I remember once when I was sitting at my desk at the end of another long day in the trenches, thinking back, reflecting on the four decades and roughly 35,000 – I did the math – classes I have taught in my career. I started looking around in my computer’s files and unexpectedly found a […]

A member of our group recently presented a workshop on our work to a group of traditional teachers. In the email below, she shares her thoughts with me on how she successfully reached across the gap to get them all excited about teaching using comprehensible input. I think this is the way we should do

We’re coming up to comment 50,000,with 49,337 comments as of today. I can’t wait to find out who writes number 50,000. How about that person gets free lifetime membership in the PLC as a prize? I know I know. People would rather have a refrigerator or a TV set.

I found a kind of strange-ass line from Dr. Krashen that reveals to me that there is quite a bit of distance between T2 and NT: “Hypothesis: Grammatical rules targeted in this way [T2] are much more likely to be at the students i + 1 than items used for Targeting 1.” It’s so weird

Alisa reports from Chicago, showing what hard work over years with a few dedicated colleagues by your side can do: In my district we were given explicit permission to follow the research and not worry abt what the high school that we feed into does once our kids get there. We have observed a positive

When I say that the real enemy is using T1 and expecting kids to show on an assessment that they “acquired” certain words/structures, I do not want anyone to think that there are not CI and TPRS teachers expecting T1 type results. (“I taught it now I will test to see who got it” types.)

Nathaniel said: …knowing a list of grammar points may be considered a skill, but it is not a communication skill. It is more like Sudoko or finding the differences in the two drawings. So I distinguish three practices: 1) communication (expression, comprehension and negotiation of meaning), 2) communication skill-building (practice ordering a taco) and 3)

I am not a research scholar, and so this may be way off, but it is what I have experienced as a teacher in the classroom.  There is this term, “tracking acquisition”, that has come into my mind. Can we actually visually perceive acquisition in our students? I think so. While teaching them, I try

If the story script ywe are using has only action, it is not as interesting to the students.  A script must contain some element of emotion, pathos, sadness, etc.  This brings emotion to the story – something is emotionally wrong and needs to be fixed.  That  makes a better story. So we need to ask

Dr. Krashen says this about T2: 1, The goal is comprehension of a story or other CI activity. 2. This will not require as many comprehensible/interesting reps as in T1. The goal is comprehension of the story or activity, not full acquisition of the rule in a short time. 3. The source of the rules

Tina wrote this on her FB page this morning: There are some radical, life-altering tenets of CI that, if we would just heed, could transform education from the bottom up. Or at least language education. The payoff is great, if we could but wrap our minds around the fact that ALL it takes is comprehensible, compelling

I got this from Ben Lev this morning in Sebastopol, CA (just north of SF). Tina and I met Steve at a summer workshop organized by Erik Olsen and by Don Read: Hey Ben, here’s a PLC success story: My teaching colleague just wasn’t working out (no class control, speaking English in class, losing papers, unwilling/unable