Jeffrey Sachs was asked what the difference between people in Norway and in the U.S. was. He responded that people in Norway are happy and that people in the U.S. are not. Extending this (what

A teacher contacted me awhile back. She had been attacked about using CI from a team leader. I told her to get some research from Eric Herman. Eric shared this: …I’m dealing with the same

In my opinion, one reason that kids don’t engage in our comprehensible input classes is that we don’t engage them. We get going too fast. We don’t invite them into the proceedings. We make it

Q. What does one do without the support of one’s colleagues when trying to make the change to comprehensible input based instruction? How does one react to a colleague who does not wish to implement

How odd that the power of the old guard and their influence on administrators, in the face of the actual research, is enough to keep teachers down, in a defensive posture, on their toes. The

A CI teacher has again locked horns with a parent simply because he uses best practices in foreign language instruction. Are there any CI teachers who have NOT had to deal with confrontations like this?

I got this question from Michelle in Australia: Q. I really struggle to match the effortless way you stay in L2 and I feel like I’m not giving enough CI. A. Your point here is

Example 2: Nathaniel Hardt once received this letter from a parent. It is typical of the kind of letter teachers sometimes receive from parents who expect our comprehensible input-based classes to resemble other classes, with

Every now and then we get challenged by misguided and misinformed parents. They are often mean-spirited as well, especially when they feel that their child is not happy in our class. Their children are usually

Example 3: This third example is from James’ teacher – who wishes to remain anonymous – who locked horns with a parent simply because he uses best practices in WL instruction. Are there any CI

Please find below an extensive discussion about grading when using either the Middle School Square or the High School Star. You’ll need coffee, since this may be the single longest blog post I’ve shared, and

I’m working with a teacher who has been using Circling, which is the old way that some TPRS and CI teachers still use to get reps on words.  The problem is that – although teachers

Q. You’ve called QL3 and QL4 – where and with whom – the “power questions”. Can you elaborate? A. Many years ago while watching Susan Gross teach us about storytelling in many workshops, I just

In my previous post on classroom management I said that the two things that I’ve concluded about this vastly ignored topic are to (1) use the StarChart™ well in all its detail to KEEP THEM

There are 3 secrets to classroom management in my view: 1. Teach an interesting class to keep them engaged. 2. Grow a spine for the vampires. 3. Never let a vampire make a single inappropriate

I know a teacher who thinks that casual conversation in the classroom is ok. He thinks that his students are his friends and they all have fun during class, going back and forth in witty

Have my readers understood what the purpose of my previous three posts on CM has been? If not, I will repeat: 1. CM is a function of good teaching that keeps the kids engaged in

If you have ever had to endure a child whose inappropriate comments were always just below the radar, read this post. It’s a conversation with a colleague: Talking to you about your classroom management problems

Let’s fix this thing once and for all about CM and just say it flat out because it is true: CM is not separate from our instruction in the language. Our instruction in the language

Teaching using CI should have a compassionate element to it. That is, we should remember how damaged some of our students are and we should try to teach in a way that includes them. Or

Why do students choose to not continue on in our four year programs? After all, a four year program of language instruction should not be a one or two year program. It should be a

I write stuff on scraps of paper and they collect on my desk next to my computer and then I throw them away. Before I toss them this time, here they are written out: …when

There is another point to add here, not touched on in the first Broken Record Technique article but critical to the discussion. The teacher in her initial email to me said this: …their child is

Example 4: Our final example is from master teacher Robert Harrell to a teacher who was in conflict with her admin team over the concept of rigor in her classroom: I’m sorry to hear you

It is generally accepted in educational research that people are either visual, auditory or tactile/kinesthetic learners. Some students exhibit balanced combinations of two or even all three of the learning styles; others are heavily “weighted”

Listening is the Bedrock My heart goes out to the students whose learning style is predominantly visual but who are in a CI classroom. Why? It is because languages are learned via listening, and so

Which would you rather have: (a) high test scores from a few of your students, or (b) happiness and confidence in all of your students? You can’t have both, obviously, the way the system is

I can report that FVR as a TPRS reading activity started to stretch out and lose its shape and value to students in the early 2000s when “Read and Discuss” became the norm in TPRS

Of course, students whose learning style is predominantly visual, when given worksheets in a language class, prefer them. But auditory and tactile kids, when given the same worksheets, feel defeated. Visual language students in a

After your students take the inventory, the main point to stress with them is that even if their visual or tactile learning style conflicts with your auditory teaching style, they can adapt. Make it into

Training Them Discuss the 3 learning styles with your students before they actually fill out the inventory. Make sure that the kids understand these points: 1. One out of every three people in any population

Some inventories don’t just provide the students with their dominant learning style, but also give them a score. If you use an inventory that does that, the score may reveal that a certain student has,

A patron wrote to tell me that this videotape about how the brain learns is exactly reflected in my two new Square and Star books. I’m glad to know that the books that I’ve been

Building Community Doing the Learning Style Inventories with the kids also serves as a community-building activity because that is exactly what the learning styles inventory does, and often in just a few days. You will

When you tell a student, “Wow! you tested out as a highly visual learner, so obviously this class is going to be more of a challenge for you than a highly auditory learner like Mikey

The learning styles message arrives within a context of what is best for the class and not what is best for any one student who happens to be good at doing worksheets and who thinks

Here is a question about what to do about teaching grammar when the kids will have to matriculate next year to a grammar teacher: What resources would you recommend for teaching grammar? It’s nearing the

Some other points to reflect on about learning styles inventories: 1. You can learn lots of valuable information about your class makeup. In one small class of about 15 students made up largely of boys,

Got a few questions this morning –  Q. I’m still having issues going from a character to a story. I feel pressed to develop a problem and a solution on the spot.  A. I think

Now that summer is approaching, my prayer for all of us is that we stop trying so hard for stories, stop trying to be entertainers, and finally lift the heavy wooden yoke from our creased

Al Franken as Stuart Smalley famously said this memorable line on SNL years ago: “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!” Why did this particular line reverberate with so many

We are not deliverers-of-instructional-language-services. Teachers who mistakenly think that their job is to deliver language services – well-built and well-planned lessons that divide the language into little pieces all nicely wrapped up in a bow

Accept that you may not get a problem going in a tableau. It’s not a big deal. If you have to control everything, if you have to know what the problem is before the story

We need to learn to teach our students with love.  We also need to assess them in terms that convey approval and love. In the past, we assigned value to them for how many words/verbs

If you have done any work with communicative language instruction before, you probably have heard the term “Circling”. Here are my thoughts on it: Circling doesn’t work very well. It’s an old technique that has