Ben Slavic

In the past month or so, our discussion has led to a rare gem of an insight that I do not remember has ever been taught at the workshops. Eric summed it up perfectly here: …targets should serve communication. [Don’t] make communication serve the targets….

I kind of like the term Watch and Discuss that Ruth uses in her a comment this morning, which I am making into a post so we can put it into the new “Watch and Discuss” category along with the existing “Movietalk” category. (What do we want to end up calling this activity?) Here is

Hi Ben, Here are screen shots I made last winter without text for Simon’s Cat in “Snow Business.” https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yc5luuhrTJkhOkDHbNZL7IJ796sGWEGlpLs807uPINY/edit#slide=id.g42b215abc_038 It’s great for lots of action verbs and feelings for beginners but can get into other things, too. I also have them with simple French text if you want. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1E26X7mwnQN6NH9eVhwk5Eir4tEWvglnuGVB6n7OIjgE/edit#slide=id.g439b17713_03 Ruth

Today I’m in here observing Linda Li in one of her afternoon classes. I’ll take some notes to share: In the first minute of class she packed about 20 sentences in. They were all spoken very fast. Very high paced. There was no effort to shelter that I could see and there was no deliberate

Update on Two Strikes to control blurting. The moving of the kid to the wall to observe on the first blurt was too punitive and embarrassing. Two upset kids made me modify that. Now, on the first blurt, I pull out a yellow card like in soccer and lay it in front of the kid.

Eric: Savignon is a name we should all read. I need to read more of her work. In episode 3, BVP cited her famous 1972 study in which the group that had communication for 1 hour per week (in addition to 4 hours of audiolingual method) was way better at communicative tasks and equal on

Another legacy of the textbook is the “unit”. We don’t do units, we communicate in the language, with the oddest result that they actually learn it. And yet a member of our group has a meeting tomorrow and needs this filled out. If anyone has any ideas, pls. inform: unit plan template

We thank Diane for sharing these screen shot sets of three more of Simon’s Cat MT episodes: Cat Man Do Simon’s Cat Feed Me Simon’s Cat Scary Legs Diane explains: Hi Ben, Here are the three Simon’s Cat screenshot PPTs I have used. To me, “Scary Legs” is the one that lends to slightly more

Here are some significant September 2015 changes to ROA. For those currently using ROA, the main changes involve Steps 6 through 8. I used Robert’s term dialogic reading to describe the elegant Step 6 and suggest here that the directing of actors as they re-enact the play as described below in Step 7 is just

This is from Eric: Hey Ben – I originally posted this to moreTPRS, to criticize BVP’s lackluster commentary on textbooks in episode 3 of his radio show. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/moretprs/conversations/messages/149461 I think you’ll enjoy the analogy: A commercial textbook is like alcohol. What it’s good for depends on the goal. The goal of language acquisition is like

Here’s another one, to follow roughly the plan outlined in the “Simon’s Cat MT – 1” article: Reading: MT Simon’s Cat 2 – Let Me In!

Here is something for those who like me may be a little skittish with MT (I’m afraid of going too wide on the kids with it): Reading in French: MT Simon’s Cat 1 – The Box What I’m thinking of doing with this is: Part A: Get a box and my cat hand puppet. No video