EPISODE FORTY-EIGHT
AGENT ADRIANA RAMIREZ (COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT)
Your lesson, should you choose to accept it, is to use comprehensible input when teaching languages, specifically the TPRS method. The special agent assigned to help you with this task is Adriana Ramirez of British Columbia.
In this episode:
Adriana defines Comprehensible Input (CI) and TPRS, and explains how students are still learning grammar, just doing so intuitively
Adriana responds to a ton of misconceptions and critiques of CI and TPRS, including:
Comprehensible input is mutually exclusive with using authentic resources
Students are only ever exposed to the teacher’s voice, and never explore other cultures and accents
Students are never expected to produce their own speaking or writing
It can only work if every teacher in a department is using the same method
It takes more effort to teach with story-telling than through textbooks
You have to completely remake your own curriculum every year
It’s impossible to plan for having a substitute teacher
You can’t mix CI methods with your old lessons
It doesn’t matter what level of fluency a teacher has in the target language (I mentioned the story of my own experience around gaining fluency while teaching; you can listen to it here)
Adriana discusses students taking ownership of the stories, adapting for teaching during Covid-19, and finding inspiration in other teachers through social media
Adriana’s links:
Her website
Her Twitter
Her Instagram
Her YouTube channel “Teaching Spanish with Comprehensible Input”
Browse the Spanish and French curriculum books she has written or check out the books she has written for students on Amazon
Teachers and academics Adriana admires:
Dr. Bill VanPatten (and his podcast “Tea with BVP”)
Liam Printer (and his podcast “The Motivated Classroom”)
Alina Filipescu (and her YouTube channel)
