SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone!

Ben’s Blog Post About Intercultural Communicative Competence

Book Study: Learner Feedback for Language Growth by Nickel, Strauss, and Budke

The Motivated Classroom Podcast

Ep. 46: SLAyyy Mid-Semester Check-In

Bill Langley-Bostick — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 13:08:08 GMT

SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone Website

Gaslight

Class Size

Planning Ahead - Less is More!

Gatekeep -

Chunking! TPR!

Comprehensible Definitions

The Survey Quiz Game

Girlboss

Feedback Loops

Going Slow!

References

Social Accounts:

SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone Website

Book Study: Learner Feedback for Language Growth by Nickel, Strauss, and Budke

What If Input Is Enough? by Beniko Mason

Wir sind Curriculum

The Survey Quiz Game - blog post by Ben

Join us to chat about Learner Feedback for Language Growth

Stacy Witkowski — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 01:36:03 GMT

¡Hola! Bonjour! Annyeonghaseyo!
Thanks for reading SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone!! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.
Subscribe now
This Thursday, October 8, we will continue to discuss the book Learner Feedback for Language Growth. We will be discussing chapters 5 and 6. These chapters start to dig into the meat of the first two Performance Domains: Language Use and Text Type. All are welcome to join, whether you have read these chapters or not!
Check out the questions below, and join us this Thursday, October 8 at 8 P.M. Eastern / 7 P.M. Central / 5 P.M. Pacific time at https://slayyypod.com/chat

The first “performance domain” is Language Use. What do we mean by Language Use?
What is something you look for in your learners to determine whether they are meeting the learning target in the Language Use domain?
In this model, the basic rubric remains the same across proficiency levels, but the criteria for “meeting” the target shift as learners advance. How does this concept fit with the rubrics you have been using?
Chapter 6 is about Text Type. What does that mean to you, and is that something that you have focused on in the past when giving feedback?
How would you train learners to evaluate their own work using these performance domains?

We’re looking forward to more great discussions this week :)
Bill, Ben, Stacy
Thanks for reading SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone!! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.
Subscribe now

Ep. 45: SLAyyy Word Chunks

Bill Langley-Bostick — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 10:00:00 GMT

Gaslight

Teaching Words Individually

SLOW

Gatekeep - Wang, S. Y., & Christiansen, M. H. (2024). Chunking in the second language: Implications for language learning and teaching. Language Teaching Research Quarterly, 44, 84-106.

The Processing Bottleneck + Chunk and Pass

L1 + L2 Language Acquisition

Girlboss

ENHANCED CHUNKING SKILLS

Revising the Vocab List

Auditory, then Reading

Chat Mats and Sentence Builders

References

Social Accounts:

Episode 18: SLAyyy Multiword Sequences

Book Study: Learner Feedback for Language Growth by Nickel, Strauss, and Budke

TextActivities

Sentence Builders

Book Study Chats Continue This Week!

Stacy Witkowski — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 01:00:58 GMT

Hola! Bonjour! Annyeonghaseyo!

Thanks for reading SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone!! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

This week we are excited to continue our chat series on the book Learner Feedback for Language Growth. We will be discussing chapters 3 and 4. You are welcome to join us whether you have read these chapters or not!

Preview the questions below, and join us this Thursday, September 24 at 8 P.M. Eastern at https://slayyypod.com/chat

Pretest! What is a performance task? Tell us in your own words.
Give an example of an interpersonal or presentational performance task that you have used and liked.
When creating a performance task, teachers should consider: the task, content, context, sociocultural context, and language function. That’s a lot to think about! What aspect do you find most challenging?
In your opinion, what makes feedback effective?
Give yourself some feedback: Where do you GLOW when giving feedback, and where could you GROW?

We’re looking forward to great discussions over the course of this book study :)

Bill, Ben, Stacy

Thanks for reading SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone!! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

Four Listening Activities I Keep Coming Back To — and the Twist I’d Add Now

Bill Langley-Bostick — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 21:51:10 GMT

A few years ago, while teaching Spanish 4, I worked through the Música Originaria unit from Huellas — Carrie Toth’s curriculum from Somewhere to Share, sold through The Comprehensible Classroom. If you don’t know Huellas, go find it. One of the things I loved about the unit was how many simple ideas it gave me for working with video and listening in class.

