Diane Neubauer and Haiyun Lu report: Chinese teacher conference in Milwaukee Oct. 11 & 12: Friday, 10/11: “Learning and the Brain” with Dr. Judy Willis – Brain-friendly teaching and learning strategies Saturday, 10/12: “Advanced TPRS

So we know that we want to personalize and set the rules firmly in place over the first two months, but we also might want to make sure that those first 20 hours of instruction

Some may remember from last spring that our own Bob Patrick is teaching a graduate course in the World Language and Literature Department at the University of Georgia this fall. It begins on Wednesday night, Aug

This is Erica’s addition to the jGR and dGR. It is a good version that many of us will want to use. I have changed the title from “participation” to Interpersonal Skills Rubric to align

This is new information about CWB and OWI as of August, 2013. It discusses the importance of simplicity in the first few weeks of any school year. For a review of the basics of CWB and

We all seem to like to tweak our own posters and that is great. It is another thing that makes this group unique – there are as many ways to do things as there are teachers. In

Sabrina is coming to Denver Public Schools from Chicago. How cool is that? She will be taking Paul Kirschling’s position at Thomas Jefferson High School as Paul moves to East High School along with a

We are slowly setting the table for the fall. There was no room on the table last year for Movie Talk, it seemed. But it is becoming clear that Movie Talk is going to be a huge

I’ve never quite understood why more people don’t teach using comprehension methods, and why it’s not mandated in more districts. But I just got an insight into it. I think it’s for the same reason

We have our first specific “start the year” question from Kelly and it’s a good one. How many of us have had success with CWB (see category for definition) in level 1 and then not

With all the conference excitement this month, plus I was writing that book, I forgot to publish this post describing our July teacher of the month – jen Schongalla. I ap0logize for that. Jen is definitely one

As we begin to gear up for real for the coming school year, we must avoid confusion. Many of our threads become unavoidably obtuse, and I accept that, but in spite of all the complex

I just added this to the five bail out moves described in my new book (the iFLT notes I wrote for San Diego actually became a book for beginners): Often, in the daily grind of

I received an emailed course description from a member of the PLC to look over and it was too complex. Does anybody else do that – write mini novels about course expectations each fall? Maybe it’s because we

Today was a very happy day, as a group of PLC teachers in Chicago met with Sabrina. Here is the report from Sabrina: Today a few teachers from The Greater Chicago area and myself got

There is a reason we have long summer breaks in education, a real one that only teachers and students can know. We need them in order to survive. Since ours is emotionally a most demanding

Carol sent this. It makes Krashen’s case against early speech output that much more compelling by substantiating the fact that the mind is always busy processing what it hears and trying to turn it, over years, into

I think we should celebrate our successes more here with each other, to balance the hard work we do in the trenches. Here is a celebration from Robert: Hi Ben, It is so encouraging to

Chris Stoltz reports in with this: Hey Ben: A friend, Mark, while in undergrad was part of an experiment at then University of Calgary. He was asked to listen to a CD of a computer-generated, monosyllabic

Those following the thread about Bob Patrick’s upcoming classes on CI at the University of Georgia may be interested to see the course description. I made a category for it so we can keep up with how

Michele gives us an update on Movie Talk. For the previous thread on this important topic for next year, click on the category. Here is the update: Hi Ben, I was stunned to find out

Many of us start the year with CWB and OWI and Word Associations and the Word Chunk team game (https://benslavic.com/workshop-handouts.pdf). We need to remember to throw the right amount of TPR into that mix. It’s a deal

Our own Trisha Schutzius is opening up a language school in her home in Fort Collins. Anyone in that area might be interested. I think that what Trisha is doing, and the way she has

Angie has a only few days to prepare for an interview coming up on Friday, so make some suggestions. We have had this question before but I’m not sure where it we answered it. Angie maybe you

Liam recently shared this sentence with us about talking with Helena Curtain at FLENJ: [Helena] gave a presentation at FLENJ as well, right before mine, in fact. Her presentation (her hallmark thematic unit – which

