Grammar is correctly spoken language. We learn it by osmosis. There is no way we can learn it analytically, anymore than a yoga student can learn yoga by reading a book about a particular asana and then suddenly be expected to move into it without some kind of neurological pathway development in the body first. […]
In a blog entry last summer I had asked Doug Stone to comment on the idea of change to new ways of teaching, or change in any field. His response is repeated here: Hi Ben, So the idea for the model for resistance to change came from my experience with acculturation which began not long
It saddens me when the passion that some of us have for comprehensible input methods is misinterpreted as being some kind of boastful claim to expertise and superiority in the field. Just because we write and talk about what we do with such intensity and excitement, people latch onto that in oppositional terms and accuse
This is from last spring. I was reflecting on how well my kids could write (free writes rules are on the posters page of this site) after very little practice that year. In fact, we didn’t focus on writing at all. I thought I would post that blog entry from last May again here as
We all suck at this. I just wanted to say that. Now, that said, can we just accept that we may be clumsy with this radically different method than the one that preceded it? Can we just accept our limited level of mastery of the method and, by trying every day, get better through those micro-efforts
O.K. this blog entry may wig a few people out. If it starts to make no sense, just stop reading. I think you may have to be a little on the crazy side for it to make sense. It makes sense to me, though, but then I’m a little on the crazy side. So here
Teenagers are trapped. They can’t go back to the joys of their younger days, which were squeezed out of them somewhere between 4th and 7th grade. They can’t go forward either. They’re stuck. Oh, but what wouldn’t they give for a break in their day from the endless boring tasks that led Tolstoy to describe
The mind simply cannot serve two masters. The human unconscious mind is far superior, infinitely superior, in the artful process of decoding and understanding the sounds of a foreign language than is the conscious mind. It does so just by hearing and reading it – automatically! The language teachers of the future will know this.
I thought I would repost this from November of 2009: Jody and I were talking today about Krashen. Aren’t we all trying to figure out, by studying his work, how to reach our kids at a more authentic level? Krashen is prodding us all to look at the ways in which we provide Comprehensible Input
Elissa asked for some thoughts on transitioning into stories. Carla or anybody – please constribute on this topic – we need to start talking about it. I am sure that there are many other blog entries on this site over the past three years that also address this topic, so if anybody finds any now is a good time
Anne’s student J, a former Hog, in a recent blog entry here (https://benslavic.com/blog/?p=7949), wrote to her former teacher about what college German is like. Here is a follow up. J writes to Anne: “At this point I have learned how to teach myself the grammar needed to do the homework exercises when before I was trying to do them
There is currently a great Big Picture presentation on diving that syncs great with a lot of year-beginning vocabulary. It’s called “Diving In” and can be found at: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/09/diving_in.html In Circling with Balls, we are using the verb “jump” an awful lot, and this picture set takes that and drills it wonderfully. I used the terms
