela La Catrina - yep, conjugating verbs. I am a visual learner, so to see language beautifully arranged in charts was (and still is) a guilty pleasure.
 |
| *drools* |
From there I moved on to languages with even more inflections (Ancient Greek, Latin, Turkish) and loved the charts, the patterns, even Greek's quantitative metathesis. When I went back to school to get my MA and teaching license, I naïvely imagined that my future career as a Latin teacher would entail inspiring the future generations with the magic of morphology.
Acquiring a new approach
My first second language acquisition class shattered that dream when I learned that there was research and there were teachers who *gasp* advocated against the grammar-based curriculum in which I had thrived. Up to that point, I could not imagine any other way to teach or learn a language. Despite this existential crisis, I tried to keep an open mind. After all, I had come to grad school with two goals in mind: 1) to become as proficient in Latin as possible and 2) to become the best teacher I could for my future students. That latter goal motivated me to familiarize myself with various teaching methods and philosophies, even if I did not necessarily agree with them.
Before I started grad school and early in my MA program, I joined various Latin teacher groups on social media and mailing lists. One thing stood out to me: I would often see posts about this "Comprehensible Input." If it was being mentioned so often in these groups, it must have been important, so I needed at the very least to familiarize myself with it.
As I made my way through my MA program with coursework and teaching, my attitudes toward language teaching and the field of Classics began to shift. As I gained experience teaching Latin with a grammar-translation curriculum, I grew disillusioned at the grammar-translation approach's need for precision and memorization. My students would shut down because of all the vocabulary, principal parts, and charts that they had to memorize every week. Or they could memorize the endings, but then not apply that knowledge to translating practice sentences.
 |
| As funny as it was being turned into a meme, the struggle is real in a grammar-translation class. |
In my Latin 102 class, I decided to try to make the often overwhelming and tedious task of learning vocabulary more engaging and memorable. Each week every student had to choose one word from our weekly vocabulary list, give some sort of memorable presentation to help the class remember their word's meaning, and write an original sentence that used their word. To minimize frustration and encourage originality, I did not grade for grammatical accuracy on these original sentences. My students consequently had fun with this weekly assignment. Most presented with pictures on a slideshow, but some rolled it: they included YouTube videos, acted in front of the class, and even made memes of me.
 |
| I became a meme for one of my student's vocabulary assignments. But hopefully they learned the meaning of temptat! |
I have always believed in personalizing one's language learning experience and encouraged my students to take ownership of the language (I have been an advocate of "active" Latin from day one). Language, after all, is humanity's most natural form of self-expression. As I moved away from grammar-translation teaching to more acquisition-focused teaching, I noticed that my students were far more comfortable using the language. The Latin language was no longer something to be feared or memorized, but something to be used for communication and fun. Readings were no longer a burden, but an opportunity for students to get lost in a new story and to celebrate their progress in their language acquisition.
Being true to myself and to my students
My students' language learning experiences made me reflect upon my own and my own thoughts regarding the Classics. What motivated me to study Greek and Latin in the first place? What did I want to do with these languages?
I eventually learned about the distinction between learning about a language and language acquisition. Learning about a language means that you know the grammar and probably some linguistic features of the language, but you might not ever interact with the language per se. Language acquisition means that you know the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of the language subconsciously. You communicate naturally and your use of the language is intuitive. This ties into the distinction between reading and translating. Reading is natural; you think in the language in which the text was written. Translation (for many language learners) is putting the language into English to make sense of the original text. All too often, students have had to translate Latin texts into English because they cannot read these texts naturally.
