Got this from Brad this morning: Ben- A 2nd year student made this post today, and I thought you’d appreciate it: “Had the amazing opportunity to talk with some Mexicans tonight at the gym entirely in Spanish. It was fabulous…. I had seen them a few times there before, so I figured, what the heck, […]
One colleague recently asked why we only have one word responses in circling. She couldn’t figure out why, when the kids obviously knew the answer, they didn’t output it right then in a complete sentence. Here is one answer – it seems to me that when we are doing circling, and comprehensible input in general,
There is an excellent video of TPRS available online at vimeo.com. It was taken by Sylvia Duckworth (AIM) of Norm Veilleux teaching a level one French class in Toronto. Here is the link: http://www.vimeo.com/10121629 – password is TPRS I recommend a close look. Here are some observations I would like to offer: 2:30 – notice the class
K continues with her description of what she does as a French teacher/French 2 student in her school, with a teacher who is open to these [Krashen based] ideas. Below she describes, in a bit greater detail, the lunch scene that we have been reading about in previous blogs: Lunch stories: This schedule depends on what we
I asked K to send me some sample days from her French class, so that we could get a picture of her role in this story: There are 2 basic setups – stories at lunch and in the classroom. I’ll start with the classroom first. Classes are 90 minutes every other day, however since I
Teaching a language without using comprehensible input is insulting to the magnificence of the human brain, which can process and decode and implement thousands of rules of language without even needing to use its conscious side – it’s all automatic. All that the brain needs to acquire a language is to hear the language spoken correctly in a
In the middle of some CI, I sometimes ask the kids to write a sentence that I dictate to them letter by letter, not word by word. The difference is that they don’t actually write on paper, and they don’t use a writing instrument – they just pretend wo write. It’s a race to see
Of course, a typical week of CI for most of us changes weekly as we learn more and more about comprehensible input possibilities with each class. But this very wealth of options presented to us by what Krashen started can cause confusion and a certain sense of being scattered in our lesson planning. Too much good
Have you noticed that the kids love to suggest “multicolored” or “tie die” or “stripes” or “polka dots” in response to the question “What color was it?” I love that. They keep wanting things colorful – they don’t want their worlds to become black and white! Rainbows, also, seem to get into stories often. Anytime a
Femmelette (m. – wuss – a male who is timid and weak) is a great name to call the manly man of the class. Just start calling him femmelette. Just make sure that you first ask him before class that you have a great name for the strongest boy in the class, but only one who
Brian Barabe raises two points below that could benefit from a variety of responses. I have not taught upper level TPRS to TPRS trained kids but somebody must be doing that and so can comment. Brian asks about the materials question as well. My answer to both questions is increasing output at the upper levels for
Grant Boulanger in Minnesota has this question: Does anyone know of anyone operating in a full on International Baccalaureate program? I’d like to network with some of those people to see how they are dealing with the requirements of the IB and wondering if you know of any. Thanks!
