
From Gibberish to … Wow!
You may have found a great video but when you put it on, your students complain that the speakers don’t articulate, they speak too fast and their accents are frightful! It’s gibberish to them.
You may have found a great video but when you put it on, your students complain that the speakers don’t articulate, they speak too fast and their accents are frightful! It’s gibberish to them.
Through acquisition they were sufficiently aware of which structures were possible and which were not, without having had any explicite grammar training.
So, my advice to colleagues who feel torn between teaching with Comprehensible Input and teaching grammar is to trust their wings, the wings of Acquisition, and jump off the roof.
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 a strategy that allows us to immerse our students in compelling comprehensible input.
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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uErKI0zWgjg
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.
This poster can be downloaded and used to make your expectations visible in the classroom.
Reader’s Theater is a way of “revisiting” a familiar text that makes it fun and compelling.
“Enjoy yourself. Have fun. Laugh at their funny ideas.”
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.