Ben Slavic

Here is the link Keri referenced in the first post on this topic. She had to get parent releases completed first: https://youtu.be/WL-p0aueG3o

Language acquisition is an unconscious process. As Krashen said to me, “What don’t they get about that?” Apparently they don’t get any of it.   The fact is, if we are language acquisition specialists, then we should be providing language acquisition that engages the unconscious minds of our students. If we are not doing that,

A story script from Anne Matava. If you try it please report back. It’s strong: collection/collects gets bitten/stung dies Austin collects fingernails. He has a nice fingernail collection, but he doesn’t have any fingernails from Arizona. So he goes to Arizona to collect some. While collecting, he gets stung in the left ear by a scorpion.

The current discussion here about sheltering vs. targeting seems important so I’m just writing this to say it and keep it out there. Maybe we can develop it even more from last week’s thread and see if it actually takes hold in our teaching, where ideas like this are tested and proven. In my view, this

Keri wants group feedback in two areas: Hi Ben, Two Questions: Recently the World Language Coordinator in my district asked me to give a TPRS workshop this fall.  As I’ve been thinking of what to prepare, it occurred to me to record a TPRS storyasking lesson.  Now that it’s done, I thought that maybe you

There are good articles on FLOW here. Search them. This work is about flow of language. Meandering language. When we forget that, when we forget that languages are acquired below the radar of the Sauron-like eye, we succeed at this work in ways that we never could have predicted. We flow with this stuff because

Paul Seevinck sent this link: http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2016/05/17/pilot-translates-just-like-the-babel-fish/

When we don’t target structures, when we have no lesson plans at all but only a pool of strategies from which to work, we win the CI game. It’s as simple as that. We have a pool from which to work but we don’t plan. We don’t even think about which strategies we want to

Here are some video links that I’m sharing just because I know how bored we all get at the end of the year with nothing to do. Just kidding. (Do keep in mind that this is not a one size fits all approach and that, working from a set of common principles and strategies presented in

In the interest of teaching my students about the nature of relationships, that there are beginnings and ends to (human) relationships, I will project The Little Prince in French on the board and read it from my heart to them in English in our last three 85 minute classes. They can’t read it in French but

Building a sense of community in our classrooms guarantees good physical health and good mental health for us and our children. Teachers burn out when they are not in strong community, because they sense that they are alone in the classrooms, with only a few good memorizers on their side and every other child, to

There are at least two words in French that mean “suddenly”: tout-à-coup soudain I would assume that this might be true in other languages. Here is an idea that Sabrina shares with us to teach those words, and it is a good one that others may want to incorporate into their classes: She states: …in every story