Roads to Rome and language learning

All roads lead to Rome: Tabula Peutingeriana (section), borrowed from https://kosmossociety.chs.harvard.edu There are a lot of different ways to teach a foreign or second language.  Foreign language instruction has been evolving throughout time, depending on pedagogical beliefs, scientific insights, and changing didactical needs. Some of us may be familiar with the Grammatical-Translation approach, Audio-Lingualism, or …

Language development in a broad perspective: the kindergarten class

One of the challenges unique to kindergarten teachers is making good use of the various corners of their classrooms: a house corner, a maths corner, an arts and crafts table, a painting corner, a writing center, a math and science center, a reading corner - the list can be quite long!  Each corner offers opportunities …

Policy planning part 1: vision and ambition

How do you see education?  What is the goal of education?  What are important aspects of education?  What do you think? At your school: How are children viewed, in their role as learners?  What aspects of learning are important? What kind of education does your school provide?  What is the role of the teacher, of …

Teaching from the top-down: flipping Bloom’s taxonomy

How many of us have learned about Bloom's taxonomy, back in the days we went to college?  Very likely, one learned to start teaching at the base: knowledge and comprehension, before moving on to the higher levels of application and analysis.  And maybe, just maybe the children would be clever enough to move on to …

Transfer and L1 Interference: tools to play with

What makes a foreign language easier or harder to learn?  There are many different factors involved, such as inflection, grammatical issues, and "gender" of nouns which differ from language to language.  What a lot of these differences come down to, however, are the concepts of transfer and L1 interference, a.k.a. negative transfer. Transfer, as defined …