Empirical Research/Previous Comparative Research While the current body of empirical research on comprehensible-input based instruction such as TPRS is low, it is growing.  Studies have been conducted that show that the use of comprehensible input-based

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GDjgbxyF-0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSpwLgv-2oI

I haven’t yet met Chris personally but I can tell from our communication that he is a man on a mission. That is a good thing. During this past year he handled family responsibilities and professional

A group member sent this question in: My school has chosen me to lead our department in training the FL teachers to teach IB b/c our school is going wall to wall IB next year.They

We are making it through April, which is big news in itself. To various relative degrees, we are all hurting, certainly. Teaching does that. I think it was Hazrat Inayat Kahn who said that spirituality

From Jim Tripp: Ben, could you post this for me? I’m in a bit of a crunch, deadlines fast approaching. I’m planning a trip for next Spring or Summer with a group of students. Does

From Ben Lev in CA. Everybody have at it. It could make the difference in a job or not. Suggest anything – Ben doesn’t have to use it: Hi Ben, Maybe people in the PLC

Group I have a very serious request. I am getting ready to try to take all the most important content on this site over the past seven years and make some videos explaining it with

Here is a Report from the Field from Greg, who started TPRS/CI only about ten weeks ago, and has never been to a workshop: I have to share some good news from an observation today

I’m sure this is on our list of bail out moves, but a simple R & D is totally kick ass when it comes to eating up minutes and getting through the hard month of

James posted a comment today that I would like to use as a jumping off point for a discussion that will lead to rubrics to join jGR to align our grading with the Interpretive and

We must give the kids proper punctuation instructions. I sometimes forget to say, for example, “point” for a period. This confuses them. So I am going to try to do that better. Adolescents need clarity.

Here’s Kevin’s bio: Salvete Omnes! I joined the PLC at the start of this school year and learned a ton, but took a few months away while my son (now almost a year old) learned

…when I was very young, most of my childhood heroes wore capes, flew through the air, or picked up buildings with one arm. They were spectacular and got a lot of attention. But as I

I got this question from a group member: Ben do we have a stand alone rubric for the Interpretive Mode like jGR ? I responded: No, and I don’t see one happening. Interpreting input is

There is another Ben in our group so now we have Ben Lev and me and now Ben Orwin from Arizona: Ben, I have not been too active on the PLC, but I do appreciate

Here is a bio from Jamie in Arizona: My name is Jamie Kronwald and I teach at Mesa Prep in AZ. I teach high school Spanish 9th-12th grade. I began comprehension based teaching when, after my

Here’s Steve’s bio: I work at Del Oro High School in Loomis, Ca (Sacramento area). I teach Spanish 1 and 2. I became interested in comprehension based teaching when I learned the difference between learning

Hi Ben, I just logged on to the site for the first time in a few months. Life got too crazy for a bit. As a middle school teacher, I only get together with my

I’m Liz Hughes Waddick.  I teach at Breckenridge Elementary and Upper Blue Elementary schools in Breckenridge, CO.  I have been using CI since my first year of teaching in 2005.  I went to a Blaine

In dictée, the importance of absolute silence from the very beginning to the end of the process, which lasts fifteen minutes at most, is not properly appreciated by most teachers, and that is a gross

Anyone working with kids who think that making a mistake is a big horrible egregious thing, here is an interesting story from a teacher – who is not in the PLC – in Japan. We

Another Latin teacher in the group! Here is Mark Hazard’s bio: I have been teaching Latin at a public high school in Maine for the past seven years.  Before that I taught a couple of

Hi Ben, Here is my long overdue bio! My names is Bobbi (Robledo) Cress. I work in Jeffco Public Schools in Lakewood, Colorado. I am  one of the many native Californians who have made an

Here is Dick Detwiler in PA’s bio: Jenkintown Middle/High School, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania Spanish II, III, IV, V (AP to be added soon). Here’s my bio, so that I can stay tuned, though I confess, I

We have another German teacher in the group! Not only that, but this teacher is from the same state as Susan Gross, South Dakota. Here is Britt Samson’s bio: TPRS rookie (in spite of 19

