Having problems with free reading? Free reading is a great idea, but to get reading happening, you need texts that are 100% comprehensible, even to students who have never seen the written form of the language before — even if the language is a non-simple script language. Enter the purpose-written text. Purpose-written texts look a […]
Archive for October, 2011
Purpose-Written Texts
Posted by Terry Waltz on October 31st, 2011
Posted in Methods, Reading 
Tags: Cold Character Reading, Materials, Purpose-Written Text 
Comments Off on Purpose-Written TextsThemed Units and Curriculum Tagging
Posted by Terry Waltz on October 27th, 2011
One reason why some folks aren’t keen on TPRS® is that it doesn’t embrace the themed unit. Most textbooks and curriculum documents are organized into themes. “My Family.” “School and Home”. “Celebrations”. Those are great, if you believe that giving people the ability to say a whole lot about a very little is the way […]
Posted in Curriculum, Outside Forces Tags: Curriculum Tagging, Thematic Units, Vocabulary Comments Off on Themed Units and Curriculum TaggingIs “free” reading what it’s really worth?
Posted by Terry Waltz on October 25th, 2011
Free-reading is great. Everyone wants a classroom library. Everyone wants to have kids sitting quietly, absorbed in authentic materials in the target language. But is it the best use of acquisitional time for a novice-level learner? I say no. Because free reading is less-than-100%-comprehensible immersion. I am thinking of novice-level learners here: first- or possibly […]
Differentiation: is it needed for acquisition?
Posted by Terry Waltz on October 7th, 2011
So everyone’s going nuts about differentiation around here, with the new teacher evaluation standards and so on. And the admins are thumbing through their lists and saying, “You TPRS people aren’t differentiating.” Should we be? Differentiation is for LEARNING. Being able to diagram sentences, conjugate verbs in charts, or list the four principal exports of […]
Posted in Methods, Outside Forces Tags: Criticisms of TPRS, Differentiation, Learning vs Acquisition Comments Off on Differentiation: is it needed for acquisition?