Ben Slavic

Grant sent this: http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/trying-harder-makes-it-more-difficult-to-learn-some-aspects-of-language-0721 “The results indicate that learning to identify relatively simple parts of language, such as words, is facilitated by effortful learning, whereas learning more complex aspects of language, such as grammatical features, is impeded by effortful learning.” “The findings support a theory of language acquisition that suggests that some parts of language […]

Krashen’s natural order hypothesis is a fairly important idea for any language educator to consider when deciding how to teach. The natural order hypothesis states that language is acquired in a particular order, and that this order does not change between learners, and is not affected by explicit instruction. Mary Beth sent me an interesting

Andrew Snider shares very important news: I’ve always been more of a lurker than I should be, but I won’t be very active commenting on the PLC for the next few months. I just became a dad for the first time. Mateo John Snider was born on Nov. 21 at 9:52 am. I’m super proud

Robert Harrell shares an article with us: Hi Ben, There is an article in the Washington Post about Christopher Paolini, the author of „Eragon“ and „The Inheritance Cycle“. It focuses on how he was educated (home schooled) and able to write a novel (later a cycle) and still get an education. However, there is a

James sent this about TPRS and Rigor. To me, it is a big red flag, a big one: Ben, not sure if you saw this on flTeach. It’s part of somebody’s response to someone asking, “How to increase rigor?” Notice just how badly TPRS is really understood by some people: …as far as increasing the

I remember when Mr. Chadwick, my French teacher at Culver Military Academy, told me that in the past tense the past participle agreed with any preceding direct object pronoun. I remember the ferocity with which I set out to memorize that rule. It didn’t help that the terms were foreign to me, but I reasoned

This is from James: Ben, I just posted this on my blog here: http://jameshosler.blogspot.com/2014/11/pictures-for-ci-whats-wrong-and-whats.html Here is what I wrote. Feel free to put it on your blog so it can get more exposure and more comments: Pictures for CI: What’s Wrong? and What’s Different? Ben Slavic (benslavic.com/blog) describes a procedure called Look and Discuss (L

Just arrived from San Antonio at the beach in Wilmington, NC where my family and I will spend Thanksgiving week. I want to say a few things about ACTFL. Getting myself to large conferences is always something I struggle with. I find the crowd, the travel and the non-stop meetings exhausting. That was all true

Michael Nagelkerke shares this clip from SNL: Hey Ben, I had seen this skit before long time ago, but I watched it again and now that I know better, I couldn’t help but think that SNL is making a social commentary about how foreign language is being taught in this country. The verb conjugation part

I’m adding things to my book Stepping Stones to Stories and want to know if there is any update to this list (from last summer) from anyone. What are people currently using for their story artists? – Here are the names of some interactive whiteboards that are currently on the market: Explain Everything ($2.99)* Doceri

I went back and found a comment made by Michele over a year ago here when we had our first big thread about MovieTalk. Here is part of what she said last year: [The originator of Movie Talk is] Ashley Hastings. Here is his page, which explains everything, including giving you sample talking scripts for

This is something that can be used by French teachers this week from our Bryan Whitney. Thanks Bryan! – Bonjour Ben, I just made this for next week, and I thought others might find it useful (though it is in French). I’m not quite sure how to share it with the group, but I would