Q. At what level is all of this work with the Invisibles the most effective? A. For me it is with sixth graders. They really get into it. But I think all middle school levels can “go there”. However, if the kids have ever had a year or more of traditional book based verb conjugation […]
Pamela: “I made lots of copies with “fill in the blank space” exercises, so at least I can tell the parents that I tried everything I could, and their kids are just not able to understand it. I do think that we all are able to learn a language – we already did so with
Pamela: “My students find it exhausting and tedious to answer similar questions over and over again.” Tina: I just sense your frustration here. I know the feeling! You knock yourself out trying something new, you are stepping outside your comfort zone, and you are not getting the results, and you are second-guessing yourself. But I
Pamela had said that her students reacted to Circling with this response: “Do you think we are stupid? We did understand who did what where when and how. Stop asking that question over and over again.” She went on: “Even though I know that they even don’t understand easy texts and cannot produce one single
Tina continues (pls refer to the first article in this series to refresh your awareness of Pamela’s concerns): In the interest of Krashen’s ability to read the longer messages (and I am told he reads them all) I am making these short, though I have a lot of ideas for Pamela. And yes, I agree
Tina continues her response to Pamela’s concerns expressed in the previous article: Tina: I said earlier that I would provide ways to provide repetition without circling. To provide repetitions outside without having to rely on “circling” you could: “Ask” a story or tell a story to them using comprehensible language. Circle to the extent that
Pamela expressed concerns about TPRS recently in a discussion online. In the next six articles here, Tina responds to her: Pamela: Maybe I’m not the right teacher for TPRS. I don’t know. It doesn’t work for me. On the hand, the class is expected to create a story. On the other hand, I need to
Q You refer to the idea of a “group mind”. Can you expand on that? A. It’s the collective unconscious mind of the class, and is perhaps the most unifying tool in building community. We enjoy our community by envisaging the same happy and interesting things together. I remember that last year Pringle Man had
Steven wrote this about a month ago here: …we can try our best to map the great sea of CI via systems and strategies like TPRS and circling. etc… but nontargeted CI has really been the most underrated and under-noticed revolutionary movement. Teachers are afraid because it undermines their control. But the complexity of SLA
Q. How did you not get fired with an attitude where you are advocating just talking to the kids in the target language, not evaluating speech or writing, when in fact you were supposed to be addressing a curriculum with measurable outcomes and evaluate what the kids can actually do with the language? A. Well,
Q. You seem to have finally reached a place with your teaching where you are happy. What was the very worst part of your career leading up to this point of being professionally content? It was what I just mentioned, the misery of only reaching a few kids in a class of thirty or so,
I hope we get some deep answers to this major question from Alisa which is very applicable to current discussion in the CI community: I am getting emboldened to dump my ‘classical’ circling and PQA in favor of all out non-targeted language usage. (I seldom target classically anymore, but I do circle and PQA still…I
