OCTB Blog

Which foreign language should you learn? Should it be French, the language of love?  Mandarin, the most spoken language in the world? Or Spanish, the language of tacos and salsas? 

Watch this video where OCTB founder debunks the myth of comprehensible input as it's currently applied in language classes.

Wait...what is Comprehensible Input again?

We've talked here about what is missing in foreign language classes and we demonstrated that the one-to-many classroom setting is not ideal for the students to develop their speaking skills in a foreign language...and even less so in a virtual classroom. Now with a vast number of schools across the U.S. going online until September 1st 2020, foreign language teachers are increasingly incorporating EdTech in their teaching.

As we described in one of our previous posts, teachers are fighting an uphill battle in the classroom because of the one-to-many ratio of students to teachers is not conducive to learning a foreign language. Comprehensible input is a  technique often applied to foreign language teaching. Although this technique has many benefits, it has one major flaw: the lack of personalized content when applied to a the classroom setting. Before we denounce it, let's look at what "comprehensible input" really means!