Krashen
October 4, 2023
It’s so sweet to be back, y’all. Last weekend, the annual conference of the Kentucky World Language Association returned to Lexington, Kentucky. Last year, KWLA was my first conference since I paused blogging while I wrapped my mind around a diagnosis of MS. I embraced friends, sat quietly, absorbed the learning– but I didn’t present. […]
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July 1, 2015
We know that students need comprehensible input in order to acquire language. Is that all we need? Learn more in this Black Box videocast. Here’s the info. It is hard to find a research model that has influenced the direction of language more than Stephen Krashen’s five-pronged hypotheses first published in the late 1970’s. Still, […]
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February 17, 2015
Shall we talk labor and delivery a moment? I suspect I have your attention! No worries, I’m not going to get gross. I don’t think so, anyway. But you will get to know me a little bit better. When I was pregnant with my third child, some family friends were visiting, a couple and their […]
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February 25, 2014
This guest post is a response to last week’s “What I hate about TPRS.” First, I would like to thank Sara-Elizabeth for writing such thought-provoking posts. You gave us a great deal to consider and challenged our thinking. THAT is always GOOD! And many thanks for the opportunity to be a guest blogger. I won’t […]
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February 18, 2014
A friend of mine told me he frequently gets asked if I’m a TPRS teacher. My answer: TPRS is an am vs. use question for me. Yes, I use. No, I am not “a TPRS teacher.” There are so many strategies from TPRS that have made me a much better teacher and that I use in almost every class […]
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February 13, 2014
What I love about TPRS
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Let me give you a run-down of my teaching career. After I graduated from high school, I spent four years at a liberal arts college learning a lot about what it means to be a good teacher and almost nothing about how to be a good language teacher. After graduating from college, I spent three […]
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April 15, 2013
No, not the latest John Gresham to while away the class period. Whether it’s for field trips, ceremony practice, or just a widespread illness, sometimes I have a class where many of the students are gone. Inevitably this leads to the same request: a free day. For some reason, my students think that because their […]
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November 11, 2009
A case for pleasure reading
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Stephen Krashen has done a ton of research on what he calls Free Voluntary Reading. Catch up on his research by checking it out on his website. Basically, the premise is that kids learn more (and language learners acquire more vocabulary) when reading at an appropriate leve and something that is pleasurable to them. I […]
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September 17, 2008
Love/Hate Krashen
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There are an awful lot of people with good things to say about Krashen, and an awful lot of bad things to say about him. For a good, balanced summary of Krashen’s theories and some reactions, look here. Krashen was/is an advocate of bilingual education. I hate almost everything about bilingual education, particularly past 2nd […]
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September 3, 2008
People I love
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I have to throw out some props for the people whose work I believe makes the theoretical field of SLA something we can use to make ourselves better teachers and learners. Obviously I’m a Krashenite. Not all the way. I couldn’t care less what he has to say about bird languages or what the aliens […]
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September 1, 2008
Starting to share my journey
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I put myself through grad school working with a group of graduate electrical engineers. Their supervisor spent thousands of dollars paying 100% of my tuition and a stipend for me to live off of, and in exchange, I helped them communicate their research. After spending 4 years in undergraduate engineering classes, they’d entered their master’s […]
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