A few thoughts on the subject of textbooks from Robert Harrell: Most evaluators and administrators place a great deal of emphasis on student-centered instruction. Many TCI/TPRS teachers take a hit on this because administrators believe that “student-centered” instruction means that students are doing all of the talking. This is an area for administrator education. TCI/TPRS […]

Another useful article by Robert Harrell: The quiz below can be given to teachers who teach using the old grammar model of teaching languages. So if you get into one of those uncomfortable discussions with a teacher in your building who still touts grammar as the (“academic”) way to teach a language (there is no

How I feel about language teaching is very simple, and has been expressed perfectly by the pianist Alice Sara Ott, when speaking about music: “Music is art, and art lives from creativity, and there cannot be any creativity if there is no motivation. And the motivation can only come from the child. So, I don’t

A repost, and a good one, from Robert Harrell: Hi Ben, Relative to the discussion about assessment, I thought I would share the following e-mail exchange I had with a student today. Since the student asked, I decided to be straightforward and blunt. Names have been redacted to protect identities. Earlier in my career and

About five years ago, in order to make those little Pobre Ana types of readers more “interesting” I suppose, or “useful”, people started to add pre-formed questions at the end of each chapter, to make it easier on the teacher. I think this happened first around 2015 when Teacher’s Discovery first published Anne Matava’s script

I’m amazed that many of us are too weak to challenge kids when they decide to show up for class without their video on. This is not acceptable. We teach LANGUAGES. They are participatory in nature; back–and-forth, reciprocal, human interaction and eye contact is required. How on earth could you teach a language class if

Setting Realistic Goals for the Post-COVID Online Classroom. Instead of stressing out about how much grammar you can teach your language students, learn to relax and just communicate with them in ways that tap into the great potential of simple human verbal interaction, also known as comprehensible input. Instead of paying primary attention to the

I’m not exactly thrilled with the quality of readers out there. I think it’s not good to ask kids to read above their level. Most of us hand them books that are above their heads. In general, the TPRS/CI communitey routinely asks kids to silently read books that are above their level, and it frustrates

When you pause, it gives everyone’s neurology a chance to reset. It gives you a chance to “get back” to yourself. It’s one of the benefits of the Jesus Rule, and WBYT. Do it consciously and soon it will become an unconscious part of your teaching. Similarly, when you parse word chunks, you purposefully allow

Some years ago here in the PLC, Laura Censis wrote intelligently about how to communicate with parents about how we grade in our non-targeted approach: Spanish I students do not start this course with significant Spanish skills. They are here to absorb the language (receiving input) and they need hundreds or thousands of hours of

We need to address HOW we are making our kids feel when they are in our classes. To extend Marshall McCluhan’s message beyond electronic media, is it not possible that we ourselves, our bodies and the expressions on our faces, are also a medium for our CI messages in our classes? Bear in mind that

I don’t know who wrote the article below – probably Beniko Mason – but if you don’t do story listening you should be, at least part of the time. Beniko told me that a good ratio is 80% NTCI and 20% SL: Story-Listening (SL) classes attempt to provide a massive amount of meaningful aural comprehensible