The following information is taken from Anne’s Story Scripts, Vol. 1. After reading what Laurie says about scripting stories, I thought it appropriate to pull this information from an appendix (C) from that book to shed further light on the topic. Appendix C:  How to Script a Story I. Scripting a story to prepare for […]

A pile of bricks. That is what grammar teachers inflict on their students when they don’t present the whole building to their students from the beginning of their language study. What Susan Gross says about reading, therefore, is important [bracketed text mine]: …acquisition occurs only when the learner is focused entirely on meaning [the house],

Robert, commenting on a recent thread on assessment, wrote this: For all of the teachers who believe that one cannot speak a language without consciously knowing the rules of grammar and proper terminology, I suggest giving this “modest grammar quiz” to college-educated native English speakers, especially those who have not taken advanced grammar courses. I

I got this important email from John Piazza in San Francisco as part of an ongoing private conversation we have been sharing over the past year about Latin instruction and CI. It totally kicks ass in that it speaks to me, with my zero knowledge of how Latin instruction differs from modern language instruction, on

Choosing Structures C: Action/Reaction Revisited Earlier, we took a target structure and then brainstormed natural reactions to it. We can also reverse the process. Above we STARTED with “I need to tell you something.” and looked for the reaction. What if “I need to tell you something” WAS THE REACTION?! What could have happened that

When the bricks are presented from the beginning of the program of study via sound and thus as integrated and contiguous pieces of the overall house, as the learner’s mind points to each brick countless times in countless arrangements of words (we call that reading), then the student enjoys inhaling the language without even being

Here is a direct quote from Susan Gross during one of her sessions at NTPRS. You really can’t make it any more simple than this: Grammar clarifies meaning. That is its role in language. Then Susie gave the following example: a dansé = danced So, if you feel yourself wanting to go off into the

These thoughts from John written last September are very important and so I repeat them here: Hey Ben, Well I have only seen my students twice, so I have nothing to say about what I am doing with them in the classroom just yet.  I wanted to share how un-stressed I am this year, for

Choosing Structures B: THINK, FEEL, SAY, DO Another thought: In a story characters will THINK, FEEL, SAY AND DO things. The first structure is something that Earl SAYS, “I need to tell you something.” The beauty of it is that it immediately implies a feeling. Earl NEEDS to. AND a future action: TELL. This is

Four comments since May were routed into the “pending” file of the site, which I rarely check. There is no vetting of comments here, it is all instant conversation. So, if you add a comment to a post and it doesn’t come up there right away, please send it to me via email and I will get it

By the time each batch of bricks is labeled and “understood” by the class (as evidenced by the bogus test), as in the case of the relative pronouns brick which takes over a week or ten days to look at, and the students are vastly confused and bored because they still don’t see what the house

A colleague in TPRS advocates this kind of assessment work in Spanish 1: Translate into English the following words: 1. le gustaba jugar golf 2. jugar 3. necesitaba dinero 4. se llamaban 5. andaba en la calle 6. había 7. tampoco 8. ahora 9. queríamos comer 10. vio I don’t think that that is a good