And I mean simple.

These weren’t elaborate listening stations. Nothing that took an hour to prep. Most of them were just: take the content of a video, give students a very specific reason to listen.

That distinction has stuck with me. And I owe it to that unit.

“Listen to this video” isn’t much of a task.

Listen to figure out which statement is true is.

Looking back at these activities now, I realize they were pushing me toward something else too — something I’ve become a lot more intentional about since. Listening tasks can do more than check comprehension. They can create repeated chances for learners to process a meaningful form–meaning connection without turning the lesson into a grammar exercise.

That’s the twist I’d add today. The four activities below are straight from that Huellas unit — the credit is Carrie’s, the twist at the end is mine.

SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone Website

1. Pre-Listening with Whiteboards

Who doesn’t love a whiteboard?

I’d always used them with beginners, especially when introducing new language. Say or show something in Spanish, students demonstrate what they understood, I immediately see where comprehension is breaking down.

I’d mostly stopped doing that with my upper-level classes. No good reason. It’s simple, it works, and somewhere along the way I decided advanced students didn’t need it anymore. They did.

For this activity, I pulled several important phrases from the upcoming video and worked through them one at a time before students watched. Students wrote what they thought each phrase meant on their whiteboards in English, showed me their answers, got feedback immediately.

The important part wasn’t really the whiteboard.

It was the selection of the language.

I wanted phrases that carried important meaning in the video. Not random vocabulary that happened to show up in it.

Working one phrase at a time also let us stay with the language longer. Instead of:

They understood it. Great. Next.

I could ask another question, change one piece of information, connect it to something students already knew, reuse the phrase somewhere else.

Useful reminder: upper-level students still need repeated, comprehensible exposure. They just need more interesting language to process it with.

2. 7 of 10

This one is ridiculously easy.

Write ten statements about the listening in English — or whatever language you and your students share. Only seven actually happen. Students listen and identify which seven.

That’s it.

But the design does real work. Students aren’t trying to understand every word. They’re listening for meaning and testing it against possible interpretations. Make the wrong statements almost right — the tradition began in the north, not the south — and now students have a reason to listen closely instead of waiting to hear a word they recognize.

For quick finishers, I added one more layer: What did you hear that supports your answer? A word, a phrase, whatever helped them decide. Same task for everyone, one more rung for the kids who needed it.

3. Which Do You Hear?

Same principle, narrower lens. Instead of ten statements, one detail at a time, two possible readings:

A. The musicians perform only during religious festivals.
B. The musicians perform during religious festivals and community celebrations.

Students pick which one they actually heard.

The trick is making both options plausible. One ridiculous answer and students don’t have to process anything. Two options that differ by one meaningful detail, and suddenly there’s a reason to listen carefully.

This is where I now see the clearer link to Structured Input. It’s not:

Did you hear this word?

It’s:

Which meaning did the language communicate?

That difference matters.

4. The Splits

This one moves a little closer to the language itself.

Take several sentences from the video, split them in half. Beginnings:

La música tradicional se desarrolló…
Los músicos utilizan…
La celebración representa…

Endings, shuffled:

A. instrumentos hechos a mano.
B. una conexión importante con la comunidad.
C. durante varios siglos.

Students match halves as they listen.

I do this after students already understand the video generally. Otherwise it turns into a sound-matching game — I heard música, there’s música on the paper! — and that’s not the point.

Once they’ve got the general message, The Splits gets them to notice how that meaning actually gets expressed. Meaning first. Form second. Not because form doesn’t matter, but because form is only useful once learners have something meaningful to hang it on.

What I’d Add Now: Let the Authentic Text Carry the Form

I did a lesson recently with Juanes’s A Dios le pido that pushed this further. The song is basically built for it.

