So can we say that: CI works. CI takes a long time to be measured, to show up as concrete gains. Schools don’t work. Schools require immediate proof of gains (even if memorized and therefore destined to be forgotten). Therefore: CI works. Schools don’t work. CI doesn’t work in schools.

These two YouTube links are connected to the general discussion about if CI works in schools. I am asking if CI works in schools and the video is asking if school even works. (I suggest turning the sound off on the second very important video because for some reason I find that I can focus

Of course I know CI works. It’s how people learn languages, in fact. So here is yet another way to formulate my question: “Is the little bit of CI that we can do in schools (relative to the amount of time needed for fluency) enough for us to claim that CI “works” in schools?” Of

Here is another way to formulate my question: Given the amount of time it takes for gains to show up, does CI work? (This means that if we have 400 hours in a four year program, which is a top realistic quantity of actual hours of CI available to us, and we need somewhere between 10,000 and 24,000

Ruth asked a question about Sabrina’s greetings questions to start class, and it made me wonder if we are possibly overrating how much our students learn. My question has to do with how many hours we have for CI vs. how many hours are necessary. This is one of those devil’s advocate types of questions: In the

Joe Dziedzic does something in his new video (I’ll post the link tomorrow) that some of us might want to do. He has a L1 story writer as most of us do (for the all important reason that we can use it to write the reading of the story), but he also has a superstar

Along with the Eric-inspired thread this year on putting communication over targets, John Piazza, in a comment this morning, sums up another important thread that has appeared here this year: Not sure if I would have changed anything, but my life would have been far less stressful last year, if I had been ok with

This letter from a former student to Eric is, in my view, where the rubber meets the road in this work: Hi Mr. Herman! It’s Heather from last year. I just wanted to tell you where I am right now with Spanish. I’m currently taking Spanish 2 at Ridgeland High School in Mississippi. I thank you

There is a term out there among the new batches of ways of thinking coming out of the current national think tanks (because it’s all about thinking and if we just figure it all out we can become a happy nation again, right?) – but this one actually has some practical merit. What is it?

What matters is not whether our students are learning or not. What matters is that they feel as if they are learning. Therefore, in buildings where students in levels 2, 3 or 4 are used to doing grammar and learning from a textbook, those students should not have stories and other CI activities pushed on them. The

This one is from Diane: Hi Ben, While we’re passing around screenshot PPTs, here is another one. It’s for “Runaway” (about a boy & his refrigerator). It’s very sweet. –  3 min., 41 sec. – a little longer than some Video & Discuss videos. Also, there is some English esp. at the beginning and end

I’ll categorize this post as a bail out move, but it’s more than that. It’s an attempt to describe the free and loose spirit of what we do and how we can go anywhere at anytime with anything and have a great time doing it. It’s an attempt to point out that this work with CI