I’m glad I made people pay for the PLC membership. It kept the group small. It kept the right people here. From 12,000 hits a day a year ago and a big, non-focused and argumentative community (people seemed to want to argue the merits of TPRS/CI more than learn it), we have become a group […]

Many of us met and worked with Sauk, Euchee and Chickasaw tribe members at NTPRS last year. Kate sent me a copy of the agenda for the Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Tribes Native Language Summit which I attended last May. If you notice, it is dominated by Sauk instruction. Here is what Kate said:

Robert got error messages when trying to post this reply about the 10,000 hour discussion. Here it is as a post. It is long but, as with everything from Robert, definitely worth the read: #1 – Ben has mentioned a couple of times that someone has estimated 10,000 hours are necessary for mastery of anything.

The Archie discussion continues here in Segment 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G-2EvHj_Os Here are the other two in case you haven’t seen them yet or want to review them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3Lbuqw3xWA (Segment 1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRI9DcPLMaU (Segment 2)

I attended the IDT (International German Teachers) conference in Jena, Germany, in 2010 and learned the following: – the value of chunking language so students don’t experience cognitive overload – that everything is lexical until a learner has acquired sufficient language to begin making connections. “Voy = I go” and “Fui = I went” are

Don’t forget that Laurie is going down to Washington, D.C. this week to visit Lea and talk about what we do with some teachers at her school and on the East Coast. Here is the information if you are in that area and would like to attend. Lea informs us that there is still time to

Hi Ben, I received an e-mail from a colleague who is looking for ways to help her achieve and maintain the 90% target language goal. She has been turned off about TPRS, but does tell stories from personal experience to her students, so I tried to explain things without using any of the jargon. Here’s

Drew hit on a great plan re: leveling kids in language classes. We all need to think about whether it is something we would want to fight for in our schools. I personally will, because I think it has the potential to solve a lot of problems. Here is Drew’s four year plan: I am

Why do I believe Teaching with Comprehensible Input is the most effective method for producing speaking fluency? Before proceeding, it is important to make a distinction. TCI is not TPRS. While TPRS is one method of providing Comprehensible Input, it is not the only method. Experts on Second Language Acquisition (e.g. Asher, Krashen, Van Patten,

Jen said: …Isn’t every class a mixed level? Aren’t there really no such things as “levels” anyway?…. John said this: …this statement from Jen’s recent post I think deserves to be a post on its own, because it really touches on the the assumptions most teachers, parents and administrators hold. How many of us are

Once we have decided that the goal is fluency or communicative competence, we have to decide what method best helps us accomplish that goal. To answer that question, we need to know something about both Second Language Acquisition and how the brain works. Some of the things we know include the following: 1. The brain

Just thought I’d turn these two paragraphs (from a comment by Robert in response to a question from Libby) into a post. We need to gear up for next year when we start defining rigor and defending our positions in terms of ACTFL and the Three Modes. We must make it clear to all concerned – students,