Our discussion of what CI is continues: Here is how Wikipedia defines Dr. Stephen Krashen’s approach: …the natural approach is a method of language teaching developed by Stephen Krashen and Tracy Terrell in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It aims to foster naturalistic language acquisition in a classroom setting, and to this end it […]
This article discusses the general theory and practice of comprehensible input in the World Language classroom. After it, I will begin to post more and more articles on non-targeted comprehensible input, since I think that it is vastly superior to targeted instruction. For those still interested in targeted instruction, there are ten years of articles
David Strock has a question: Hi Ben, Below is my first post in this PLC. I hope I understood correctly, that we email you our question/comment and you will share it with the group. [ed. comment: yes, this is encouraged…] After attending a workshop by Susan Gross in 2007 I drank the kool-aid and embraced
Julia comments on the concept of enthusiasm in her own work: …something that I love about NTCI is that I have the freedom to follow and share my own interests. Last night I was reading more about 19th century missionaries along the US-Mex border and was really enthralled, and so I talked about that today
It is the focus on gains that inhibits are own ability to be enthusiastic each day. Unless we can expect new things, untargeted things, spontaneous and serendipitous things to happen, how can we get excited about our jobs? We always seem to be “targeting” certain words connected to the textbook, the novel du jour, the
Dear Ben, Today I told the story of Junípero Serra to my 6th graders. I felt like doing a history inspired lesson this morning, so we did! (Ahhhh the freedom.) The kids are completely understanding these days and they loved this lesson. Even though it wasn’t an Invisibles lesson, they still were invited to use
For a long time I knew that Piedad Gutierrez was swimming upstream trying to get to the non-targeted place along with me and Tina and about four other people that we knew over the years. She just finished a training in New Jersey in which she covered the following topics. It’s very similar to where
Here is a look at how the Square Peg Round Hole Book. It beautifully reflects and aligns the New Natural Approach books to the standards. This is a significant statement in terms of Greg’s earlier comment here today about Paul Sandrock and the book lobby sham. Both A Natural Approach to Stories and A Natural
Cameron Taylor in Japan has written a nice complement to the Natural Approach books. Here is his introduction to it: Dear Colleague, Many of us are required to have standards, enduring understandings, essential questions, objectives, assessments, and can-do statements ready at a moment’s notice. It is sometimes difficult for our administrators, parents, learners and even
A question from Jonathan in VA: Ben- Wanted to shoot a question out to the PLC, re: educational travel. Looking for ideas for travel for students of Spanish and/or French. The typical EF & Explorica are the ones that pop up online, and they do seem to have more options now toward the immersion learning
Dear Ben, I wanted to share with you and the group little success stories. The kids do FVR every day for ten minutes. Yesterday, I found one of our books in the teacher’s room next door. I was put out for a second that whoever was reading it didn’t put it back on my desk,
