It’s the time of year for Top Somenumber Posts! I’ve enjoyed seeing other bloggers share their top posts of the year. Here are the five posts on indwellinglanguage.com that generated the most interaction. As you can see, three of them were reflections on / descriptions of things that happened at Express Fluency 2017. I hope […]
Tag Archives: whatever works
Guided Meditation in the TL
Sometimes I use guided meditation to relax or to help me fall asleep. Because I enjoy it and in order to get a bit more out of life, I usually listen in a language other than English. (My partner recently said to me that the fact that I use even sleep meditation to get more input […]
Letter from Tim on ‘Something from Nothing’
The following is a letter I received from Tim, a teacher in Colorado, in response to my recent video and commentary on getting Something from Nothing in our classes. It was encouraging to me and I thought it might be encouraging for you to hear about the repeatability of the filmed interaction and about the […]
Something from Nothing – VIDEO breakdown (Express Fluency reflection 4)
This is the fourth in a series of reflections and elaborations on Express Fluency 2017. If you haven’t yet, check out installment 1, on the skills of slowness and silence, installment 2, on making lemonade, i.e., capitalizing on would-be problems in class, and installment 3, on brain UNbreaks. I hesitated to share the video below. It’s as […]
Brain Unbreaks (Express Fluency reflection 3)
This is the third in a series of reflections and elaborations on Express Fluency 2017. If you haven’t yet, check out installment 1, on the skills of slowness and silence, and installment 2, on making lemonade, i.e., capitalizing on would-be problems in class. I usually use brain breaks just to get the blood pumping if it’s been […]
Same Conversation (Notes from Italy, pt. 3)
Note: This is part 3 of a summer series with notes on learning and interacting in another language. The series is inspired by my Italian interactions, but can apply to any language! See part 1 for two stories illustrating the goodness that comes from interacting with people in their own language and part 2 for […]
Advanced Eavesdropping (Notes from Italy, pt. 2)
If you ask most people whether eavesdropping is something you should do, they’ll answer no. If you ask me, I’ll say yes–if you’re trying to learn a language. Note: This is part 2 of my summer series sharing notes on learning and interacting in another language. The series is inspired by my Italian interactions, but […]
A new, gentle intro to “non-targeted CI”
Responding to requests from Stephen Krashen and others, I wrote a report last fall on my students’ and my experiences with what he calls “non-targeted comprehensible input,” which I sometimes call “interest-targeting input.” The article, “Non-Targeted Comprehensible Input: How it Works for My Students and Me,” appeared in the latest issue of The International Journal of […]
Neurodiversity in Your Classroom
In reflections published every Monday, colleagues and I at The Inclusive Latin Classroom are exploring ways of ensuring that our classes serve as many students as possible, as well as possible. Though some of our reflections refer to Latin classes in particular, most apply to courses in any language. This is the case for my contribution from […]
Language Quirks and Perks
What are some unique or quirky things about learning or teaching the language you learn or teach? I’m not talking so much about things like “the language has seven conjugations” or “there’s no past tense”–though those things are fun, too–as about extra-linguistic things like “I can’t find many other people learning the language” or “For some reason, […]