Building a better language teacher
The good “doctor” Gianfranco Conti is back with some ideas about how to best teach “weird stuff,” ie, things in the target language that don’t seem to have counterparts in learners’ L1. A classic example of this is how English doesn’t have the Spanish subjunctive, so English speakers need to “learn a new grammar concept.” […]
Here’s a recent example of “hey let’s learn culture and language!” that looks kinda fun but, well, hmm. Check it: Ok…but…
I was at a BCATML presentation recently at a “cognitive overload” workshop. I disagreed with most of what the presenter had to say (because they thought general cognitive psych stuff applied to language acquisition). Cognitive overload can happen in a variety of ways: too much info at once, a low signal-to-noise ratio, too great a […]
Today we have both good news and bad news. First, the good: “Doctor” Gianfranco Conti is back with more goodies for language teachers. The bad: as usual, he is wrong about most of his claims. So let’s get into it. Here are his comments He’s right about one thing– declarative and procedural knowledge are different. […]
Ya I’m in the middle of them so of course I was thinking about report card comments. Preamble: In BC, we are supposed to give kids grades K-9 proficiency grades (emerging, developing, proficient, extending), as well as comments on curricular competencies. Grade 10-12 get comments plus numbers. Sounds good, right? Let’s put ourselves into a […]
As we head back to school in 2025, a “tech obsessed” language teacher has some suggestions for getting kids speaking the target language. Before I discuss these, I would like to remind everyone that listening and reading, and not “speaking practice,” that puts language into people’s heads, and they need a lot of language in […]
On what subject(s) are you an authority? Research into second language acquisition.
He’s baaack! Gianfranco Conti is a member of the World Language Teacher Lounge on FB and of course he and I are arguing. Here is his list of must-haves for successful language teaching. On the upside, Conti is coming along: he reconises the value of input. On the downside, he is still— without evidence— recommending […]
My student Ribhav has had six years of French (textbook-driven) in India and in Canada. He’s had one year of Spanish (all via comprehended input eg TPRS, Movietalk, reading). I asked him the same questions in French and Spanish. He had no time to plan or rehearse. Check it: Ribhav likes languages, and fiddles around […]
The other day I found the following and thought wha? Eventually I– a French reader and speaker– figured it out. This is a verb chart, a guide for how to change the endings on French verbs to match the number and person of the sentence subject, in the present tense. This brings up today’s question: […]