Lee, a teacher I coached for 15 sessions last year, now has a new job. Here's what he's dealing with: I have a new a job teaching at a relatively small school. The curriculum is grammar-based, but the principal is open to modifications. My question is—how does a teacher [...]
Jonny, a Mandarin teacher who saw my recent presentation on Special Person Interviews, had some questions about the process. We've had a conversation about it and here are the results. Before answering Jonny's questions, I need to make this crucial point: Follow-up questions are the most important part of [...]
David, a successful veteran teacher relatively new to teaching with C.I. writes: Bryce, I am frustrated by the fact that I enter every semester with the good intentions of doing CI. I start, and then I get frustrated as I don't see the results and don't feel skilled enough [...]
Anita, a reader of this blog writes: . Hi Bryce, . I've just about completed my Persona Especial for the year and saw some good and bad things about my first time. I wanted to share these with you. . • Spanish I did well with answering questions in [...]
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 [...]
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 read the original article here. Below are some select quotes from that article and my commentary about the world language classrooms of Allyson Segal [...]