This is an updated repost from February of 2008:
My teacher gave me a fender. She told me it was “important” to really look at the fender, which she called relative pronouns. Then she gave me two bumpers, front and back. Verbs, she called them, regular and irregular. Important. Then she gave me a steering wheel and a lot of stuff on the dashboard. More pronouns. Very important, was what she said.
My teacher gave me a lot of car parts. But I didn’t know how to put them together. I wanted a car that I could drive around in. So what happened was that when I went to Europe I brought my fender, the two bumpers, and the steering wall and all. But they didn’t help me. I looked pretty stupid, actually, carrying all those car parts around with me in Strasbourg, France, trying to communicate with people on my Junior Year Abroad through Washington University in St. Louis.
Then, in 2001, my new teacher, Susan Gross, gave me a car, a whole car, and not just a bunch of car parts! I liked it. I liked the idea that I would be able to actually be like Susie and give my French students entire cars so that they could actually get around in any French-speaking country.
You may want to check out language instruction based on comprehensible input. Your students will love you because you will be giving them an entire car and not just parts of it, since few people know how to assemble a car. Be the first teacher in your school to give your foreign language kids something that will actually get them around in a foreign country….the sleek, powerful, fun-to-drive CI Mobile!
Better than giving your kids the fender, I say!