Intuition – 1

1 thought on “Intuition – 1”

1. Justin

   August 22, 2008 at 3:02 am

   Ben,
   Thanks for the insights and materials. I’m learning TPRS. I used it to begin last year, but I kind of dropped the ball on it at the end of last year. We got shiny new textbooks this year with all of the bells and whistles, but I am determined to resist the temptation to buy into that stuff. I think that, at the core, we (teachers, and people in general) hate change. Or rather, we hate the effort it takes to make change and *sustain* change. It’s easy to slip back into the familiar “Do exercises A&B and we’ll go over them in a minute” type of teaching.

   I’m trying to gather some informal, anecdotal evidence about students attitudes, self-assessments as language learners, etc. for the first time this year. I’ve only flipped through the responses, but many negative self-assessments seemed to revolve around the fact that they couldn’t remember all of the conjugations, or they had problems with adverbs, etc. I am a reforming grammar-hound. I love it with a capital ‘L.’ The problem? I’m convinced that my old way of grammar-based instruction, while great for the 4 percenters, is inferior to actual acquisition. (I found out that the four percenters are really, really resistant to change also – they are good at the game of playing school, and they don’t want anyone to switch stuff up on them now!
   Sorry for the rambling post. Conclusion : I think you’re absolutely right. It’s not about “materials.” It’s about the kids.

   Log in to Reply