Three ways to target all three modalities during reading
A reading group in the animal kingdom. On an online post, a teacher recently wrote: I would welcome suggestions of how to structure reading groups to target all three modes of communication. So you have a group of language students, and you have them in a group,...
read more“I was amazed…”
Photo by Mert Guller But will your students be? Teachers go to demos, and teachers loooooove to learn new languages. That's why we're language teachers. We get excited by the grammar patterns, the new sounds, even (let's face it!) the geekery -- everything. And...
read moreDon’t break the spell!
Keep the magic alive in your classroom! (Photo by Aron Visuals) The question was asked on social media recently: When y'all do special person interviews do you let the special person answer in L1? And like most things in life, the answer is "that depends". If the...
read moreThe problem of the +1
Together forever...another happy match from a +1 that wasn't left lonely!Photo by Jeremy Wong Weddings No, not for the wedding...or to fool the Chinese parents over Spring Festival...that's been solved with all the useful rent-a-date services out there. (See...
read moreComparing not-CI and…huh. It’s not-CI too!
Photo by Ben White So I'm reading this article the other day. "A comparison between teaching words through mere comprehensible input and through comprehensible input plus pushed output and corrective feedback was made." Naturally I'm intrigued. The authors were quite...
read moreR U a gud langwije teecher?
Correct orthography and usage are of the utmost importance to a highly qualified and effective teacher of world languages. How many errors can you spot? It's amazing how many words we can just look at once and KNOW right off are misspelled...or, in my case, how many I...
read moreStop with the bad Chinese already, please!
All you people who've had a couple of Chinese lessons -- please, please -- and I am not saying this to be mean -- stop generalizing your experience with Chinese to the broader field of language acquisition and particularly to teaching Chinese. Immediate output is not...
read moreJust you and me: adapting classroom practice for 1-on-1
Many teachers are beginning to take distance students using Skype or other technologies, and increasingly there are questions about what needs to be done to have a successful 1-on-1 class using TPRS. It's true that there are a few things that should, or can, be...
read moreCI Myth #97: You can’t follow student interests if you target
What people do not get is that it is entirely possible to discuss topics students are interested in while targeting. High frequency, you know? We are focusing on high-frequency language, supposedly. It's perfectly feasible to simply add a few words (making them...
read moreIt’s a method! No, it’s an approach! A philosophy!
It's not any of them. CI is a lens. It's a way of looking at things. Not only a way of looking, it's the compulsion to look at everything that happens in the classroom and ascertain whether it is providing Comprehended Input in a way that will get students to listen...
read more