Keep that in mind, then, that when GPs panic because
they aren’t being taught “past, present and future,” during the first week, it
is because their folk-theory of language tells them that they are missing one
of the main details of any language. But in fact, they may be trying to jump
ahead three or four hundred hours!
Our own experience is that abilities that GPs have in
comprehension at Phase X will become common in their production ability at
Phase X + 1 (even from the beginning of Phase X+1):
Phase 1 (100 hours): comprehend here-&-now
tense-aspect-mood
Phase 2 (150 hours): comprehend story-event
tense-aspect-mood; produce here&now tense-aspect-mood
Phase 3 (250 hours): Produce story-event
tense-aspect-mood; comprehend story-backgrounding tense-aspect (He was
drinking his coffee when…)
Phase 4 (500 hours): Produce story-backgrounding
tense-aspect-mood; Understand expository and argumentative discourse.
Phase 5 (500 hours): Produce expository and
argumentative discourse.
This does not mean that there will be no experience
whatsoever with “story-event tense-aspect-mood,” for example, “past tense” in
Phases 1 and 2. Linguists talk about the inherent lexical semantics of verbs,
for example, “burst” is inherently a brief event, not stretching out over time.
(Other examples are “jab”,” “strike [a match],” “fall”.) In the here-and-now,
you can’t typically describe something in the process of bursting because the
event happens too suddenly and quickly to allow time to discuss it while it is
underway. (Well, you can describe something that is in the process of
bursting if it is in a still picture—such as a picture of a dam bursting.) With
such verbs, a GP, like a host baby, may primarily hear them, and hence
primarily know them, them in their story-event form (in English that is the simple
past tense). Or consider what linguists call “habitual aspect” (and English
teachers call them, ever-so-misleadingly, “simple present”). Such verb forms
might naturally belong to Phase 3 comprehension and Phase 4 production, since they
involve a type of “backgrounding” tense/aspect. However with “stative” verbs
such as “live” (Jean lives in France), and “know,” (Jean knows French)
again, GPs, like host babies may most frequently hear them in this aspect.
So the point is not that GPs following the Six-Phase
Programme have no experience with, say, “past tense” in listening comprehension
before Phase 2, nor with past tense production before Phase 3. Lots of more
advanced grammatical riches are going to be there all along. GPs become aware
of them to varying degrees before their time. Think of English “the” and “a”
which are extremely common even in Phase 1 listening, and probably come into
production already a little bit, even in Phase 1B. Yet most GPs will still not
use them in fully host-like ways (in listening comprehension, and hence also in
speaking) even in Phase 6.
If the nurturer were a teacher, she might have a list
of all the grammatical content she’d want to make GPs master. Based on the common
folk theory of language in the Anglophone world, then “Past, present and
future” will be high on her list of grammar points to teach as early as
possible, and she’ll try to get the GPs to master “the tenses” and to display
their mastery as early as possible.
However, a nurturer is not a teacher. A nurturer is
just including you in her languacultural world, and helping you to do what
you’re trying to do as you continue to develop and change. In Phase 1 and Phase
2 GPs aren’t generally trying to tell stories, and so the nurturer won’t be
helping them to form “past-tense” verbs very often. Those GPs will naturally be
trying to supply “past-tense” forms a lot in Phase 3, and hence the nurturer
will naturally be helping them a lot with this in Phase 3.
I haven’t been talking about “future tense,” but as
“past tense” goes with narrative, with story telling, “future tense” may come
into play when we share plans or undertake commitments, right? GPs can expect
to hear such forms in dialogues between characters in Phase 2 stories that they
help build, or in vocalisation of the thoughts of characters. In Phase 3 GPs
should be interacting with host people quite a lot outside of supercharged
participation, and naturally talking about plans, and undertaking commitments.
In terms of the US FSI/ILR levels, “future” is placed
with “past” at proficiency level 2 (720 hours).
Forms that are more naturally encountered in
expository discourse (you might hear grammar terms like “subjunctive” and
“conditional” and “irrealis”) will come in large quantities by Phase 4 and 5.
Languacultures differ much in all of these areas. In
Urdu, some of the more advanced forms (subjunctive and counterfactual conditional)
are truncations of less advanced forms (future and habitual, respectively). So
they aren’t that hard to form, but
they still come in their own time in terms of comprehending and producing them,
because the speech genres that are rich in them are difficult to understand and
produce until the GP is fairly far along.
In much of life, most GPs will be speaking a “personal
pidgin” (a term I learned from anthropologist Robbins Burling) in early phases.
In English, you’ll hear things like “I go to store” (used for “I went to the
store,” and “I’m going to go to the store.”) Personal pidgins really work, and the
personal pidgin stage really is a stage we need to pass through. The only path
to host-sounding speech lies across a large terrain of strange-sounding speech.
At the point when you find yourself trying to produce
a grammatical form which you previously were comprehending, then the GPA
advocates special effort, in a “just-in-time” spirit. Nurturers and other host
people help GPs to do what they are currently trying to do in natural
communication—not more advanced forms. This sometimes called “focus on form” as
opposed to the common teachers’ style of “focus on formS.” The latter ignores
what the students are and are not currently trying to do in their own
spontaneous speaking efforts. The GPA encourages focusing on form through
structured input, input flooding, output flooding, and record-yourself-for
feedback, but probably pre-eminently, in the constant process of conversation
between the GPs and nurturer, in which the GP struggles and the nurturer scaffolds.
Our “grammar-awareness raising” strategies begin, of course, in Phase 1, with
input floods and structured input, and the later grammar awareness raising activities,
like record-yourself-for feedback, can be used in an ongoing way, even in Phase
6.
Note: If you have received LLA training, but find you
have forgotten terms like “structured input” then you need to come again!
Non-memory of “structured input” could be the tip of an iceberg of non-memory!
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