Ben Slavic

Alias shares an interesting article on how many words it takes to get by in a foreign language. Since the study references the work of researcher Paul Nation, we know it’s legit: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44569277

Another question from a PLC member came today: Hello! I am a world language teacher about to enter my second year of teaching. Last year I taught Spanish to heritage speakers, so starting FVR was relatively easy and we were able to start almost at the beginning of the year (once we had books!). However,

Sometimes with untrained students the sounds we make go into their ears, rattle around a bit, and then fall out. This is not what we want. We want to instruct our students in such a way that the sounds we say move from inside their ears into their eyes, and never fall out. We want them

Some kids engage at the right amount. Some too much. What about the kids who withdraw? It is my thought-out position that, generally, kids who withdraw from interacting in a CI class have a reason to do so. We all know that kids withdraw in traditional textbook classes from pure boredom. But when things are

Why do we assume that just because some governing body in our profession like the College Board has the best interests of students and teacher at heart? In fact, they don’t. They have their profit line at heart. Indeed, when God invented these beautiful languages, He didn’t divide them into levels – “beginning” to “advanced”. There

The differences in philosophy between CI and traditional language education: CI is a student-driven methodology. It responds to the linguistic needs of students, to their wishes to speak about things interesting to them. This necessarily changes the nature of how we plan. We can’t plan by putting the language first in a linear curriculum to

This profound report from Craig reveals exactly what WBYT can bring to your instruction. It reminds us that engaging kids, actually commanding their attention in the TL, doesn’t happen as nearly as much as we think: Hey Ben – Thinking about the Invisibles has helped me realize that language is ALL about what we see,

When a class is pushing you, and Classroom Rule #2 and the “Zero Option” aren’t doing the job, you can go to two options, known as the “Mini-Elevator Speech” and the “Elevator Speech” – Mini-Elevator Speech: (said to an offending child or group who keep talking despite your having used Rule 2 and the Zero

Hi Ben – Please feel free to post these two videos of my first 15 minutes of the first day of my Spanish 1 class this year, on 8/23/19. Part 1 is 5 minutes. Then there was an announcement by my principal. And Part 2 is 11 minutes. I realize many people have already started their school year, but

I don’t know of any CI activity in Poland. However, we now have a group of five teachers from rural Poland with us, reading the books and hopefully taking part in the discussion here with questions, clarifications, etc. So, we offer from our group a big welcome to Agnieszka, Asia, Kasia, Janina and Aneta. In

Jake reports on what has really been quite a remarkable re-entry into teaching after a long segue. I think he has decided well in terms of simplifying his job and of reducing daily stress. Note in particular what he says about planning below: When I sat down over the summer to attack planning for my

A few days ago David wrote about applying CI to upper levels and I gave a response w high levels of snark. But that’s really what I believe based on my own experiences – I do believe that for all but the few gifted kids in the class it’s a fool’s errand to even try