I call the Monday after a break Snarky Monday. The kids just seem to get basted with an extra layer of snark over the break – who knows why? Since trying the same stuff that our classes were doing before a vacation doesn’t always work for those first few days after the vacation, I wait […]

There is this quote from Soren Kierkegaard: “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” I connect this to what is happening in the CI world these days. I won’t say how. Just some food for thought.

How’s this for an unnecessary and professionally embarrassing website? http://www.angelfire.com/az/english4thechildren/krashen.html

Here is an excellent MT clip from Craig for Thanksgiving: https://goo.gl/UJUjfR

In the next year it would be nice to collect some readings here and put them all in one place. I remain convinced that we don’t need the novels. They are pretty boring. We can generate our own reading materials from our classes to share far and wide. An example of what we might be

I was just reading a thread in an online group. It said, “Challenge them by introducing more vocabulary.” I don’t agree with this. “Challenging” kids is code for “make them think harder,” or “make them aware that the class is something they have to gird their minds up for”, or “I’m going to control what

Hi Ben – I think the last email I sent you the subject line read, “Worst Year Ever.” So I thought it appropriate to give the subject of this email the title “Best Two Years Ever.” I switched schools two years ago and now work part time (every other day) at a fabulous high school.

This is a repost for Dana from April of 2016 when I was in India. It’s also for anyone else following the Helena Curtain thread, which has been going on since 2012: We have about twelve World Language teachers here at the American Embassy School. There are also what seem like countless ESL teachers all

Kids teach us. Let’s embrace that idea. So when they refuse our academic overtures, those are teaching moments. For us. Students are not mean spirited or lazy, as the Teacher’s Lounge Crew would often have it. They are just bored. That’s what the textbook does – it bores people. Now that we have a way

Another repost from 2017: If it is true that targeted instruction increases constraints on interest, then why do it? How can we possibly get acquisition when the interest isn’t really there, even with 100 repetitions per class? It’s not the amount of reps, but their quality. It’s about how much what we say approaches compelling.

I’m going to do a workshop in Chicago tomorrow, returning Thursday. Ironically I won’t be able to see Alisa even though the training I’m doing is close to her, because she will also be on the road doing a training. She’s lighting up the Hebrew scene in NYC. We are all very very proud of