Dear Ben, I have been feeling very “down” lately regarding my foray into TPRS/CI. I feel like I’m under a microscope and have to turn the kids over having “learned” a TON of Spanish. The semester is now at an end, finals are next week, review (of grammar to be sure they’re ready for the […]
Administrator: We always need to teach to all learning modalities of the children. The lesson should move around in a lively way between the different modalities – it keeps the kids interested. Me: Bullshit. It has been pretty much agreed upon over the past thirty years, based on the best research available, that in language classes
In 2010 I was working with a videographer whom I had contacted about making a serious film about TPRS, a documentary. We sneaked her into East High School where she was going to get as much footage as she could from within our ten member WL department. I’ll never forget that first session, walking down
It’s interesting that anger seems to be a lot more directed at us than from us. We just want to left to our own devices to study what Krashen and Blaine have offered, and I don’t know of any TPRS teachers who have “gone after” traditional teachers. Some, like me, have gotten angry at being
James is new to all of this and has sent in some video footage for us at: http://jameshosler.blogspot.com/2013/01/sample-latin-3-pqa-january-15-2013.html He explains: I was hoping for three things with this video: 1) to get some feedback from fellow teachers; 2) to show my “beginning of class routine” and the transition to and practice of PQA; and 3)
Bob Patrick writes on sentence frames. I have been barely able to fit in any stories lately because I too have become a big fan of this great idea from Robert Harrell which combines writing with auditory input. We may be talking about what they did over the holidays until June! I LOVE the Discovery Mall set
Chris is reaping the benefits of his unrelenting focus on comprehension based instruction in Ohio. Here is the kind of report from the field that, as we continue to fight, we will see more and more of from our members. Congratulations, Chris! Ben, I have some exciting news. I’ve been nominated by one of my
This was previously entitled Help Needed by Monday, Please. It has grown into a weatlth of comments from lots of group members and so will be placed in the category Presenting to Colleagues on the Method. Jen writes: Ben, Holy crud! I have news. On Thursday, I’m going to an articulation meeting with the other
Grammar is correcly spoken speech in three dimensions. It has been trapped and wrestled down out of its pure form, the way all people learn real grammar, and it has been stuck onto paper and forced into that one (mechanical mental) dimension. It has been shoved into the left hemisphere of the brain, where it loses
Robert makes a nice connection between the need for teachers to get instant gratification for their L2 instruction in the form of forced output when everything Krashen has ever shown us tells us to wait and not force output, both in the form of writing and of speech: Most of us here in the PLC
I think of a classroom in which the kids feel no stress. All they have to do is listen in a happy way to the French language. The room can be described by this line from Baudelaire’s L’Invitation au voyage: Là,tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté, luxe, calme et volupté. There, all is order and beauty,
Matt sent a nice bio: I teach both Chinese and ESL, and am presently teaching at Fei Tian Academy of the Arts—a small, private, performing arts school in NY. This is my first year teaching ESL in a while (and at this position), after teaching full-on TPRS Chinese before this year and enjoying some wonderful
