Thoughts on Online Instruction
Marko Sanden wrote this as a comment here on the PLC last week. It contains good insights into the details of online language instruction: "I remind them regularly that my assumption is that they WILL demonstrate interpersonal communication skills and that I've
When They Don’t Participate
What if your students don’t want to give any real energy to the interactive activities that we have worked so hard to learn as we have retooled our classrooms over to comprehensible input? What if the kids just act totally
Stepping Stones to Stories
If you have a copy of this book, please send me the PDF at benslavic@yahoo.com. I can't find it in my computer. Merci d'avance! (I'll send you other free books in return.)
Toxic Culture of Education
A repost: Eric says: If you haven't seen this talk, then check it out. It's much of what Krashen and Ravitch have been saying forever! While not being about the FL classroom, I feel it sums up a lot of what we
Robert Harrell – Advice on Administrators
Robert has offered some sterling advice on how to deal with administrators: 1. Have a checklist hanging by the door telling all visitors how exactly to observe your comprehensible input classroom. Ask the evaluator(s) to take one the moment they walk
Advertising for New Ultimate CI Books
My new website - much changed - will be live soon. I keep saying soon, but there is so much involved in web development, as many of us who have written books for our colleagues know. I do like this
Updated Star
For Sean and others doing it, here is the updated Star Sequence curriculum. Note that in Phases 1 and 2 everything is auditory which sets up a nice visual (reading) experience for our students in Phases 3, 4 and 5. Also
Communicating with Doubting Parents
In this communication between Robert Harrell and a parent, we almost have a template from Robert that we could modify to use to answer parent inquiries like the one he recently received below: Good afternoon Mr. Harrell, My wife and I have been after
Little Blue Hand Reading
From our unmatched superstar Alisa, good stuff on online reading: "Regarding round-robin (one at a time) style reading – here’s a suggestion – dunno what the button names in Hangouts are but it works over Zoom. You screenshare the reading, then
Why Did We Ever Start Studying Grammar?
More from Robert Harrell: If you follow the history of the teaching of languages, a number of practices become logical - even if misguided. Up until the early modern period, Latin and Greek were taught as means of communication. When those languages