I teach a full German program at Pacifica High School in Garden Grove, CA. I’ve been at Pacfiica for 16 years, and this is the only public school in which I have taught. (Before becoming a teacher I worked at a variety of other jobs, including an airline, a private seminary, a church, and an […]
Chunk Dictation works best at the end of the year when the kids have had lots of comprehensible input. It obviously can’t work in the beginning months of study since output in the form of writing can only follow massive amounts of input (listening and reading) as per Krashen. How does Chunk Dictation work? On
I’ m feeling that I need to republish these two posts from about a week ago. (Unless I am the only one struggling with kids who just won’t stay focused in their restraining devices). Again, this is for discipline more than anything else. It’s the best way I know to get the classroom quiet and the
The school that is currently most focused on CI and Krashen in Denver Public Schools is George Washington High School. That is largely because of the leadership of the department chair and a member of our blog family here, Joseph Dziedzic. I once overhead Joseph on the phone in deep conversation with Stephen Krashen.
Note that there is an automatic lockout on this site that cannot be turned off. If you end up traveling or just accessing the blog from different locations on your laptop you may get locked out, the way they do with credit cards like when Pam and Jim went down to the Bahamas on their
This is from Ray in Chicago, actually Brookfield, IL: My name is Ray Bauer and I currently teach 7th and 8th Grade Spanish in Western Springs, IL. I spent the last three years teaching Spanish to grades K-6 at an elementary school in the area, however my position was cut due to budgetary issues. I
Good stuff from Robert here: Hi Ben, While TPRS/CI are diametrically opposed to grammar-driven instruction, I’m going to disagree with the stance that it has to be all or nothing with TPRS. My anecdotal evidence will follow, but the conclusion I have reached is as follows: Even a little TPRS/CI is better than none, especially
We are lucky, to say the least, to have Bryce Hedstrom in our group. He will provide a lot of stuff as we move along – he is not just a reading expert but an author whose materials are used all over the place. This blog entry is a great example of how creative things
Warm-up Activities As Catalyst for CI – Bryce Hedstrom Read More »
Well, we heard from my good friend Carol yesterday and today we get to hear from Martin. I will publish one blog bio here each day. We can get to know each other. How wonderful is that? My name is Martin Anders. I teach at Kaltenkirchen Waldorf School, in Northern Germany, and use TPRS for
In recent blog posts the subject of “language activity facilitator” (Tripp) was compared with the term “teacher as coach” (Sizer). The implication was that a language activity facilitator is someone who wastes kids’ time in the language classroom. I think that may be why LAF’s aren’t big fans of Krashen, whose research basically trashes their
The mind simply cannot serve two masters. The human unconscious mind is far superior, infinitely superior, in the artful process of decoding and understanding the sounds of a foreign language than is the conscious mind. It does so just by hearing and reading it – automatically! The language teachers of the future will know this.
What our kids do when they hear a story or just do PQA is they use the vastly superior technology of the human brain to create movies of what is being said. By focusing on the message, the medium is acquired. So it is in reading. Now, if the conscious mind is involved in this process,
