What is pop-up grammar, and what is it NOT?

Pop-up Grammar is a core strategy used by teachers that have been trained in Acquisition Driven Instruction (ADI) with a focus on making input comprehensible. Whereas grammar has traditionally been a major focus of instruction and therefore instructional minutes in language courses, Pop-Up Grammar flips the traditional, explicit grammar instruction model on its head. Pop-Up…

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Translating second language acquisition research into motivational practice

Over the last decade, I have come to realize that I entered the profession of language education with a lot of beliefs about language and language teaching, but those beliefs were based on impressions that I had from my own personal experience, not on facts. I began learning about language when I began learning about…

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Giveaway: Books from Teacher’s Discovery

After four decades of research in the area of second language acquisition, it is clear that language is acquired not from practice (drills), but from consistent and constant exposure to input. Input is indispensable to language acquisition–meaning that language cannot be acquired without it. This idea of the indispensability of input was largely  absent from my language…

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Question word posters en français and new additions

Yippee Yay! Dana Wilson emailed me most of the French translations of my Spanish question word posters earlier this week, and Catherine Ousselin (@CatherineKU72) helped me out with a few more! Mercy beau coup! Click on the image to download the file. What else is new for the 2015 school year? Check out these recently…

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Teaching other verb forms – a reading for Spanish 1!

I need to make an FAQ page. Here is one that came through today:     …I was looking at your website and I was curious if you teach the “nosotros” or “ustedes” forms in Spanish 1. If so, is there a certain unit in which you teach it?   Thanks!     The answer…

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I’m going on a trip – a mind game for language classes!

I am a very bossy person by nature, and unfortunately I didn’t realize it until right after I graduated from high school. By the grace of God, I’ve learned how to tame my nasty natural instincts…although it’s not always easy! Being married helps 🙂 I think that this is why the game that I’m about…

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