Chris is reaping the benefits of his unrelenting focus on comprehension based instruction in Ohio. Here is the kind of report from the field that, as we continue to fight, we will see more and more of from our members. Congratulations, Chris! Ben, I have some exciting news. I’ve been nominated by one of my […]
This was previously entitled Help Needed by Monday, Please. It has grown into a weatlth of comments from lots of group members and so will be placed in the category Presenting to Colleagues on the Method. Jen writes: Ben, Holy crud! I have news. On Thursday, I’m going to an articulation meeting with the other
Grammar is correcly spoken speech in three dimensions. It has been trapped and wrestled down out of its pure form, the way all people learn real grammar, and it has been stuck onto paper and forced into that one (mechanical mental) dimension. It has been shoved into the left hemisphere of the brain, where it loses
Robert makes a nice connection between the need for teachers to get instant gratification for their L2 instruction in the form of forced output when everything Krashen has ever shown us tells us to wait and not force output, both in the form of writing and of speech: Most of us here in the PLC
I think of a classroom in which the kids feel no stress. All they have to do is listen in a happy way to the French language. The room can be described by this line from Baudelaire’s L’Invitation au voyage: Là,tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté, luxe, calme et volupté. There, all is order and beauty,
Matt sent a nice bio: I teach both Chinese and ESL, and am presently teaching at Fei Tian Academy of the Arts—a small, private, performing arts school in NY. This is my first year teaching ESL in a while (and at this position), after teaching full-on TPRS Chinese before this year and enjoying some wonderful
Sabrina shares this great news from the moretprs list about our own Michael Miller. Of course, Michael worked with Susan Gross in the 1990’s at this same school. Whenever I observed him his kids were in a constant German environment, lots of PQA, lots of physical response with kids diving under desks and stuff. Fun to
This is a great article from Sabrina illustrating and defending rSF. It puts to shame any other idea in language education about how to teach lists of sports and other thematic units. THIS is the way to teach lists of sports, pastimes, etc. if it is acquisition you are after. We do not learn languages by memorizing
Think of some of the best classes you ever were a part of, as a student or as an instructor. Were they all planned out, or did they kind of direct themselves? What was the feeling in those classes? Was there a serious tone, or one of excitement, with some humor and a certain kind
Here is an important article from Robert Patrick to the Latin-Best Practices list. It goes into detail and is an excellent addition to our already strong set of articles in the R and D category: Of all the practices currently developing in the larger practice of Comprehensible Input, Reading and Discussing (R/D) in Latin was
Sharon has a kind of complex question: Ben, I’d like to know how you handle new students who transfer into your class in the middle of the semester with no background with TPRS. How do you do it without translating every single thing you are saying? I teach only Spanish 1 and 2, and so
From John: Last week, in an email exchange among our little Latin CI cohort, Bob wrote this: “Breathe. Enjoy what you are doing today. Make sure (Dave also reminded us) that laughter has a chance of happening in every class. It really doesn’t cost much, but the dividend is huge.” I would add, not only