When I realized this, I felt embarrassed as a classicist. Here I was in graduate school for Classics and in our graduate seminars we - grad students and professors alike - were consulting English translations of the Latin texts we were 'reading.' I thought to myself, "We do this because we are not fluent enough to read these texts normally. What other language field consults English translations in their graduate seminars?! We classicists know these languages better than anyone else, but do we really know them?!"
 |
| Loebs exist for a reason. |
I even had a professor who said that Greek and Latin "aren't languages you can just pick up and read like French or Italian." Ancient Greek and Latin are said to be difficult languages because they are highly inflected, but when there are other, more complex languages that people use and learn every day (e.g. Lithuanian), I refuse to believe that Greek and Latin are exceptionally difficult. The problem is not the languages themselves, but the ways we have been taught, which we then use to teach our own students. We classicists love research, but for too long the field has taught its languages using methods that have no basis in second language acquisition research.
A large part of the problem is that most Greek and Latin programs want their students to 'read' classical literature as quickly as possible (often, after one to two years of studying vocabulary and grammar). Almost all of the works in the canon of classical literature, however, were written for a highly educated and elite audience. Would we expect that students learning English read Shakespeare or academic articles after a year or so?
Don't get me wrong - I love classical literature and I am so grateful that my college and grad school coursework taught me to appreciate it, but I disagree with our field's attachment to the canon for several reasons. First, post-classical Greek and Latin almost always are disregarded and discredited. All too often I've heard the problematic opinion that post-classical literature is inherently inferior and derivative. I came to college as a medievalist, so I have long enjoyed Byzantine Greek and Medieval Latin and defended their value and study. Add to this the fact that more Latin texts survive from the Middle Ages than from the Classical period and even more survive from the Renaissance onward - and many of these texts have yet to be translated into English! How many times have we Latinists heard, "Why learn Latin if everything has already been translated?" Why do we stubbornly cling to the canon when there is plenty of literature to go around?! Sorry, not sorry, but let's give Digenis Akritis its time in the spotlight instead of another tired reinterpretation of Aeneid Book IV. Don't even get me started on how we exclude 1000 years of history of Roman civilization by calling it 'Byzantine.'
One argument used to discredit Medieval Latin and Neo-Latin is that it was not written by native speakers of Latin. This argument is problematic for a couple reasons. First, several canonical authors were not native speakers of Greek and/or Latin. Second, consider the message the argument sends to our students. Is the English produced by non-native speakers - our students! - inherently inferior too? Should we disregard twenty-first-century English literature written by non-native speakers too? Latin would not have survived for so long without the care and dynamism of its medieval and modern speakers, many of whom we would regard as fluent.
What does all this have to do with my journey to CI? Too many of us Latin teachers have to teach with the canon in mind *cough*AP*cough*. But the model to get students to the canon is flawed, both in its approach and in its intent. Students do not acquire the language nor do they read it naturally. Very few students want to read the canonical authors specifically. Many students enroll in our classes because they want to read myths. I would love for my students to read Hesiod and Ovid one day, but that is simply unrealistic for the two, three, maybe four years we have with our students.
I think back to my motivations for studying Greek and Latin. I wanted to read the words of the Greeks and Romans; to see their points of view; to understand their values, identities, and challenges. The canon certainly offers all this and more to me, but not exclusively. For me, papyri, epitaphs, and graffiti are just as enjoyable to read. My point is: the canon is great, but not at the expense of other texts and not at the detriment to our students and to ourselves.
What I do now
My teaching, coursework, and reflection in grad school reshaped my philosophy for teaching Latin. Fortunately, I had the chance to get hands-on experience teaching with CI during my student teaching practicum. The school's Latin program was transitioning to CI, so my mentor teacher and I were buzzing with ideas and excited at the novelty. Half of my teaching load was using CI in two sections of Latin I. My belief in CI and my positive experiences with it made me want to continue to do it.
Fast forward to today: I teach in a completely CI Latin program in a multicultural suburban public high school with five other Latin teachers. My goal each and every day for my students is that they understand the Latin that I share with them and that their interests and identities be celebrated in our communication in Latin. We read short stories, discuss the world of the past and of today, compare our experiences, and laugh. For too long the teaching of Latin has stagnated, at best, and, at worst, been threatened with extinction. For me, CI is the spice in the recipe for success.
