June 7, 2022

1.  16% of WL teachers leave the profession after their first year. 2.  47% of WL teachers have left the profession by the end of their second year. 3.  62% of WL teachers have left the profession by the end of their fourth year. 4.  86% of WL teachers have left the profession by the […]

In my opinion, one reason that kids don’t engage in our comprehensible input classes is that we don’t engage them. We get going too fast. We don’t invite them into the proceedings. We make it difficult for them. Maybe we get nervous about the method because we just haven’t got the experience we need with

Q. What does one do without the support of one’s colleagues when trying to make the change to comprehensible input based instruction? How does one react to a colleague who does not wish to implement a non-textbook approach within the same year grouping? How does one go about using CI to teach older students who

How odd that the power of the old guard and their influence on administrators, in the face of the actual research, is enough to keep teachers down, in a defensive posture, on their toes. The teachers are only trying their best in a failed system to employ comprehensible input in their classes. In the movie

A CI teacher has again locked horns with a parent simply because he uses best practices in foreign language instruction. Are there any CI teachers who have NOT had to deal with confrontations like this? James’ mother starts off her email to the teacher with: Bonjour, I wanted to follow up a bit to gain

I got this question from Michelle in Australia: Q. I really struggle to match the effortless way you stay in L2 and I feel like I’m not giving enough CI. A. Your point here is a valid concern, of course, but not if you think about it in terms of how much time it takes

Example 2: Nathaniel Hardt once received this letter from a parent. It is typical of the kind of letter teachers sometimes receive from parents who expect our comprehensible input-based classes to resemble other classes, with lots of memorization and homework, which they decidedly do not for the simple reason that in our work we have

Every now and then we get challenged by misguided and misinformed parents. They are often mean-spirited as well, especially when they feel that their child is not happy in our class. Their children are usually heavily robotic memorizers with not much in their social skills bank accounts. It must be our fault! Why don’t we

Example 3: This third example is from James’ teacher – who wishes to remain anonymous – who locked horns with a parent simply because he uses best practices in WL instruction. Are there any CI teachers who have NOT had to deal with confrontations like this? James’ mother starts off her email to the teacher

Please find below an extensive discussion about grading when using either the Middle School Square or the High School Star. You’ll need coffee, since this may be the single longest blog post I’ve shared, and I’ve been sharing these posts since 2004.  This information is the result of 40 years of intense personal introspection and

I’m working with a teacher who has been using Circling, which is the old way that some TPRS and CI teachers still use to get reps on words.  The problem is that – although teachers who still use Circling get plenty of reps on individual words – they are at the same time hampering the

Q. You’ve called QL3 and QL4 – where and with whom – the “power questions”. Can you elaborate? A. Many years ago while watching Susan Gross teach us about storytelling in many workshops, I just noticed it. I noticed that a story would “take off” when those questions were asked. It took some careful observing,