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ESL Question

Jolyn has a question: I am volunteering, teaching EAL in a variety of situations in Mexico, some one on one, some small classes, over an extended winter vacation.  Several of my students have access to internet and very motivated. I am using CI/TPRS methods in my teaching and tutoring, but I want to leave them […]

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It Won’t Change

It won’t change until the training/coaching model changes. We’re trying. But we can’t make CI based instruction work until we trust each other more in schools. It’s going in the opposite direction. We trust less and less in each other and less in what Krashen and Blaine have served up. It’s a big table of wonderful

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Circling Exercise

This is from the West Coast Bear: Hi Ben, Here’s a little circling exercise that I wrote up. Share it if you like. The language is Sindarin (the version of Elvish used in Middle Earth by the Third Age). I challenge any of the “just try harder“ people to get this without help. (I included

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Robert Harrell’s Grammar Quiz

A post appeared here a few days ago on how it feels to not understand anything in a grammar class: https://benslavic.com/blog/how-does-it-feel-to-not-understand/ Jim then reminded us of Robert Harrell’s grammar quiz for teachers, which can be given to teachers who teach using the old grammar model of teaching languages. So if you get into one of those

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Kale

Recently kale has become the food to eat. Food researcher Mike Anderson, in his important book The Rave Diet, has made that claim for over twenty years. He claims that the closer one gets to a diet of pure dark leafy greens, the better one’s health. Recently TPRS has become the way to teach a

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My Son

My 18 year old son has had a difficult time of it in high school. He is gifted. No doubt, having me as a dad didn’t help him go all bright and bushy tailed about school, hearing me bitch and complain about schools all the time growing up. Now Evan is in an experiential school

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