Charlotte (Canada) has a question: Hi Ben, I have a technology question for the group.  Our school just bought a class set of Blackberry Playbooks. (not impressed)  I would like to buy one ipad for my class to use as a document camera.  I have to justify this expenditure and I was looking for more […]

I want to keep the Latin discussion front and center. I am beginning to see that there is some unique stuff going on right now. Churning beneath the waters. In a small part of the ocean. That few have noticed yet. But will. There are about seven vocal Classicists in our group and they are impacting how people view and relate to

Trying to cut through all the crap and get to the core of this stuff and share it is my mission. It’s what we are doing here, and very well, I might add. But doing this work is so hard, and getting distracted by bullshit happens a lot. Whenever I get distracted or confused, I

This article was in the queue to be published in 2016. Why? Who knows? The queue is crowded, for sure. Anyway, here it is. I think I didn’t want to publish it bc I was unsure about the content, but in the light of the recent discussion generated by James, I’ll just publish it here

Most people already do this but just to say it anyway. When I do pop-up grammar in R & D or in Reading Option A, if it’s a verb, referring to the ending of the verb, I ask the class: What does (ending on the verb) mean? When they respond with the corresponding subject pronoun,

Here is a nice field report from a newer member of the group, Mike Rooney: I wanted to tell you about an awesome and validating moment I had last week in my Spanish 4 class. We have been working on our first full story together, based on Bryce’s suggestion for how to introduce the subjunctive

Most of us, me more than others, go into English a lot more than I would ever admit here. I go into English at the drop of a hat. Someone dropped a hat in my classroom just last week and I started speaking English. It’s just that way. And then we say that “some day”

Using too much English in the classroom is a situation that we all face. We need to get this one tied down for next year. It is hugely connected to classroom discipline and and gains in fluency yet we don’t really acknowledge that. We don’t realize what a snake English/L1 is in undermining the effects of

Krashen and TPRS. Both mean little in Babylon. If the story about Madame Curie is to teach us anything, it is to get us to finally initiate a dialogue based ideas that won’t create a firestorm of ignorance about what those two now almost meaningless terms – both associated with old white men* – actually mean.

Is comprehensible input a strong enough force to bring change to school cultures? I’m not asking if it is an effective force in general. Indeed, it is THE driving principle of language acquisition. Rather, I am asking if it can be effective in school language classrooms. Where am I going with this? As always, I’m

Chris, again, congratulations on attracting the attention of the big dog with your paper. A while back I had asked Krashen a simple question. I asked him how he would describe his own work. I wanted to hear what he would say is the simplest way to conceptualize his work. He wrote back: It’s not

Daniel sends his bio: My name is Daniel Durrett, and I am a Spanish and Bible teacher at a small to mid size Christian school in Paducah, Kentucky. My Spanish classes are all at the high school level, at least for this year. I teach levels one through three. A few years ago, I was