How Well Do They Really Know It?

When I first started using tprs I had the idea that if we used a phrase or structure in class, it was acquired. I have since learned that this may not necessarily be the case. As I work with students more I observe that there are different levels of acquiring a language. I have come [...]

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 [...]

Teaching multiple tenses

Today I started the road to teaching multiple tenses. It is freeing to me to present the language as a whole and not in segments. The wonderful thing was that the student completely understood the difference. It seems terrible to me that people would say, “Oh, they can’t learn that yet. They are not that [...]

Keeping it Personalized

I have discovered that it is essential that a language is personalized. As soon as I start talking about something that they are not interested in I begin to loose them. When I add a new detail, it sparks the interest again. I need get better at circling so that I don’t loose the kids [...]

Following the rules

I realized today that rules are brilliant when you enforce them. It can be easy for teachers to just let it slide, but today in class I really enforced the rules. When I did this, it wasn’t in a harsh way. I simply just stated the rule to class when I saw that someone was [...]

False Beginners

When teaching a language like Spanish I am bound to run into the idea of false beginners. There will be so many different levels of Spanish with my students when they enter the classroom. A false beginner is a student who has prior knowledge of Spanish, but is in a class with true beginners, who [...]

Teaching like Chet

There was a while where I really listened to a lot of Chet Baker, a jazz trumpeter who was most popular in the 50s. There was something about his music that I really liked. It had soul to it. Most jazz musicians know a thing or two about chords. In truth, jazz musicians are some [...]

Fluent in Karate

I have made a new TPRS friend, Dirk Frewing. It is really great to be able to collaborate ideas and to learn from others. I don’t think I could do this without it, to be honest. Dirk made a comment in an email the other day that really got me thinking. He said:
So much of [...]

Teaching multiple tenses

I just read this in Ben Slavic’s blog and it offers such and interesting perspective. I have always wanted to teach more than one tense at a time, but was concerned that it would throw the students into disequilibrium. I have found that when I did my children’s books that the students handled it just [...]

Meaning based grammar teaching

Often I hear different teachers say something like: “My main objective is to teach the difference between the preterit and imperfect during this unit” or “Now we are focusing on gender and verb agreement within the sentence.” etc.
I don’t know what it is, but I just get so turned off to statements like these. I [...]