Pairwork. Mmm. Soooo good (say the administrators and observers). Students working together, taking responsibility for their learning, in a student-centered environment. (Whether or not these are really true is up for grabs. But we digress.) It’s like that cup of coffee your mouth is watering for right after I typed the words “cup of coffee”. […]
Posts Tagged ‘Pairwork’
TPRS-friendly student pair work
Posted by Terry Waltz on November 21st, 2014
Question from an online list: What are some collaborative student-student activities that lend themselves to a language acquisition method based on dense, high-quality comprehensible input? You got me. Student to student input is not comprehensible input, it’s “interput”. That’s low-quality forced interaction between people who don’t know the language yet, like students. Students CAN provide […]
Posted in Methods, Outside Forces 
Tags: Comprehensible Input, Output, Pairwork 
Comments Off on TPRS-friendly student pair workNegotiation of Meaning: Is it Different in CI Instruction?
Posted by Terry Waltz on March 14th, 2011
From our friends (really…they used to be a good interpreting client of mine when I lived in Taipei!) at the British Council, a definition and some examples of “negotiation of meaning”, a popular language teaching buzzword. Does it apply to CI-based instruction? (British Council information in italics below.) Negotiation of meaning is a process that […]
Posted in General, Methods, Speaking/Listening Tags: Legacy Methods, Output, Pairwork Comments Off on Negotiation of Meaning: Is it Different in CI Instruction?Making student groups: a souflée that didn’t rise
Posted by Terry Waltz on March 7th, 2011
Or, “how many posts on an e-mail list are ‘too many’ for a given topic?” I note with some amusement a loooong ongoing thread on a foreign language teachers’ e-mail list concerning how to get kids to work in the groups you assign them to work in. This would be the same list that recently […]
Posted in Methods Tags: Legacy Methods, Output, Pairwork Comments Off on Making student groups: a souflée that didn’t riseWhy isn’t pairwork Comprehensible Input?
Posted by Terry Waltz on February 18th, 2011
On a prominent foreign language teachers’ List, the question was raised: Why are conversations with partners not CI? If one student asks “What is your favorite class and why?” and the other student answers intelligibly, then why is this less optimal CI than storytelling? Well, of course it is. Sort of. But McDonald’s is food, […]