Does CI Work? H*ll Yeah it Does!

Today is the final day of IFLT, and it has been such a great conference. Yesterday morning, I got the chance to observe Linda Li teach Mandarin, and if you remember, I took a 20-hour Fluency Fast Mandarin class from Linda back in 2017. Even though it had been two years since I had done any Mandarin and I did not remember much, I still wanted to watch Linda perform her CI magic with her students. However, after just watching Linda interact with her students for 5 minutes in Mandarin, I was ABSOLUTELY FLOORED at how much Mandarin suddenly came back to me. Suddenly, I was completely understanding what Linda was saying, even though it had been two years since I had interacted with the language. Linda even asked me to participate in a game in Mandarin with her students, and I was able to take part in it fully.

To be honest, I have absolutely NO IDEA how that language got there in my mind so deeply, especially since it had been two years since I had even thought about Mandarin. I cannot tell you how I was able to recall all that Mandarin after two years. All I can say is that the Mandarin must have gotten there subconsciously two years ago, because I certainly have made no active effort over the past two years to learn any Mandarin. If you read my post about learning Mandarin from Linda in that 20-hour class in 2017, you will learn that we never did any oral practice drills or used flashcards. All that Linda required from us was that we listen to her, pay attention, and interact with the language in a comprehensible manner in so many different ways. Seeing Linda teach Mandarin yesterday suddenly re-activated that part of my brain where Mandarin had been stored away subconsciously, and it all came back in a POWERFUL way. 

That is the difference between learning and acquisition. Learning is active in nature, and in a language class it involves conscious, explicit learning, such as memorization, flashcards, grammar drills, oral repetition practice, and forced dialogues. That is not to say that material is not learned this way, but it is stored in a different part of the brain which holds temporary memory. Acquisition, however, is different, because it is subconscious,"passive," and implicit. This is not to say that a learner in a CI classroom is not learning or engaged in the material; the material is just delivered differently in a way so that it does not mirror explicit learning. Learning becomes subconscious, and as a result, it is stored in a completely different of the brain. Based on my own personal experience from yesterday, I can say that this is true.

So do I think that CI works? Since I have experienced it truly myself first hand as a student and realize now that Mandarin is so deeply inside of me in a way that I am unable to explain after yesterday's experience, all I can say is H*LL YEAH IT DOES!