Question about Presenting to Colleagues

4 thoughts on “Question about Presenting to Colleagues”

1. skip

   June 13, 2012 at 7:07 am

   Anne, Alice and I actually presented at our state conference in March. I would be happy to send the power point and “presentation description” to the person who was asking if they want to e-mail me…

   One thing we found it that it is fairly important to “introduce TPRS” by “doing TPRS”. The other thing we found is that it is pretty important to use a language that is foreign to the audience.

   We started with the ACTFL language of 90%, Comprehensible Input etc and then asked who was meeting the ACTFL guideline.

   It was actually received really well mostly because Matava is SUCH an amazing practitioner of the craft.

   skip

   Log in to Reply
   1. MB

      June 13, 2012 at 9:36 pm

      Yeah, and now everyone knows that I want a dog!!!! 🙂 (I was one of the actors in Anne’s story!)
      I went to that conference this year SOLELY for the purpose of going to Skip’s workshop (both of them). It was GREAT! I was already a believer, but I brought my dept head too. I just told him, “Oh, this is about Comprehensible Input” and Skip, Anne and Alice had it advertised as “ACTFL 90%”. There was a full house for both sessions, and since I got to sit in the front and face the crowd, I saw a lot of positive faces with LOTS of smiles staring back at me. Everyone was having FUN! (but, I know you will then have the ones who will walk out the door, turn the corner and poo-poo ‘TPRS’, because they won’t know that that was what they just experienced!) BUT…..I also think it got the ‘draw’ cause it said “ACTFL 90%”; I’m pretty sure if it said “TPRS” the turnout would not have been so great. Just have to educate one at a time! *SKIP: what exactly was the title? wasn’t it a question? It was an AWESOME presentation!
      that being said, my dept head had fun and said that he wants to do that now with the lower levels…..I hope he means it. I’m trying to get him to commit to getting us funding to go to the Maine CI workshop in October!!!

      Log in to Reply
2. Ben Slavic

   June 13, 2012 at 11:23 pm

   And here is this venue we have just spent a very productive year and a lot of time marrying ACTFL’s Three Modes of Communication, especially the interspersonal skill, and the 90% use position statement to what we do. If a teacher doesn’t

   …know that [CI] was what they just experienced….

   then they won’t be aware of the connection that we have so exhaustively studied together this year. We must not get bent out of shape that so many teachers can’t make that connection. That is the right thing to do, to not get bent out of shape over the tens of thousands of teachers who still don’t get CI, because, even when they see those three teachers doing really effective CI right in front of them, they still often just plain don’t have the eyes to see. It is so different!

   When you stood there in front of the group, Mary Beth, you were seeing unconscious acquisition. The smiles meant that they were focused on the message and not the medium for its deliverery – which is real acquisition! B

   But, reflecting on what you wrote, I really can see where they would walk out and not understand what they saw. Why? Because they are 4%ers and they never saw it. It is like asking someone from the North Pole who has never heard Mozart to grasp it musically. They are not equipped to do so. They have never even entertained the thought that one could learn a language this way.

   So they are not to be blamed. Rather, they are to be educated. But teaching a 4%er about Krashen and CI is a bit of an anachronistic terms, so it’s gonna be slow sledding. But neither could we easily teach our North Pole person how to listen to Mozart. It takes some time to be able to learn to absorb those musical ideas – the language of Mozart is so distant, so very distant, from what they know. Perhaps Bach is a better example.

   Anyway, Mary Beth, thank you so much for you observations of that Maine team. Those people are just so fine. Each of us will get it when we are supposed to. It’ll happen. Slowly. In God’s time.

   Log in to Reply
3. skip

   June 14, 2012 at 5:34 pm

   The title of the workshop was: “The 90% ACTFL Goal- We really can meet it!”

   Log in to Reply