If I’m not careful, my blog will consist solely of Sr. Stoltz’s posts. His work should be required reading for all language teachers interested in CI and TPRS.
I used to do all the things he describes and expect it to work. It shows that if we really take a step back and evaluate grammar-based methods, we will see how unnatural it all seems.
Someone once defined insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same outcome. Hopefully posts like this will reach lots of teachers and shake them out of complacency. While it is difficult to make a big curriculum change, it is absolutely worth it when we see students making real gains in acquisition and proficiency in a new language.
I walked into class with my cup of coffee and all the kids said “¡Hola!” in unison. I then told them to get out their ¡Juntos! workbooks and turn to their homework, pages 89-93. I then asked them to read their answers– from fill-in-the-blanks exercises– aloud, one by one.
“The boy walks to the park,” read Nuvjit.
“We walk to school,” read Stella.
“I walk to the store,” read David.
“They walk to the movies,” read Akhtar.
We read another thirty or so sentences together. What was awesome during this homework review was, first, the kids were all listening intently to each other– because the homework was really interesting, and second, the kids all got every answer right, and third, all the kids had done their homework, again because the homework was super-interesting.
Then one student asked “why does the verb fartear have the irregular present tense first…
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senor fernie 