We become adept at becoming aware of what we are feeling intuitively as teachers. We learn to feel our way creatively and expansively through a class without a lesson plan. We learn that good language teaching is not all about teaching a certain thing at a certain time, but rather just spending time with the kids […]
Have the researchers figured out how many combinations of words there are in languages? Have they figured out the form it assumes in human speech? Can they predict the form that language assumes? I’m thinking not. I don’t see how they could, anyway. There are too many combinations. So my opinion of language is that
I published this on the listserve about five years ago: The floorboards of our classrooms are rotting. How long have we waited for the final cave-in of each one! All of us will be dropped, all akimbo, each at the right moment for us, into the waiting underground lake of fluency. There, we will meet
Back in 2011 Robert Harrell offered this advice: One of the things we are supposed to do each day is write down a goal and agenda for every class every day. The goal is supposed to be in the form of “Students will be able to” (SWBAT). The idea is that if students know the
We did well with our quick responses to Keri’s question a few weeks ago. Now we only have, really, one day to help Steven Ordiano in Fresno with the following: Hi Ben, I would like to request feedback from the PLC with the following situation by Friday at noon, if possible. My instructional coach has
This article first appeared here in June of 2008: Jody Noble sent me, some months ago, a text written about foreign language education in our country by Dr. Jack Richards. Here is a portion of the text: “In the last decade or so language teaching has also been influenced by concepts and practices from the corporate
I was asked via email about the content of the Bite Size Books – what it looked like. I sent the person this example from our Bite Size Book of Student Artists, and share it here as well: Comprehension-based teachers sometimes get themselves all worked up with the challenge of providing repetitions of the language
Hi Ben, I wanted to give a report about how yesterday’s Open House went. Overall, it was a time to show off my French 1s freewrites with some supportive parents. However, harsh opinions were not too far away. I had a one particular parent who was adamant about me having to teach students skills like
Are there any AP teachers in our group who would briefly address the current state of the exam in terms of writing/grammar/essay requirements?
A teacher wrote and expressed fear that with Story Listening we might go from too much transparency (TPRS) to confusing the kids (SL). My position is that any confusion that the kids might experience in a Story Listening classroom would be a result not of methodology but of lack of individual eye contact in a
This is from Keri. Any responses, and pls send anything that comes into your minds, have about a one hour turnaround time since Keri is in CT and it is almost two o’clock there now: I am hoping someone could help me out with this: This afternoon the High School World Language teachers have a
I consider what Bryan wrote below to be of immense importance. Why? Because real language teaching is about some noise, and not making language instruction as transparent as we all have insisted on over the years. We really lost our way over the years with the focus on transparent instruction to teach specific linguistic elements that we
