Regarding distribution of instructional minutes in Story Listening (SL), I asked in a 2016 phone call with Dr. Beniko Mason, the originator of Story Listening, if she thought that Story Listening and the Invisibles would make a could combination CI program, My question was if a ratio of 50% SL to 50% Invisibles would be […]

There is one specific activity that I suggest we throw in from time to time as a break from the Invisibles. It is another way to teach using comprehensible input that is tried, tested and proven to work, and a very welcome addition to our CI arsenal. Story Listening is a highly effective technique in

The words in French, Spanish and English – Mais/Pero/But! – can be bleated. This is one of the funniest thing that occurs in my classes, and it occurs all the time. But it is hard to explain and may not resonate with some. Also, it may only work in French. In French the word for

Knockathon gets us repetitions on “How many times?” Ringeroni gets us reps on “For how long?” Ringeroni happens in a story whenever an actor approaches a house not to knock on the front door but to ring a doorbell: Instructor: “Class, the girl rang the doorbell!“ Student: “Pendant combien de secondes/For how many seconds?” This

Knockathon happens in a story whenever an actor approaches a building to knock on the door, which happens more often than you might think: A girl wanted a boyfriend so she left her house and went to the house next door, where a boy her age lived. She knocked on the door. Instructor says: “Class,

In Questioning Level 5, actors usually leave the place where they found out that they had a problem and go to Questioning Level 6 – the place where the problem is solved or not. This going from one place in QL5 to another in QL6 requires actors to travel, and with that need comes an

Jenna sent what is below. It’s about the need for a person to be fully committed to a concept to make it work. A recent (last two years) leitmotif in these pages has indeed been the need to commit and not just dabble in the research about CI. From Jenna: I was introduced to this

So after all those years of thinking, reflecting and testing how to create a problem in a story I’ve come to the conclusion that all you really need is a story starter (I don’t know why I call them that but they work). They are explained in the link below. This really does make it

Q. I’m planning to do my first story from an ICI today and was wondering if you always use the problem on the back of the ICI paper in the story.  Or do you present that problem and ask the class for a better suggestion?  I’m thinking for my first time, maybe just to stick

There are moments in which something, usually some exclamatory statement in some scene, is remarkable and special, and we don’t know why. Someone says some cute line that grabs the attention of the class. The phrase is more interesting and somehow funnier than anything else in the story. I call that a catch phrase. Catch

I’m taking off my CI Cowboy hat for good. It’s been way too intense for way too long. We fought lots of intense battles with real courage, and they kept us awake at night. Many of the battles were fought right here on this PLC over the past 15 years. Remember when we took on

This is a comment from Bryan Whitney that I want to be a part of this thread: …I feel like this [combining CI with grammar instruction] is a huge relief to hear. Trying to mix the two and make them “work together” just doesn’t work, but dividing our time between the two (in whatever percentage