Need a good group response here. This request is from Alisa: Ben, Since we don’t have a hard-core or reliable data collection protocol in this work (in beginner to intermediate level foreign language class), many CI teachers rely on free writes, timed writes and retells (often video-recorded) to document their students’ progress. While these types […]

Alisa wrote in a comment here yesterday: …every time someone moves to a new country without the benefit of scaffolded classes, there’s tons of noise! So I guess we are saying that our efforts to control and scaffold to eliminate noise are misguided; that a story with some noise flakes in it is good and

Q. I’ve watched some videos of Tina doing OWI and would like to try it. What are your tips for starting with a level 1 class that already knows some descriptive words and a level 2 that knows much more but could use some new adjectives/detailed ways to describe things? A. The way I do

Here are some words of hope for those who “can’t get” TPRS/CI with its current formula of massive reps, circling and targets. Working without targets allows: 1. More freedom because it is a softer approach to the work of CI that puts the heart first. 2. It is not about crowd control but about helping

Krashen: “Classic” TPRS ensured transparency by insisting on translation. It has been argued that simply relying on context is dangerous because students might get the wrong meaning. The same concern has come up in reading theory: how do we know that readers are arriving at the correct meaning of an unfamiliar word – some contexts

More Krashen on transparency. The “notes” are from a larger context: “Using the first language is especially valuable when teaching a language that has few or no cognates with the students’ first language (Note 6) and for providing background information, but there are other ways to make input comprehensible: e.g. visual context, in the form

Link to the survey here. (The responses are completely anonymous. Pls be has honest in your evaluation as possible.)

Alisa would like to hear from anyone who may also have some insights into the assessment money grab as described below: Since I don’t give grades in elementary, my question for y’all is a bit different but still in the Assessment Arena. It turns out that many schools/districts use a normed assessment like the SOPA

Krashen wrote: “Input is transparent if the acquirer understands every word. This is, of course, a crude definition. We could definite extreme transparency as a conscious understanding of not only every word but every grammatical marker and morpheme. “Transparent is not the same as “comprehensible.” If input is transparent, it is comprehensible, but input can

For those following the Comment Count Sweepstakes, we are now at 49, 710. Only 290 comments to go. I am guess at this rate it could happen in a month or two. Maybe six or seven weeks. Early April. Just guessing. Then with comment #50, 001 we start a new 50,000 comments.

Krashen sent a paper to Tina over the weekend. It discusses Circling but applies to any focus on form in our language classrooms: Circling: Are we just doing ALM (audio-lingual method)? Yes, at its worst. This happens when (1) there is a targeted structure; (2) the questions are obviously intended just to supply more exposure;

My new updated classroom rules, updated from December. They have changed a lot since the non-targeted issue that began in Jan. of 2016. As per points made last fall by Krista Kovalchick on iFLT, I removed the one about suggesting cute answers. Now, as per Tina’s suggestion of today, I agree that I have to