Search Results for "novice"

March 28, 2015
Ever feel behind the times?  I just caught the current #1 song on Latin Billboard and it struck me as having two golden ingredients for a good class song: high student appeal and a couple of high frequency structures repeated. (Though I wanted to say, Dude – she moved on, she’s happy, get over it! […]
March 26, 2015
This post is primarily for parents wanting to raise bilingual children and educators in elementary immersion programs, but perhaps the rest of you will find something useful here as well. I have three children that I am trying to raise bilingual in Spanish.  We started out fully committed to the one-parent, one-language method, in which […]
March 6, 2015
Proposals are now open for two of my favorite conferences, my home conference, Kentucky World Language Association, and the 2016 Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.  Conference presentations are only as good as they can relate to the content teachers actually need, so as usual, I’d like to know what you’d like […]
February 18, 2015
Are you ready for the most intense, profitable workshop on curriculum planning this summer? I’ve been planning for the 2015 Camp Musicuentos workshops since the inaugural workshop ended last June, and I’m so excited to announce that registration for the events (a 2-day workshop in Louisville, Kentucky, and a one-day workshop in Warwick, RI) is […]
January 30, 2015
For the original myths post, click here.  You can also view all of the myths posts. This, my eleventh post on myths I believe make us ineffective in the world language classroom, is about saying we’re assessing something without actually asking students to do it. 11. A multiple-choice question counts as a valid assessment of […]
January 27, 2015
If you love to incorporate authentic resources into all levels, you know that there are two major problems with doing so.  1) It takes a lot of time to find the right resource. 2) Using many resources in novice classes can be problematic because of how much scaffolding you may have to do to make […]
December 30, 2014
It wasn’t even close. My post on the biggest mistake we make (and are pushed in so many ways to make) as language teachers was hit more than 40% more than the #2 post. We know we’re covering too much content, and we’re tired of being told that’s the right thing to do. Oh- and HAPPY […]
December 28, 2014
Still going out of order, here’s the final installment in the TPRS trilogy that forms three of the top ten posts of 2014.  After this post you’ll see the top post of 2014 and that will wrap up the year for Musicuentos.  This one hit at #6, but was the last of the three TPRS […]
December 26, 2014
I hope you had a great, worship-filled Christmas Day!  2015 is almost here! I think it’s kind of unfortunate the #2 post of the year is the one I titled “What I hate about TPRS.” Sometimes I word things very strongly on the blog because I want to make a point, and my point with […]
December 23, 2014
Here’s where the missing #7 and #6 posts have been hiding. The three posts I made about the method known as TPRS in the early part of 2014 caused a bit of a ripple, and all three of them landed somewhere in the top 10.  But they make more sense if you read them in […]
December 14, 2014
I’ve skipped the #6 post for now and you’ll find out later why. Two of the resources I released this year were verb charts, a free pack of the three most common tenses and a complete pack of 8 charts available for purchase.  You can find both of them here.  But before you use them, […]
December 9, 2014
It’s time for the 8th most popular post of 2014, which was the second in a two-part series, and it just so happens that the 4th most popular post of the year was the first part in the series.  Since it makes sense to read them in order, I’m offering them both to you here. […]