A link about good stuff going on in Finland, from Robert: I came across a fascinating blog from an American teacher in Finland. Here’s the URL to a recent post: http://www.taughtbyfinland.com/1/post/2013/12/classroom-shock-what-i-am-learning-as-a-teacher-in-finland.html?#.UrjOo_2bnob The author notes three important practices that fit well with TCI/TPRS. 1. Schedule more breaks 2. Get refreshed 3. Give students more independence [and […]

This is a a reposting of a comment on reading made by Jody a year ago. I repost it here because I think it is important. I edited it a little to keep the focus on the really important parts of what she says. It addresses both reading novels and FVR in level 1 and 2 classes. The

Brian Peck is the teacher in Detroit who has recently joined our group. I say Detroit, as in Detroit, that city with the failed economy. If any of us are in a position to help him, we should. The dude is teaching in a war zone. So let’s buy him stuff if we can. Here

This is an edited repost from October and I think an important one: In my opinion the main area of work and focus for some of the newer people to this group and this work is the side talking. WE can’t allow it. I did for the first 10 or so of the 13 years

To save time, some of us may have tried writing a composite reading of all our classes and asking the classes to read them. It doesn’t work. It is best to take the extra time and rewrite each story. We only have to do it once a week at most. The big problem is that

Warning- This reposted article from 2011 could also be titled An Out of Control Ramble in Defense of Comprehensible Input. Skip it. I really like how our group takes responsibility for making sure that we keep the focus on CI. We own it. We practice it. We come back and talk about it here. We share when we

We were talking a week a few weeks ago about the Susan Gross Administrator Checklist, and it is indeed a most useful document, but I think it is too busy. Honestly, I think Susan just wrote as many things as she could think of in order to drive home the point about comprehensible input’s effectiveness.

Bob sent me an email this morning extending his thinking on understandable messages. It all relates to a previous article (Bob Patrick on CI – 1), which I republished this morning here to give us some background information for what is contained below. If you haven’t yet read that article I would suggest you read

Bob wrote this a month ago, and I am republishing it here. I put certain parts of this text in bold. It is a powerful argument and a decisive one against all who think that CI is just another tool in the box. It makes it clear that people learn languages by hearing them spoken

I very much want new people to be able to make sense of this site – there is a level of complexity in the discussion here that is of major concern to me. It is not an easy discussion to just walk into. There are two points to make about that: 1. The earlier articles published here (2008)

Our newest group member is Latrina Thompson and she asks a good question here: …I really want to start fresh with CI in the spring. Do you think it is possible to transition to CI mid-year? These students have never been in a class where Spanish was spoken more than 10% of the time…. My own opinion

I’ve been publishing articles here less frequently and I kind of like the slower pace. It gives us a chance to go narrow and deep and gives newer people time to digest stuff. The 250 articles in the queue will get in when they get in. By slowing things down a bit here on the