How does the “Half CI/Half Grammar” plan work through four years? That’s the beauty of the Deuxieme Livre – it covers four years of grammar from “er” verbs through the pluperfect subjunctive. It’s the worst-named workbook in the history of workbooks but is the best workbook ever designed – the best designed exposition of French […]

You’ve got total control with the Deuxieme Livre because it’s so good in terms of making the grammar understandable. Don’t feel like teaching CI? Teach the Deuxieme Livre. Don’t feel like teaching Deuxieme Livre? Tell a story or do a tableau. Cake. Don’t forget that the title says “second year” but goes nicely from beginning

So the Deuxieme Livre is a Mercedes in terms of organization of the French grammar system. It’s name is misleading – it beautifully covers all four years of grammar from beginning to end in a workbook format that you just plow through whenever you need a break from whatever CI you are doing. This is

Here’s a plan to combat the daily burden that weighs so heavily on too many CI teachers’ shoulders when they try to use it in schools and find that it might be easier to fight a rabid dog. If you are a French teacher, get the Eli Blume Deuxieme Livre and teach from that book.

The unbridged chasm between TPRS/CI and school settings – despite over 20 years of trying to bridge it – remains wide. This has caused heartache. Teachers have kind of driven themselves crazy trying to make CI work in schools. Careers have failed. CI works fine, but I have quietly wondered, for at least ten years

For well over 25 years, we in the CI movement have been grabbing onto CI like it’s some kind of special prize that if we only work hard enough to master, we can turn our teaching around and have a great career with super-engaged students and everything will be wonderful. Now, I propose that we

The best stories exhibit questioning sequences that resemble a bell curve skewed to the right, with the action moving slowly up to where it is most intense in levels 5 and 6 and then tapering off rapidly from there. One way to get rapid closure to a story is to ask if the story will

My dog really perks up her ears when I say words like “chicken” and “beef”. The concern and interest she shows on her face when I say those words is probably a universal look of inquiry among dogs. She wants more information. But when we give word lists to our students, expecting them to take

It was Mr. Rogers who said that we “don’t need to put on a funny hat to communicate with a child.” I spent many years working hard trying to make sure that things got funny in stories. I would think outside of class of ways to bring in a certain celebrity, or some fact about

I made a funny: We are like dogs trying to help all of the language teachers who still have their feet planted firmly in the grammar translation methods of the past century. We are C ing I dogs.

Q. A teacher wanted to use the Invisibles Extend phase strategy of interviewing students and so she came up with some personal interview questions for her level 1 and 2 classes. From there, she wrote a list of grammar items that they would naturally need to use (possessive adjectives, etc.) to answer that list of

I got this today – thought I’d share it with the group. My responses in italics: Q. Today in my Spanish 2 class, I had a student name his ICI “Mike Hawk”.  I didn’t get the nasty joke until I read it in front of the class and everyone snickered and laughed.  I realized what