Resources
August 7, 2015
Easily one of the top five topics if you look at my most popular blog posts: Choice in homework. I won’t go to deeply into what I mean by homework choice because you can see a pretty good summary here in one of the most popular posts of 2014. After you look at that, you […]
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August 3, 2015
Stressed about creating your class syllabi this year? There are a lot of really great syllabi flying around the internet. There are even competitions to see who can do the (best? most creative?) one. I have to tell you, it’s stressful. I don’t at all think it’s intended this way, but I think it feels […]
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August 1, 2015
Can language that’s learned be used in spontaneous communication? Yes. No. Maybe. It’s a big debate in the field of Second Language Acquisition research, and the authors of this article want to encourage all sides to take a more nuanced view of the issue. This question is really complex (when I was unpacking the article […]
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July 31, 2015
I hope you had a restful summer! I love back-to-school time because we’re all excited, mostly rested up, maybe feeling a little unprepared but ready to tackle what this school year has to offer. Watch what August has to offer Throughout August I’ll be posting resources and information I hope will help you get a […]
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Here’s a deeply interesting question for us: why is my language ability even in interpersonal skills measured by what I can do alone, when what I can do with you, my conversation partner who can meet me in my “zone of proximal development,” is a lot more? If you’re not familiar with Vygotsky and sociocultural […]
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June 15, 2015
Did you know grammar is not a skill you can practice? Read on. And watch this. It’s already time for the second videocast of the Musicuentos Black Box. Here’s the info. Ready to watch? This eight minutes (+) will help you understand what it really means to know a language and remind you in […]
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June 8, 2015
What is the point of teaching culture, anyway? Is it to get kids to realize that people are different? (They already do.) Is it to get them to try a new food? (Lengua, eww, gross. Does that have peanuts in it?) No, cultural awareness is more about perspective-taking. According to the research, children who show […]
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If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the world language teaching profession recently, it’s that we’re plagued with arguments about why one method trumps another. As it turns out, we’re wasting our time on that argument, and we should be asking a different question altogether. I know, I’ve dropped off the internet a bit lately and […]
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May 11, 2015
Every once in a while I come across an authentic resource so amazing I have to give it its own blog post to tell you USE THIS RESOURCE. And then there’s this one, which makes me shout #addthis and #bookmarkthis and THEN it leads me straight into an example of something I was just asking […]
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April 23, 2015
As promised, here are the “Three Before Me” posters for German and French. Big props to some good friends who helped me out with these translations, Wendy Farabaugh, Don Doehla, and Thomas Sauer. Download the free posters via Teachers Pay Teachers: German Bevor du anfängst mit der Fragerei, probier doch erstmal diese drei: 1) dich […]
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April 21, 2015
Three before me
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What could you get out of #langchat? You never know! No matter how many years you’ve been teaching, everyone’s bound to come away with some treasurable, profitable nuggets from #langchat. I’m not even sure which recent #langchat this came from. It could have been when we were discussing grit, how we could help learners persevere […]
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I’ve had a burr in my saddle for a little over a year, probably longer, a problem that pricks me and try as I might to find a solution, I just can’t put my finger on it. On the one hand, we’ve got a robust body of research coming from both applied and theoretical linguistics […]
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