Asking students a series of purposeful questions and follow-up questions supercharges learning. It engages them and drives acquisition of language and complex ideas like nothing else. Plato modeled this technique brilliantly in Socrates’ dialogues. Special Person student interviews are similar to Socratic teaching. It is asking questions with a [...]
Talking about things that matter is the goal of language teaching. One thing that matters is SCIENCE. CÓMO LO SABÍAN Excerpt is a chapter from my best-selling book Conexiones: Making Connections with the Spanish-Speaking World. This article explains in simple Spanish how ancient peoples all around the world (pun [...]
Here is an idea that will work if your curriculum demands you explicitly teach direct object pronouns: tell an interesting story that requires DOP's. Here's the outline of one that will work: Somebody sees something that another person doesn’t and they both get frustrated. It would be even better [...]
MANIAC: Krashen's 6 Hypotheses is a document that will help you to remember the core ideas of comprehension-based teaching. MANIAC is an acronym that will help you to remember six of Dr. Stephen Krashen's hypotheses about language acquisition, and how they can be applied in the classroom. I chose maniac [...]
There was a noteworthy article in the May 1, 2021 Atlanta Journal Constitution, Foreign Language Classes Get the Conversation Going, by H.M. Cauley. You can find the original article here: https://www.ajc.com/neighborhoods/foreign-language-classes-get-the-conversation-going/U3ZEAQPD2BHEZB5MZFT3OZFWBE/ Below are some select quotes from that article and my commentary about the world language classrooms of Allyson Segal [...]
SONGS FOR CINCO DE MAYO This is a set of 11 traditional Mexican songs—lasting favorites that will not go out of style in 2 weeks. The songs are in Spanish, with English translations and colorful graphics, and there are historical and cultural notes in English for each song. You [...]