The great value of having the artist’s work to refer to when doing a retell of a story, vs. not having it, is that when the students are focused on the images created by the

Cheryl sent this: I saw this and nearly laughed out loud.  It seems that new research indicates that telling kids stories helps them to remember things!! http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/06/04/why-teachers-should-present-new-material-as-stories/ Cheryl Cowherd

Helena Curtain is dangerous to our profession, if one accepts Krashen. Why is this? In my opinion, Curtain has done nothing more than cobble together a lot of ideas from TPRS and mix them with

Here is a survey designed by Drew. If you have one send it and we will add it to this (new) Survey category. Drew explains: I did a great survey with our HooverCam (a camera

Meredith is a new PLC member from Washington, D.C. Here is her bio and she needs some responses to an important question raised in the second paragraph below: Hi Ben! I’m a newly-joined member of

This request is from Trisha: Does anyone have any experience with or knowledge of elementary French curricula?  I am interested in anything from first grade to sixth.  I know that there will be differences between

Hi Ben and all, My wife and I just returned from a wonderful week in Ireland and came back immediately to 4 days of PLU for our local Latin teachers.  Along with a colleague here,

Dear Ben, I just wanted to give you an update about what is happening over here in France. Fifteen people from 8 countries, the USA, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Spain, England and Scotland, have officially

Chrisz (Canada) has come up with an idea that has the potential to blow up the entire grading system into little pieces and bring some sanity into our lives: I have moved Spanish with TPRS

John While doing my grades, I felt the need to bump a student’s overall grade up or down, depending on how well I thought my numbers accurately represented how that student was doing in my

Nate Hill has a new site that could be of interest to our group. Here he describes it: As language teachers — especially as TPRS teachers — you know the importance of personalized CI for

This is a brain break strategy, and a good one. The high level of rigor in comprehension based instruction requires brain breaks: The students form a circle around the perimeter of the room. A soft squishy

For those new to this group, this from TPRS in a Year! explains what circling is: Skill #5: Circling In the same almost magical way that pausing and pointing properly creates more engaged students, the

There is a rhythm to circling. It should not be a totally conscious, mechanical process, but rather one based on rhythm. Over years, it kind of moves down into our bodies and, whether we circle a targe structure

In those afternoon sessions in San Diego, I want to do a thing where we’ll work on CWB and OWI and stuff like that in groups of four after seeing it modeled by me and

I’ve often wondered why those Circling sessions coached by Susie and others at national conferences over the past ten years didn’t work that well. Well, in my opinion they didn’t work well because people I

Liam reports in from New Jersey: Ben: I hope your year is winding up nicely and that you’re getting pumped for SD! I had wanted to be more in touch over the blog this year

It is only the whole brain that can perform the nearly infinite functions necessary to grasp how the language is built (the conscious analytical mind is totally incapable of doing so). Just speak to the

The fact is that the grammar teachers’ claim that their students can acquire a language in this way is and has been completely false. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can come from studying a language in this

Let’s teach buildings! Let’s teach Garnier’s Opera House in Paris. We can walk around the outside of that building for three hours and barely begin to get what is on those exterior walls. And then

If it were a business, language education would eventually fail for the brick house reason. Few customers would be left. Administrators who continue to pay upper level teachers with seven or two white kids in

The result of grammar study is that the language house thus built of batches of grammar bricks has no shape or form, and, most egregiously, is not related to sound, which is what language is. How

Now that my vision is clear about grammar acquisition, I can see that grammar, word order, rules of agreement, all that mechanical stuff, is organized in the basement of the house! It happens by itself

This is the first in a series of seven articles against grammar instruction. Grammar instruction hurts kids. Stop doing it if you still are. In the past, teachers would take a batch of bricks, called

These are the keys to everything: 1. Circling – it has to become automatic. There are some hokey videos by me on the topic of Circling on the Videos hard link at the top of this