Become a more confident language teacher.
We know that we can’t communicate with someone if we don’t understand them, and we know that language acquisition cannot happen if comprehension does not occur… but just how well do we need to understand someone or something in order to communicate? How comprehensible does something have to be in order to be ‘comprehensible’? To…
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“We acquire language when we understand messages; when we understand what people tell us and when we understand what we read”. Dr. Stephen Krashen This foundational insight from Dr. Krashen is our Core Belief at Garbanzo. To that end, we are building an online, interactive library of diverse texts that are designed for language learners…
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For the last three years, Spanish students have been able to follow the top stories from the Spanish-speaking world in El mundo en tus manos. Each week, Maris Hawkins and I identify important and interesting current events and write up comprehensible summaries so that beginning language learners can understand. As we prepare for the 2019-2020…
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“Write and Discuss” is one of the core strategies in a comprehension-based teacher’s bag of tricks. It is easy-peasy and adaptable for many uses! In this post, I’m sharing with you a demo of Write and Discuss along with step-by-step instructions so that you can feel confident making this power-packed strategy your own! An abbreviated version…
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The bird’s out of the cage, and it’s time to share my big secret with YOU, my readers!! At ACTFL, I announced the launch of GARBANZO, the new web application from The Comprehensible Classroom. The journey to create an app that would help teachers find reading material that is suitable for early language learners began…
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Film, politics, sports, conservation, and activism–these are just a few of the topics that the stories from the new EL MUNDO EN TUS MANOS subscription have addressed. Maris and I are passionate about finding stories that your students will connect with and that will open their eyes to the things happening in the world, near…
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Once I decided to teach for proficiency, I become hungry for stories–real stories, invented stories, silly stories, sad stories, unbelievable stories, scary stories…anything. Language is best taught when it is being used to transmit messages, not when it is explicitly taught for conscious learning. ― Stephen D. Krashen, The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom If you…
Read MoreDon’t you love discovering a new game!? A few days ago, Jenny Robbins shared an AWESOME no-prep activity in the iFLT/NTPRS/CI Teaching Facebook group. This game can be used in ANY class to provide students with an opportunity to get up and move, accompanied by repeated exposure to content or language. How to play RUN!!…
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With a total of 19 Tweets, Facebook tags, emails, text messages, and Facebook messages in 48 hours, I am just thrilled to know that I am the first person you think of when you hear a good poop story (thank you, Correcaca). Perhaps you saw on the news that there is a new caca-criminal in town–and this…
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The March 1 issue of LITERAL is finally ready for download!! We spent Thursday in the ER (me and all five kids…). Once I get off schedule with work, it’s hard to get back on track! (Grading, anyone?! I’m sure you can relate!) Anyway–we had more than 50 submissions to LITERAL this month!! There are…
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