Greg was unable to post this as a comment so here it is as a post: (First, forgive my ramblings – if I edited myself as much as I want to I would never post

Here’s Freda from SoCal: Hi, Ben! Thanks for your message.  I’ve been meaning to send a bio. I teach at Campbell Hall Episcopal in North Hollywood, CA. I am currently teaching Japanese A, Japanese B,

Here’s an excellent bio from Krista: Hello, I’m Krista Applegate. I teach French and Latin at Palmyra Area High School in Palmyra, PA. I teach all levels of French (1-5) and Latin 1,2. This is

Here is Amy’s bio: Pueblo East High School (Pueblo CO City Schools); French, Levels 1-4 I am new to comprehension-based teaching and I came to it because I know there has to be a more

A bio from Basketball Land: Hello everyone. I have taught all levels of Spanish at Simon Kenton High School in Northern Kentucky. I have been using CI and TPRS for about ten years and have

Michael has a question about books. I defer to the greater wisdom of the group: Hey Ben, This is Mike Elsen-Rooney writing (I sent in my bio last week). As I’ve read the blog and

There are so many classrooms in DPS with stacks of Blaine’s Extended Readings for Look I Can Talk! Those blue books. Some are purple, at least in French. I have always thought them a waste until

Ben: Teach what’s up. If one sentence is up but hasn’t been acquired, don’t leave it. Why would you leave it? It hasn’t been acquired yet! If a sentence has some new grammar concept like the sound of

Here is a question: Hi Ben! I am looking for TPRS materials/stories in German for 4th and 5th grade. I find that the stories about teenagers are just not at their level. Can you guide

Last week we were using (from Matava): Allons-y!/Vas-y!– Let’s go!/Go ahead! veut tellement l’embrasser – wants so much to kiss her s’est endormi/s’endormit – went to sleep So to begin the 53 minute class I

If kids don’t give you cute answers in PQA, then TELL them what is going down in class. I call it PSA – Personalized Statements and Answers – and I do it all the time.

Just FYI, Chris has been asked to present in 2014 in St. Louis as a Central States Conference “All-Star” because his recent session at CSCTFL this spring was received so enthusiastically. That really is quite

Here is Greg’s bio: This is my second year of teaching and my second year teaching French at Northern High School in Durham, NC.  I’m the only French teacher at my school so I teach

This is news from Greg. For those who aren’t familiar with Greg, he’s the guy in Durham who started doing CI instruction like a month ago and has rocked his classroom every day since then.

Today I have posted five of these posts on how languages exist and are acquired in the unconscious mind. The reason I did that was to keep reminding us here in the group that languages exist

Our purpose in this game of teaching comprehensible input is to teach the structures. We focus more on them than on the content of the story or the PQA. Content is merely secondary to the

Every few months or so I get wigged out about how  Krashen has pretty much shown that the acquisition of a language is an unconcious process but we set much of it up to be a conscious

What is unique is that Steven Krashen used empirical studies to arrive at conclusions that are largely intuitive. This odd phenomenon in research can be likened to the work of Carl Jung, a researcher whose conclusions went

A colleague recently wrote in response to my comment that people who focus on output instruction would be better off to quit the teaching of languages and go find another profession: …so apparently that makes me someone

I keep the PQA going on three structures for an entire class on Monday to set up the story on Tuesday. I need to do that. The success of the story rests on as many reps of

The plan in WL in my district is to use stories to set up the reading of novels. This puts pressure, however, in my view unnecessary pressure, on the teacher to create those stories. On

Bryce and Lavinia from NJ are coming to my classroom today. I used to get nervous. All the time, I got nervous. I just can’t do that this time. I doubt if I’ll ever be

After all these years of trying to get better at comprehension based instruction, I have come to realize that the best kind of reading is not novels. It is the readings we create from the stories we build

I do feel that the following three things, all new this year to this PLC, add what we could call a wonderful Triangle of Classroom Discipline to our work.  jGR (keeps students engaged and respectful). Classroom Rules