Ben: Your recent comments about the hit and miss nature of TPRS, depending on moods and relationships, was really encouraging.  I have had some fun conversations with students the last month… the Olympics, the Superbowl, and the phrase “what are you going to do this weekend?” were really fun with various classes.  I found a

What Should We Say In Job Interviews? I got this excellent question from a young Denver area teacher – please answer below in the comment section if you have any ideas that might help. Hi Ben! A year or so ago, I was doing my student teaching and had heard a lot about TPRS and

Give them a feeling of success    What does this mean? We want the students to feel like they are good at Spanish.  That feeling of confidence will carry them.  I am not talking about some false sense of self esteem.  I am talking about developing something within the kids that says “I can do this.” 

This was a comment from Sylvia that got held in the queue because of what Robert figured out about the url’s. I tried to fix that but it won’t let me. But, I wanted to make sure we got a chance to read it so I posted it here: Ben, interesting point about teaching to the

Actually this from Michele is a week old, stuck in the queue during that time, but it still fits in the thread, so here it is: Dear Ben, I had an observer last Monday. She has been using the “old” TPRS and wanted to see the “new” TPRS. Because she was an experienced person, I

(This is the KEY point)   Interesting, Repeated (many times),   Personalized, Meaningful,   Comprehensible Input These are the crucial elements of language teaching.  Interesting and personalized input adds up to meaningfulness.  If our teaching becomes meaningful to the students it will stick.  Here is what master teacher Joe Neilson of Salpointe High School in

Focus on the kids.   What does this mean? We are teaching students, not a curriculum.  The students have to get it.  They won’t get it if they don’t pay attention.  And they won’t pay attention unless it is interesting to them.  The most interesting subject to high school age students is THEMSELVES.  We talk

Bryce sent this and it is long, so I will post it as separate installments over this week:   Installment #1:   Ben,   For years I had signs up at the back of my classroom to help me remember the basics.  They were gleaned from Blaine, Susie, Joe, you and others. Now, whenever I have a student

Bryce asked Blaine the following question: Blaine – There is a thread on benslavic.com (blog) about staying in English and comprehensible input right now. I started it off with a quote that I have heard you use from the novel Speak by Laurie Anderson.  The blog is titled “The 90% -99% Jump”. People are really

I took the following from a couple of comments I made on the blog today about the entire discussion about how backwards design may fit with student generated stories (Michele calls them skeleton stories), and how those fit with embedded readings as per Laurie Clarcq. Below I explain how I did those things today, on

I have a first period student whose year has been very hard, as only ninth grade can be, and who has caused me some real stress. I have been talking with mom a lot, and moved the child to sit right next to me in class. I have been applying a lot of what we have