As a young and inexperienced French teacher, I was led to believe that repetition was the key to my students' success. Time and again, I was told that if I wanted my students to learn to speak French, I needed to make them repeat, repeat, repeat. Choral responses, scripted dialogues and verb drills were supposed to be the building blocks of fluency. Besides, these types of activities filled every textbook I was required to use, and I relied heavily on them.
I know I’m not alone. Numerous expressions reinforce the concept that repetition is essential to learning:
"Practice makes perfect."
"What gets repeated gets remembered."
"Repetition breeds retention."
"Repetition is the key to mastery."
"The more you do it, the better you get."
"An ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory."
And the big daddy of them all, "Repetition is the mother of all learning."
But as I watched my students struggle to use the language we had taken so much time to practice, I began to wonder: If repetition alone is enough, why aren’t my students picking up the language as quickly as I did when I lived in France?
My students could name every item in their backpacks, every room in a house and most fruits and vegetables in a market. In other words, they could parrot back loads of rehearsed phrases. But when it came to actual communication, most were lost, and I felt frustrated.
The wrong kind of repetition
It took me years to realize that I was pursuing the wrong kind of repetition. You see, all the repetition I was aiming for required my students to do the repeating: produced repetitions. I thought that them doing and saying things would lead to acquisition.
Instead, what I’ve come to learn is that the kind of repetition that they need most is repetition coming in: processed repetitions, not produced repetitions. They don’t need robotic repetition; they need robust exposure to the language. In other words, students need compelling, comprehensible and varied input that engages them with the language in a way that their brains can actually process.
Repetition vs robust exposure
This is where the distinction between repetition and robust exposure comes into focus.
“Repeat after me” exercises might get students to say the words, but they don’t necessarily help them acquire the language. Repeating out loud focuses on memorization. Students can repeat without understanding, and they can repeat without purpose or context. Without understanding and out of context, memorizing phrases in the target language is no different from memorizing math facts. It’s not building proficiency, it’s building knowledge.
Robust exposure, on the other hand, focuses on meaning. It’s about creating opportunities for students to hear the same language in varied, relevant and engaging contexts again and again. It is the idea that teachers surround students with understandable, high-frequency language across a range of contexts. Instead of drilling isolated phrases, we give students repeated encounters with the same words through stories, conversations, songs, readings and games.
Each time the student engages with the language, their brains are processing what they can and building up an internal language system. (Learn more here!) The exposure feels fresh because the context changes, even when the core vocabulary does not.
Practice Makes Perfect, but Repeated Exposure…
It may be true that practice makes perfect. But repeated exposure? Well, there are no guarantees. Language acquisition is a complex process, and we cannot ultimately control what our students acquire. Not with robotic repetition, and not even with robust exposure.
However, because some key ingredients that drive acquisition include comprehension, frequency and emotional connection, robust exposure gives language a chance to take root. It makes words available to be acquired. It doesn’t force learning — it fosters it.
Fostering language acquisition is like tending soil. If the soil is good, the plant can grow. Will it? Maybe, maybe not. But if the soil is poor, growth is unlikely. Robust exposure enriches the soil so that language can be acquired. But will it? Maybe, maybe not. At least the conditions are right for acquisition to happen.
What it Looks Like to Provide Robust Exposure
Let me show you how this plays out in my own classroom.
Let’s take a 10-hour teaching block from my French I class at the start of the year. Over time, I’ve learned to focus on high-frequency words, regardless of the level I’m teaching. Thanks to educators like Terry Waltz and Mike Peto, I keep a list of high-frequency verbs front and center and use them to create context-rich situations that provide consistent, meaningful exposure.
In the first few days, I zero in on verbs like wants, has, sees, is happy and likes/loves. I chose these verbs because they will allow us to communicate about many topics that are of high interest and relevance to my students!
So what does that mean to zero in on those verbs? It means that I am looking for many opportunities to use those words in context so that my students are hearing and reading them many times, in many different ways: robust exposure!
To provide robust exposure to those core verbs in the early days of school, I begin by writing or projecting them in French and English and assigning a corresponding gesture, often inspired by ASL, to each word.
First context: Learning names and interests
During that first week of school, one of my main goals is to learn students’ names and pronounce them correctly. I ask students to make name tents and include a drawing of something they love. These visuals serve as low-stakes entry points for connection and communication. If Hayden draws a dog, I might say: « Hayden, tu aimes les chiens ? » (Hayden, you like dogs?) — pointing to Hayden for “tu,” using the gesture for “aimes,” and miming or pointing to the dog.
The goal is comprehension with connection. Hayden might respond with a nod, “yes” or a tentative oui. I confirm with, « Tu aimes les chiens ! » (You like dogs!) — not as a question, but as a statement. It’s another meaningful exposure of aime, but this time grounded in a real interaction.
Then I turn to the class: « Classe, Hayden aime les chiens. » (Class, Hayden likes dogs.) Now we’re building community and reinforcing high-frequency language, all in one.
New contexts
We don’t abandon the verbs after that first conversation. Robust exposure means leaning into a wide range of activities that create a context for students to keep hearing and reading those same verbs: wants, has, sees, is happy and likes/loves:
- Modified TPR
- StoryAsking
- A class selfie activity
- Two different ClipChats
- Several versions of Listen & Draw
- Co-created text (Write and Discuss)
- A couple of Gimkits or Blookets
- Two Songs
- Several Short readings
- Various games
All this happens while we build classroom community and help students feel comfortable, capable and successful. The language they hear isn’t just repeated; it’s being used. And that, ultimately, is the difference.
Robust exposure isn’t a strategy
It’s important to remember that robust exposure isn’t an activity; it’s a skill. It’s not something you check off a lesson plan, but something you learn to cultivate with practice and intention. The activities listed above are simply vehicles for me to provide robust exposure to the language I want to get into my students’ heads.
It's the techniques we employ while leading those activities (how we sustain comprehension, recycle language in new ways and stay responsive to our students) that make the exposure robust. Like any craft, honing this key skill deepens over time as we tune in more closely to our learners and get better at creating the kinds of interactions that help language stick.
Honing this skill is worth it. When we commit to cultivating robust exposure in our classrooms, we create spaces where all students feel capable of acquiring language: where they feel seen, connected and successful. Those are the spaces where learners want to keep showing up, where they find joy in using the language and where they begin to see themselves as speakers of the language.
We may not be able to control exactly what students acquire, but we can shape the conditions that make acquisition possible—and that is our language teacher superpower!
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This article was written by Donna Tatum-Johns, Professional Learning Specialist with The Comprehensible Classroom. Donna leads professional development and supports teachers in implementing acquisition-driven instruction in their classrooms. She also leads the French teacher community Au Salon des profs.
