A repost: So there are empty sandboxes and then there are sandboxes with (CI) sand in them, from which stories and all sorts of fun things emerge. How can this image be explored more deeply? Specifically, how can it be applied to teachers? Think of kids. What would happen on a real playground if a […]
More ammunition (from Diane Neubauer) for talking with admins who need help in understanding CI: Stephen-Krashen-summary-2 Stephen-Krashen-summary-2
The thought form “they won’t learn it unless I teach it” is a falsity in language acquisition. It is not true. Languages cannot be taught anymore than dreams can be consciously controlled. You can’t think your way to mastery of a language. The language acquisition process – the real stuff – requires that the process
When we think about our roles as language teachers, the most important aspect of our work is to love our children and give them hope in what they can do in life. In my opinion – and I’m not trying to sell anything with this next thought – the means that we pay back the
This post is from 2009. I republish it here because it is core to the kind of things I want to discuss here in this PLC. It just seems to me odd that if a good conversation is, as it says below, “divorced from any planned outcome”, then why are we so intent on targeting and analyzing and working
Looks like the funding for this study may be there, and TAMU has just approved it, so I’m reposting this. Julia needs just one more volunteer to get this into action. We already have precious few such studies on non-targeted so please if you are willing, contact her: Julia Lynch is a researcher at the
This is from my ANATS book for Loly who is working with dictée in her classes this week: Dictée: This is a powerful metacognitive tool that helps students attempt to match up the sounds of the language with what they can write. Again, we do not get a lot of language gains with this activity,
Alisa and I shared an interesting email thread today. She wrote: Hi Ben, The place where I’m consulting [ed. note: a Hebrew School in NYC] has a very intense testing culture. As they become schooled in CI, the principal of the junior high, I’m told, is quite stuck on what standard to hold the junior high
Personally, I don’t like the pressure to create a great story in every class. There is the idea out there that the teacher has to walk into the classroom and create with her students a great story, as long as they have the skills. Too much pressure. In that story model, everything, all the interest and
Those who, like me, think that the Star Sequence provides the truest overall curricular form to NTCI might enjoy this suggestion from Alisa: Here is an optional modification to The Star Sequence: Add a 6th point that includes: (1) Small Talk (2) Classroom banter (3) Card Talk (4) National Day and other beginning of class
I just had an insight into the reason these things are on the ACTFL pages. I once worked, an eternity ago, with Vicki Galloway, who was the South Carolina Foreign Language Consultant and later a big shot in the ACTFL hierarchy. Every time I talked to Vicki I could not understand her words. She was
