Again, we express our thanks to both Brigitte (Ch. 2) and a master of English, French and German (and who knows what other?) languages Martin Anders (Ch. 3): Die Vitalienbrüder Der neue Schiffsjunge putzt das Deck. Es ist harte Arbeit, und er ist müde, aber er darf nicht aufhören zu putzen. Er muss das ganze Deck […]

From Robert: Hi Ben, Martin is the one to thank this time for his work proofing the German in this chapter and then translating it into English.   Robert The Victual Brothers The new cabin boy is cleaning the deck. It is hard work, and he is tired, but he is not allowed to stop

I got this question from an ELA teacher who is not a member of our group: …do you have any word lists for English classes? I saw on your website that you have a ton of resources for Spanish and French, but I couldn’t find much on English…. That actually blew my mind a little

This is pretty bad ass. I think of it as a two year list: demande pose apporte achète peut veut lave compte boit conduit mange tombe trouve finit vole oublie va a est écoute sait connaît apprend vit habite prend perd fait a besoin ouvre ferme paie joue il pleut il neige lit répond court

La pipe du papa du Pape Pie pue. (author unknown) Le ver vert va vers le verre vert. (mine) Qu’est-ce que c’est que cette caisse cassée? (from Paul)

I got this request: “I’m in the process of rewriting the course description for my French class, if you have any advice or ideas you could share with me I’d really appreciate it.  I’m the only French teacher at my school and the Spanish teachers aren’t on board with TPRS yet and I’m really struggling

I got this from Paul. We were talking about how much stuff we try to cram into the hours we have. It’s like trying to pour the ocean into a thimble. I deeply appreciate Paul’s frankness here, because trying to do too much has the frightening potential to make us crazy for real: …I’m trying

I have long needed a simple and organized (therefore stress free) way to plan what I do each week with the kids. So below is my own way of organizing all of the information that I have gathered over the past twelve years in a way that works for me within the constraints of a week that contains only 4

Grant sent this in January: Ben, This is my 5th or 6th year of using TCI, only the 3rd using TCI exclusively (or what I feel is exclusively). Each year I’ve gotten better. Each year I become more and more skilled at staying in the target language and staying comprehensible and interesting. But, each year around

The blog content has gotten very busy – probably Jason’s visit. The queue is pretty jammed. So this is just an update so as to not to lose any of them. Here they are: 1. Robert Harrell’s novel about the gentlemen from the North Sea. 2. Metacocognition as an active part of self assessment in the CI

Here is a list of 72 pretty good verbs for a level 1 French class. It’s not scientific – I just pulled them out of the air. Please correct or add or subtract. This gives me 6 verb strip posters. If you think that they are ok and want them in German and/or Spanish then please get me the

I prefer words blown up in strips of about 12 words each about 1″ high. I won’t be doing word “walls” next year but those word “strips”. They are new for me. I experimented with them this year and I like it. You can see them in the Krashen video I took but haven’t had a chance