Author Description

This book presents many classroom techniques to structure conversations in the target language with the goal of discovering who we are teaching. As these class conversations grow, our students' proficiency in the target language also grows. If we focus on who we are teaching, the class content emerges naturally from our class conversations. Not only is it easier for the language teacher to develop a compelling and enjoyable language experience by centering the lives of actual students as the content of each class, but it is also more likely to generate language that students find relevant. Class time is no longer wasted on a list of words that students resist learning; instead, we focus on communicating messages that are pertinent and interesting to the students in the classroom. This approach supported an extremely successful language program in a high-poverty public school system. While we still dealt with high-absenteeism and a culture of not doing homework, our program developed a 100% pass rate on AP and IB exams. More importantly, we became happier students and happier teachers as our classrooms became refuges rather than sources of conflict.