The Sigmoid Curve of tprs

At times I have often wondered, “How far am I in the process of learning tprs?” and “How much further do I have to go?” Well, after asking several teachers I have come to find that there are no real concrete answers to these questions and everyone has their own take on it. One teacher [...]

We Have Such an Opportunity

I have a student named “Larry.”  One great thing about Larry is that he is my best actor and never fails to have enthusiasm when performing for others. However, Larry is a different kind of student and not every teacher understands him. The truth about Larry is that he can be directed to do amazing [...]

When In Doubt Personalize

These last few days have gone so-s0. Today, I really decided to go after it with some of my classes. Last night, I took a look at Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and I was reminded again of how much people really like to talk about what they like. They don’t [...]

Don’t Forget the Good Ones

Today, I had a mixed day. Some classes went better than yesterday and then I ended it all with a class that didn’t want to do anything. I am sure you know how the feels. It just ends the day on a sour note and you feel like you are terrible.
This year our school is [...]

Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the basics of teaching

Take a look at this Bobby McFerrin clip. Then if you have time watch it again and think about how he teaches and what makes him a good teacher.

We as language teachers have a lot in common with music because music has many similarities to language. In fact, many would say [...]

Wisdom from Robert Harrell

This was part of a wonderful comment that Robert Harrell made on Ben Slavic’s blog. It is a good thing to remember!
We need to remember that most of our students still have limited vocabularies in English and are not used to critical evaluation of what they are experiencing. As a result they often misinterpret the [...]

Take care of yourself

For the last few days I have been yelling a lot in class. The great thing is that it was not at the kids, it was that we were learning the word grita, which means yell or scream. We were screaming in Spanish and other languages as well as gato and rana. It was quite [...]

More encouraging news

This year we have a new teacher in our World Language department. It has been wonderful to work with her and she is on board with tprs. She teaches levels 2-4 and gets all the students that I have had for last 4 years. Although, I just got here last spring, so slowly each class [...]

Fluency Fast Denver 2009

I just got back from the fluency fast classes in Denver. Wow. What a great week it was. I was in Jason Fritze’s Spanish class and spent the rest of the time observing other teachers. Dr. Stephen Krashen was there as well as fellow TPRS teachers like Ben Slavic.
I had no idea that this week [...]

Don’t worry about it

I was watching a video of Joe Neilson from the NTPRS 2004 conference. He was doing a section on dramatizing a reading. There was so much energy and so many good ideas. Of course I wrote them down and considered them, but I got something else out of it too.
I realized that Joe has been [...]