Thanks Jonathan! I have really enjoyed reading your blog post as I too am a big fan of Liam Printer and his work. (Feeling a tad jealous you had the opportunity to experience a week in his classroom! How fabulous!) I am a strong advocate of the power of reading and passionate about providing more accessible reading materials for emergent readers of Japanese. I feel sadly that many classrooms are still restrictively tied to units and themes and driven by textbooks, but I have hope for change in the future as the momentum for CI increases. Looking forward to your next post!
Hi Monique, thanks for your message. I'm glad you're enjoying the blog. Yes it was wonderful watching Liam and I'm trying to capture some of what I saw in the blog posts. I agree re units and themes, and these can sometimes be restrictive. To be clear, Liam does have broad themes but manages to work novels and lots of CI activities into these. So while there is a broad focus, it's not narrow in the way that a textbook presents language. Students are acquiring lots of useful language rather than learning lists of topic vocabulary. His pupils are very motivated and enjoy their classes a lot... Best wishes, Jonathan
Thanks Jonathan! I have really enjoyed reading your blog post as I too am a big fan of Liam Printer and his work. (Feeling a tad jealous you had the opportunity to experience a week in his classroom! How fabulous!) I am a strong advocate of the power of reading and passionate about providing more accessible reading materials for emergent readers of Japanese. I feel sadly that many classrooms are still restrictively tied to units and themes and driven by textbooks, but I have hope for change in the future as the momentum for CI increases. Looking forward to your next post!
Hi Monique, thanks for your message. I'm glad you're enjoying the blog. Yes it was wonderful watching Liam and I'm trying to capture some of what I saw in the blog posts. I agree re units and themes, and these can sometimes be restrictive. To be clear, Liam does have broad themes but manages to work novels and lots of CI activities into these. So while there is a broad focus, it's not narrow in the way that a textbook presents language. Students are acquiring lots of useful language rather than learning lists of topic vocabulary. His pupils are very motivated and enjoy their classes a lot... Best wishes, Jonathan
Thanks Jonny. I loved reading this summary. Excellent as always and really captures the magic of teaching languages through narrative.