Leah (Turner) has a question for the group: Ben, I want to give end of the year awards in my classroom for all high school levels of German (1, 2 and 3) – 100 some students total. I’m having trouble deciding if I need to give every single kid an award. I want to spend […]
We need some sort of way to help find roommates at iFLT. Best for now is to just send me an email or comment below. Like Michael Coxon and Jason Bond need roommates so far. Anyone else?
Ron in Florida has some news: Hi, Ben – This is my second year with TPRS, but I just got your, PQA in a Wink!, this weekend and began devouring it. I was already having success, but I knew I needed more. After reading about Extended PQA last night, I suddenly tried it in one
From Bryan Whitney: Salut Ben, Here’s a very interesting quote from “Teaching as a Subversive Activity” by Neil Postman & Charles Weingartner (1969). I thought it would be a good conversation starter! Pages 54-56: “Now, if the “subject” is what is called “English”, the list of possible relevant problems is literally endless. For example, if
Jennifer in this post writes about how yoga and CI are similar. What she says here about the importance in our work with CI of repetition in context is very very important. I would go so far as to suggest that the term “repetition in context” might be added to our list of the most
If you have lost your mojo here in May, just remember one thing. You hold in your instruction the keys to a world that is inaccessible to kids if you don’t persevere. Kids are hurting, like so many these days, and we can give them something to believe in. Why did we ourselves get so
Eric concludes his analysis of Michael Long’s work with some quotes: In the article, Long strongly criticizes a grammar and vocabulary syllabus and commercially published textbooks. I’ve pulled out those beautiful quotes below: Long, M. (2011). Methodological Principles for Language Teaching. In Doughty, C. & Long, M., The Handbook of Language Teaching (pp.373-394). Blackwell. synthetic
Eric continues: Furthermore, Krashen finds flaws in the focus on form research designs. Since these studies always target a few grammatical items, the subjects are always aware that the “name of the game” is to use those forms correctly. On top of that, the tests often don’t include real-life time pressures, so the students are
An article from Eric on Michael Long and SLA. Thank you as usual Eric! Helena Curtain is trying to stay relevant and read current research. She sent Alisa and I both this 2011 article by SLA researcher Michael Long. Long is all about Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) and I think credited with the “interaction hypothesis”
Alisa sent this. It is important to at least review it. It speaks volumes about who is running ACTFL. Alisa shares: Hey Ben – Here are ACTFL’s NEW Revised World-Readiness Standards. It’s the same old BS about critical thinking and the 5 C’s – no mention of proficiency. World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages | American
Karen Olson reports from the field: Hi Ben, I’ve been mulling over jGR and reading the blog for a month now trying to figure out how to implement it. For me the devil is in the housekeeping details! I also went to Bryce Hedstrom’s blog to see what he had to say about the Special
