More and more foreign language teachers are talking about Comprehensible Input. Here I try to answer the most common questions teachers ask
I’m writing this for an English teacher in France. I’ve never met her and I’ve decided not to ask her name, but one of her students is coming to me for private lessons. « Pierre » is in the seventh grade, which, officially, in France would be his second year of English lessons. But in
Teachers often discover CI after several years, even many many years, of using other methods. Old habits are hard to break. A question that often comes up s how to transition from former methods to one that stresses Comprehensible Input. Where to find help?
TPRS is doing what people have been doing ever since the Tower of Babel: communicating with others using simple, comprehensible vocabulary in the context of a story.
I was asked to work with a group of young girls and I began by explaining to the parents that I would be making up stories with the girls and playing games, doing things that would be different than what they were doing in school. During my brief explanation of the principles of Comprehensible Input,
I want to explain the difference between the way I teach and the methods that many other language teachers use. You should know that I have been teaching English as a Foreign Language since 1967 and in over fifty years I have been trained in and have used many different strategies, both as a teacher
Out of necessity, he tried to communicate and quickly found the language “spilling out of his mouth”.
“But correction has no real effect. It is learning, not acquisition. It encourages you to rethink the conscious rule and make a better rule. That’s conscious learning.” Stephen Krashen
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.
We have a very high student success rate and a retention rate of 50-60%
over four years.
“We have built a reputation for working with all kinds of learners including
those with emotional and learning disabilities of which we are proud.”
Every summer for the last ten years something magic has happened in Agen, France. Teachers from around the world have gathered in a friendly little town in southwest France and particpated in what many of them have called a life-changing experience. They come together because they have heard of a different way of teaching languages, a way of creating stories with their students and building a different kind of classroom. They come with open hearts and open minds and they leave with smiles and warm memories and many new friends. That is the magic of Agen.