Eric writes: Chris Stolz shared with me an article from VP titled “Perceptions of and Perspectives on the Term ‘Communicative’ ” (1998), which has some gems (especially toward the end of the paper). We have made the point before that “communication” in the mainstream classroom really refers to speaking with that unit’s rules and vocabulary […]

[ed. note: From time to time we post this about our PLC map. You may want to add your information to it. If all the pins look jumbled together, just zoom in and you can see where people are much more clearly. See the Tutorial hard link above for details.] Thank you to Sean Lawler

If you want to coordinate a ride from the Minneapolis airport add your name to the list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KSMEOkAxURTyG2LBiQn-jF568labmsldcDnNmK9XaUQ/edit#gid=0

More thoughts on elementary TPRS from Catharina: Once I was asked to write a few paragraphs describing what we do in class. I was asked specifically not to mention TPRS as such. Here is what I wrote: FRENCH In Lower School French class we mimic as closely as possible the process by which children acquire

Does anyone have any really simple story scripts that elementary CI teachers could use? We have two categories already for simpler scripts: Really Short Stories Story Scripts, Simple Those categories have some stories but they were made before we had that excellent discussion last year about micro or super mini stories and some of us

This is a plug for iFLT next month. You go around and watch teachers teach in the mornings. You are shuffled around to each one of them. You sit in the room as they teach kids, and they don’t talk to you at all – they just teach for 2 1/2 hours. It’s a good training

I respect that June is our down time but I have a new idea and would like to ask the opinion of the group on it, if it is worth starting. It’s a big project. What if, starting in July, we set about to do some detailed and specific lesson planning together? It’s a vague idea, and

Judy reports from France: It’s time for an update, I guess. We have 40 people coming, which is what I consider an upper limit because any more and our site will start being crowded. I’m particularly happy that so many people who were there last year or the year before are returning, showing that they

I’ve taken some stuff Catharina wrote on the Forum about elementary TPRS to share with the group here: Out of curiosity, I’ve looked into when and why schools choose to start foreign language study and have yet to hear a logical answer. Two prominent private schools in NYC did extensive research and came to the

This is a repost from January just to keep the focus on this excellent workshop, now in its third year, in Agen, France. Hi everyone! I wanted to bring you up to date about the 2015 Agen Workshop. Registration has been open for some time and we already have quite a few signed up. Sabrina

Here is a very cool opportunity to hang out with Robert Harrell in Africa. I added a category called Travel Opportunities in case others like it become available: Hi Ben, Currently I am planning a research trip to Tanzania in 2016. It’s for the third book in my series (following “Ritter von heute” and “Nordseepirat”),

This question is from Craig West: Question. Should comprehension questions in the final exam be written in Spanish or English? If I write them in Spanish, students can search the matching words and not have to understand that much and can still get by. If I write them in English, they can’t just hunt for