Cate Ruiz-Vélez
Cate teaches Spanish in a US dual-language elementary immersion program. She moved into elementary after a decade in middle and high school classrooms when she realized the comprehensible-input research she believed in worked even better with younger learners. Catalan-American by background, she writes about TPRS, extensive reading, and the kind of patience early-stage CI requires.
- TPRS
- Extensive reading
- Reading rate and fluency
- Comprehensible input for novices
3 pieces in the archive.
The case for extensive reading, the cheapest intervention with the largest evidence base.
Stephen Krashen has been right about one thing for forty years and the field still under-implements it. Extensive reading. Long, easy, voluntary, in volume. The evidence is overwhelming. The barrier is logistical, not theoretical.
TPRS, the evidence we actually have for the most loved method in CI teaching.
Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling has converted more teachers in twenty years than any other approach in our field. The conferences are warm, the testimonials are loud, and the published research is thinner than the testimonials suggest. Here is what we actually know.
Reading rate and fluency, the variable your Spanish students never get measured on.
William Grabe spent twenty-five years arguing that second-language reading instruction was missing the most measurable variable in reading research: rate. The Spanish field still has not absorbed the argument. Your students should be reading faster every month, and you should be measuring it.
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