Ben Slavic

Washington Post/Krashen

Michele sent these: Ben, I don’t know whether you’ve been following the Krashen bashing/support in the comments on the Washington Post article, but in the comments a site popped up that is giving me a lot to read. But here is one page you’re going to just love. http://www.focalskills.info/articles/dayreading.html You will love this article on […]

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Autodidaxy

Robert shared a unique image to help our kids think more critically about what is happening as they learn in our classes. He uses it with upper level students, and I suspect that he is right to do that, but here it is for those interested: …one thing I do with my upper level students,

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The Listening Skill

I have posted these words from Blaine at least ten times on this list, and I apologize for that – it should have been a hundred times: “I believe people who are the most effective at TPRS don’t tell stories. They ask questions, pause, and listen for cute   answers from the students. The magic is

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Vacuum Cleaners

Tradition teachers who use books, and the new ones who use electronic books (they’re still books) – are like the old vacuum cleaner salesmen.  They go door to door (student to student) selling their boring wares (books). They go from neighborhood to neighborhood in an old jalopy.  They are outmoded and boring. Teachers who stress

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Feel the Burn

This is a republication of an article that addresses the recent discussion about how to deal with recalcitrant kids. Note that it doesn’t deal with that specific kind of hostile silence we were talking about last week, but rather the brain dead kind of responses we see all too often:  If a student refuses to try, we

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Weekends

For those who may have recently joined our group, just an fyi that we take weekends off. We read and comment, but no new articles are published. Actually I’m going out to Portland in the morning and will be back Tuesday. I will time stamp a few articles to appear on Monday and Tuesday. It’s a

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Cosmo

I got this from Bob Patrick: Ben, You may have already seen this, but I asked Krashen for the latest article he is offering to others.  He says we can share freely.  I’ve attached.  He demonstrates all his hypotheses with this amazing story of an African Grey Parrot.  In my opinion, those who are not

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Question

An ESL teacher asked me several questions about TPRS, and I forwarded the questions to a couple of group members. After commenting, Robert received the following “comprehension check” and shares his comments to it below (in italics): Your response was helpful – thanks for taking the time.  I’d like to check my understanding, if you don’t mind: TPRS

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Josh is Cool

Josh is cool. There is no way getting around it. If you pay attention to that fact, you will feed it, but if you ignore it, it will get out into the room somehow anyway, in more subtle ways. Either way, the fact that Josh is cool will draw your students’ attention away from you

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The World Is Round

Many people think that the shift that we are in now towards comprehensible input is like the shift that has just recently occurred from the use of film to digital equipment in movie making. The reasoning is that film was effective, but digitial equipment is more effective and easier to work with, but the result

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