NOTE: In my last post, I shared material from a presentation I gave at the National TPRS® conference in July. This post is based on another presentation that I gave fifteen minutes later. This post addresses a trifecta of questions teachers often ask: 1. How do I get my students to talk more? 2. How can I […]
Tag Archives: reading
What Is Your Favorite Thing To Do?
If you could spend your time doing whatever you wanted, how would you spend it? What if doing that activity somehow also helped you learn a language? Many of our favorite activities can be adjusted or can be incorporated into our schedules in such a way as to enhance language learning. This doesn’t mean they always […]
Indwelling Language and Stephen Krashen at NTPRS 2015
The first day at NTPRS 2015 (this year’s national conference for the system called Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) has been exhilarating: I’ve enjoyed conversations with teachers and presenters that I had known only through the internet or by fame and had been eager to meet in person, and have been pleasantly surprised to hear that I have been […]
You can’t learn when you’re distracted–a note from London
It’s the middle of the night in London, where I’m spending the week in a cute little flat in Soho. Today my wife and I, with a group of friends, enjoyed an outing to Stratford and, though I never tire of driving through the English countryside, I decided–perhaps inspired by glimpsing Cicero and Caffe Nero side by […]
Do What You Feel Like
“Do what you feel like” can be devastating moral advice, but for language-learning that doesn’t have an impending deadline, it’s a great way to maximize joy and success. Here’s what I mean: This morning I felt like reading young adult fantasy fiction in French. Fortunately, I had sitting by my bed a copy of Harry Potter à l’école des sorciers […]
The Multilingual Reading Countdown
If you are interested in multiple languages, the Multilingual Reading Countdown is for you. This straightforward technique both increases the comprehensibility of a text and improves your understanding and memory of the content. Simply select a text that exists in multiple languages and read it in successive languages. For maximum comprehensibility and, therefore, maximum language acquisition, […]
Reading websites in multiple languages
As you may know from research or experience, the best thing you can do for your fluency in a language is to consume large quantities of content that you can understand. (If you are a teacher, the best thing you can do for your students’ fluency is to provide compelling content that your students can […]
Your Language-Learning Happy Place
Your Happy Place is a mental state or a physical setting in which you are most at ease or most energized. You may have a general Happy Place, or you may have a host of Happy Places for different activities or purposes. Do you have a language-learning Happy Place? Mine are (a) just after breakfast, in […]
Pre-Reading and Three-Reading
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 […]
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 […]