On a teachers’ list, a hypothesis was recently posted: The more compelling the input, the more listeners and readers can tolerate noise. Maybe they can. But should they? I believe that the goal of teaching a language class does not lie in engaging students. I believe it is to get them to acquire the language. […]
Archive for the ‘Speaking/Listening’ Category
Can, or should?
Posted by Terry Waltz on April 7th, 2017
Posted in General, Speaking/Listening 
Tags: compelling, comprehended input, noise 
Comments Off on Can, or should?TPRS SKILL: Establishing Meaning
Posted by Terry Waltz on February 26th, 2017
This is perhaps the most basic skill of the entire TPRS repertoire. Because if you do not establish meaning, the students cannot comprehend. If you don’t establish meaning, all the gestures in the world won’t make up for it. If you don’t establish meaning, it doesn’t matter how slowly you speak. They will not understand […]
Smiling ruthlessness
Posted by Terry Waltz on December 12th, 2016
On a teachers’ group, the question was recently posted: How can I transition my Spanish 2 class from listening to me speak in Spanish, but almost always responding/suggesting/asking in English to the students speaking in Spanish as well? Two words: classroom management. I know, not the answer people want to hear. Teachers would prefer to […]
Input by the numbers
Posted by Terry Waltz on December 9th, 2016
On a teachers’ discussion group, the question recently came up: Any suggestions for teaching numbers up to 100? I know they can naturally come up in stories…but I feel like it doesn’t happen often enough and doesn’t regularly cover every “ten.” Or should I just do more of it?! The post garnered a number of […]
The need to ask
Posted by Terry Waltz on November 26th, 2016
On a social media site, a general question more or less like this has been flying around of late: Why can’t we just look at our students and gauge them that way? Why do they need to actually respond? I can already tell if they are listening and interested. The answer goes back to the […]
Posted in Drift / Is This TPRS?, Methods, Speaking/Listening Tags: comprehension checks Comments Off on The need to askPowerpoint it you need not
Posted by Terry Waltz on September 22nd, 2016
On a teacher’s list, a language teacher recently asked: I am doing my best to incorporate ideas of TPRS/CI. Does anyone have suggestions of HOW and WHEN is best introduce new vocabulary? Well, TPRS makes the question of when to introduce new vocabulary really easy…you introduce it when it’s used for the first time. So […]
Memorization: something to keep in mind
Posted by Terry Waltz on September 14th, 2016
On a discussion board for a prominent language-related association, the following came out of a discussion on homework and memorization in foreign language teaching practice. …some form memorization is vital to learning anything really; it is one of the building block of knowledge construction. Anything…except languages. Well, yes, memorization is vital to *learning* languages. Fortunately, […]
Posted in Grammar, Methods, Speaking/Listening Comments Off on Memorization: something to keep in mind1. Pre-teach the new words with a TPRS story…
Posted by Terry Waltz on September 12th, 2016
But what IS a TPRS story, anyway? Before reading a novel, we want the students to know the language in the novel. Heck, before reading much of anything, we want the students to know the language in the reading. And in TPRS, the way we get the language into the students is (usually called) a […]
Posted in Drift / Is This TPRS?, Reading, Speaking/Listening Tags: novels, pre-teaching, targeting 2 Comments »NCIS: Teaching Question Formation
Posted by Terry Waltz on September 11th, 2016
NCIS: Not CI Stuff More and more, we are seeing helpful links posted to various groups that are supposed to be focused on teaching with Comprehensible Input. Of course, everyone likes sharing. Sharing is a good thing that.s spread good ideas and reduces the time teachers have to spend prepping for classes. The only problem […]
Posted in Methods, NCIS: Not CI Stuff, Speaking/Listening, Writing Comments Off on NCIS: Teaching Question FormationTone smackdown: ears vs brain
Posted by Terry Waltz on September 8th, 2016
So, Chinese has tones. Yeah. The thing everyone fears, and talks about, and comes up with practices and apps and all that stuff to “teach”. And yet it’s really, really easy to get tones into students’ heads. 1. Lots of input. I mean lots. Nope, more than that. Lots of input they can understand, showing […]