An experienced teacher knows her students, their culture and their needs and her own personality and possibilities better than anyone else. No one can make her decisions for her. If what she is doing is working, if her students are acquiring language, no one can criticize it. If it’s not working, she knows it before anyone else.
He was using the passive voice spontaneously and correctly and appropriately. Something the excellent students from my “S” class had never quite managed, in spite of the tests on the passive voice that they had aced.
Teachers intent on counting reps forgot that input must always be compelling. If your students’ eyes have glazed over, you may as well stop circling.
I am grateful to Beniko Mason Nanki for presenting teachers around the world with an elegant and easy to use strategy that allows us to immerse our students in compelling comprehensible input.
He is passionate about his craft, passionate about wanting to help others find their way. He has the courage to go off the beaten path, the courage to try new methods and the courage to speak his mind.
She just does it so beautifully that it doesn’t feel like circling. It feels like she’s having a genuine conversation with her students.
LET’S CREATE A BRIDGE WE CAN ALL WALK ON TO GET TOGETHER. LET’S COMMUNICATE!
The standard textbook approach has always reminded me of Johnny Cash’s song, One Piece at a Time, and gives similar results. The students, the few who persevere, have a lot of bits and pieces but they don’t necessarily fit together very well.
We all know that magic tricks work because of the magician’s ability to focus our attention elsewhere. My students are focused on filling in the blanks, but actually my goal is to get them to listen to Comprehensible Input attentively and repeatedly.
“A century of research shows that traditional grammar lessons—those hours spent diagramming sentences and memorizing parts of speech—don’t help and may even hinder students’ efforts to become better writers. “