The last post celebrated the benefits of rereading texts. This post delivers the promised rereading activity that you can use on your own or with a small group if you are an autodidact, or, if you are a teacher, can conduct in class or assign to students. If you’ve tried adding a bunch of different sounds […]
Tag Archives: joy
Don’t Read, Reread
It wouldn’t be unfair of you to ask why I read a letter this morning written to someone other than me, or why I did so twice, once silently and once aloud, or why these were the fifth and sixth times this week that I had read this same letter. “Curiously enough, one cannot read a […]
Rando Mitem, Your Friend and Mine: using random items to spark conversations
Note: this article is for both teachers and learners. If you are learning on your own or in a small group, you can easily adapt the ideas for your purposes. How many things can you say in your target language about the item in the first picture? What kinds of things can you say? What […]
What You Can Do, I Can Talk About: Using students’ quirky skills to generate language
In the last post we talked about using party tricks as something to talk about in a target language. In a classroom setting, students’ special skills, including party tricks, are a compelling, useful source of content. Just like with a picture, movie, or story, the teacher can use students’ non-linguistic skills either to target specific linguistic […]
Party Tricks
I don’t have the best party tricks. My elbows and one thumb are double-jointed (see GIF), but I haven’t parlayed that into on-demand entertainment. I don’t do any good impressions. I can’t fold my tongue into a swan shape, although I can fold a hand towel into something like a Cornish game hen (picture below, video […]
Spare No Tupperware: Erasmus on living in the language
Like most people, I read some Erasmus this morning. A friend had asked for a particular passage in Erasmus’s booklet De Ratione Studii (roughly, “On Study Habits”); after finding the passage, I was intrigued enough to read the book from the beginning. Several pages in, I found a delightful, Indwelling-Language-evoking passage in which Erasmus discusses internalizing […]
“Whatever” Works: Non-Targeted CI Lesson 4, “Frivolity Is the Mother Of Invention”
My second thought when I see this is “Think of all the classy waffles I could make.” This is the Pixel, a customizable waffle maker; you can create your own design by depressing any of the 81 squares. But my first thought is, “This is Non-Targeted CI gold.” That’s right, golden-brown on the breakfast table is straight gold an hour later. […]
“Whatever” Works: Non-Targeted CI Lesson 3, “Not Today”
Three of the following four things happened on this day (November 3) in history. Can you guess which one did not? “Not Today,” or “Not This Day In History,” is an easy-to-plan game of Non-Targeted Comprehensible Input, presented here as part of the Whatever Works series. Simply check a Today In History list on Wikipedia or […]
Essentials For Language Learners, Part 2: Essentials 6-10
Yesterday we posted about Essentials 1-5, Communication, Comprehension, Joy, Variety, and Trust. Today we complete the list with Essentials 6-10. (In case you missed it, see the original article, “What Makes ‘Whatever’ Work: Essentials For Any Language Program,” on which these learner-specific articles are based.) 6. Personalization Do your approach and materials take into account your own life, interests, […]
Essentials For Language Learners, Part 1: Essentials 1-5
Recently we posted ten language program Essentials from the perspective of a teacher, department, school, or curriculum developer. Since Indwelling Language is a service for both teachers and learners, we want to provide some learner-specific thoughts on the Essentials. (Teachers, these comments are still worth your consideration, whether or not you consider yourself a language […]