We were talking about the limitations brought by the new practitioners of TPRS/CI who have over the past twenty years led the TPRS/CI movement into a new marketplace which I call the “CI Marketplace”, where the purity of the research and the elegant simplicity of the Communication standard have been left in tattered shreds of […]

In the last post we suggested that there have been waves of language teachers since about 1970. The first were the traditionalists. ‘Nuff said. The second were the Blaine Ray disciples who came in with real force in the early 2000s. Unfortunately, they sold out and Krashen and Blaine let them. So now, their potential

I said in a recent Teacher’s Discovery webinar – just yesterday actually – that we need to finally grow up in our profession. We need to become big girls and boys now that COVID has opened up a new and exciting highway for us to align more and more with the research. We need to

Viktoria has read the book with particular close attention to Cat. A. She has also attended the last few weeks of Zoom instruction on Cat. A. I am thrilled to report that we just finished a Zoom class in which Victoria demo’d Cat. A and she nailed it. She really did. What does that mean?

If you but learn how to teach in line with the standards and research, you won’t have to complain about being bullied by children in your classroom. Kids become bullies when they feel powerless. Give them power (i.e. knowledge of what you are saying) and – BECAUSE THEY UNDERSTAND – they will stop bullying you.

Alisa sent this: I just don’t agree. We in the specific field of language education have the upper hand, but nobody seems to know it. I think that with (1) the 65%/35% grading system used in the Invisibles and (2) small personalized classes, it can work fine.  All we have to do is make sure

This post is from years ago, but worth a re-post: Some years ago, in a much-lauded speech to the Republican National Convention, then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made “we believe in teachers” one of his central themes. This prompts the questions: What does it mean to believe in teachers? And, do we really believe in

I’ve been reflecting more and more about how it’s not about how smart you are, or how fast you process languages, but about the community piece. That’s why, even when instructing online, we can’t let that piece fall aside. We need to increase it. Indeed, everything is based on recognizing our students as people. And

Here is the link to today’s 5:00 p.m. Teacher’s Discovery webinar on online CI instruction: https://www.facebook.com/events/717709192298591/

This further explains some of the content of my webinar tomorrow: Rationale: If you are going to be successful in the fall with your online language instruction, you’re going to have to get your kids focused on the message and not on the language when you use the ZOOM platform. Despite your frustrations this spring

I’m doing a Facebook webinar for Teacher’s Discovery tomorrow, at 5:00 pm Eastern Time.  Here’s the information: https://www.facebook.com/events/717709192298591/ Also earlier that day at 2:00 pm Eastern Time is our usual Zoom class on the Invisibles. We’re almost ready to go on to Category B! Anyone wanting in, let me know.

I will continuously fight against targeted CI instruction. It’s so sad that most CI teachers don’t even really know the difference. They think that targeting is what CI is. But it’s not. It’s an aberration and it’s costing them student engagement. When I said in the last article here that the novels and any targeted