Never one to obfuscate or confuse, our Steve Ordiano said something in a comment here this morning that bears repeating. It is an idea that is refreshing and quite new in the CI community, which in spite of all the rhetoric is still very tied to curricular objectives and lists of words and, dare I […]
Last year from time to time our elementary French teacher would bring her 5th graders in to visit my middle school classes. Whenever the kids came, they would share something that they had been working on. But I could always tell that the stuff they said was rehearsed. They weren’t actually saying it, they had memorized it,
Someone on FB named Thomas attacked my one pointed focus on Krashen and CI, arguing, like so many other foreign language teachers, for a more eclectic approach. This is my unapologetic response to him: Thomas you miss the point. I have been teaching for 38 years and my conclusion is that Dr. Krashen has it
Stephen Krashen – April 26, 2012 How’s this: Don’t worry about number of repetitions. Don’t worry about vocabulary. Worry only about presenting comprehensible and compelling input, vocabulary will take care of itself. For crucial vocabulary, there will be plenty of repetitions, and they will be “distributed,” not “massed,” exactly the optimal way of presenting items
A question for French teachers: Hello Ben, We have started using the TPRS method this year at school. I am using it for French 1, 2 and 3. I find that I need to find someone in the same situation as I am in, using TPRS plus Bien Dit. Our school wants to keep the
We can see descriptions of Robert Harrell’s readers at: http://compellinginput.net/ Currently the only thing he has in French and Spanish is “Pirate de la Mer du Nord“. He has more German materials. We can read chapter 1 of North Sea Pirate by clicking on “Samples“ and following the link there.
Jeanette has been in the group for many years now and has a combination report from the field as well as a question: Hi Ben, I am still learning. Everyday. With the littles now 🙂 I’m back with the littles after 12 years with middle school. Another adventure. Happily I am doing this part time
Robert uses a sharp knife to cut through a lot of confusion in this post: I was at a conference last weekend (6-9 October 2016), but it wasn’t a language teachers conference; it was a business conference. During the course of the weekend we had several times that we were asked to interact with other
Robert Harrell on the History of Foreign Language Pedagogy Read More »
A repost from 2012: There is a grammar ghost in me and it won’t die. I guess ghosts can’t just die – they have to be released. So I guess I have to release my grammar ghost from flying around inside my head or I won’t be able to be happy in my teaching. This
The language instructs itself. We are merely the vehicle. We need to get out of the way as the language goes about its business of bringing communication. The room is not big enough for a self-absorbed teacher who thinks that he or she is always on stage.
If we can focus a bit less on the skills (the bone) and try to establish a more genuine and compelling and soft and flowing communication with our kids (the marrow) we may be able to find out the magnificence of this work. Genuine and compelling and soft and flowing communication is what comprehensible input
Two days ago in an email message Tina Hargaden asked Dr. Krashen: Q. Is Non-Targeted input less efficient? Someone recently said that with only a hundred hours of class time we need targets and that Non-Targeted work can only exist in a perfect ideal world. I’m wondering if there’s data to back that up. A.