Over and over, Juanes uses the same frame: pedir + que + a desired action or state. The frame holds still, the meaning moves — family, love, life, time, eventually his country.

We didn’t start with the grammar. We started with what he asked of others. First listen: Who is he talking to? What does he want? Then students read the lyrics and sorted what he asked into categories of their own choosing. Family. Love. Life. Country. Whatever made sense to them.

That sorting task was the whole lesson. They were rereading the same grammatical frame again and again, but the task was about meaning, every time.

Only after they’d spent real time interpreting what Juanes asked of others did I project an enhanced version of the text and ask: What keeps repeating?

At that point they couldn’t not see it. And the explanation took one sentence: This is how we talk about what we want someone, or something, else to do for us.

No paradigm. No verb chart. No twenty-minute subjunctive lecture. The text had already done the work.

The Twist

That lesson clarified something for me: I don’t need to change the activities. I need to change what I’m looking for when I design them.

Not just how do I help students understand this video, also is there a useful form–meaning connection already sitting inside this text?

If there is, I can sequence the listening so students hit it again and again while doing actual interpretive work: understand the message, make a meaning-based distinction, go back to find what carried that meaning, notice the form that keeps showing up, then reuse it themselves.

That last step doesn’t need to be elaborate. In the Juanes lesson, students used a fixed frame and a word bank to write a few things they ask of others: Yo le pido a ___ que ___. The production came after a flood of input, supported enough that students could think about meaning instead of scrambling for a conjugation.

Repeated Listening Needs a New Job

This is still the biggest thing I take from all of this.

Repeated listening works better when each listen has a different job. First listen: What is this mostly about? Next: Which of these ideas did the speaker actually mention? Then: Which detail is correct? Then: How would you organize the speaker’s ideas? Finally: What language keeps appearing when the speaker expresses that meaning?

The audio hasn’t changed. The reason for listening has.

That’s the difference between “we’re listening again because you didn’t get it” and “we’re listening again because there’s something new to figure out.”

And sometimes, if you pick the text carefully, students end up processing the same grammatical relationship a dozen times before anyone ever says the word grammar.

Ep. 44: SLAyyy Whole-Class Choral Reading

Bill Langley-Bostick — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 09:30:00 GMT

Notes

Gaslight

It’ll All Work Out in the End! …Right?

How Much Should We Emphasize Any Given Aspect of a Language?

The Need for Massive Aural Input

How to Reread Texts Many Times

Gatekeep - Paige, D. D. (2011). 16 Minutes of “Eyes-on-Text” Can Make a Difference: Whole-Class Choral Reading as an Adolescent Fluency Strategy. Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts, 51 (1).

Repeated Readings Help!

More Efficient Than…

Student and Teacher Perceptions

Girlboss

Control the Game

Interruption

Table Tennis Reading

Embedded Readings, Revisited

Write and Discuss

References

Social Accounts:

TPRS with Chinese Characteristics by Terry Waltz

Book Study: Learner Feedback for Language Growth by Nickel, Strauss, and Budke

Book Study Chats Start Tonight!

Bill Langley-Bostick — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 14:57:21 GMT

Hellooooooo!

Tonight we are excited to start our chat series on the book Learner Feedback for Language Growth.

Stacy has crafted some great questions to get us started. Preview the questions below, and join us tonight at 8 P.M. Eastern at https://slayyypod.com/chat

Pretest! Are you a novice, intermediate, or advanced in the skill of giving learner feedback? Justify your choice.
What does “Performance Domain Indicators” mean to you? What questions do you have about them?
How would you describe performance and proficiency to your learners?
In your opinion, what are some pros and cons of the Performance Domain Indicators?
Do your colleagues evaluate learner work like you do? How do you stay on the same page? Or, how do you deal with disagreements?

We’re looking forward to great discussions over the course of this book study :)

Bill, Ben, Stacy

Ep. 43: SLAyyy Student Leadership with Nathan Campbell

Bill Langley-Bostick — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 10:00:00 GMT

SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone Website

Gaslight

“Ok, Just Be a Leader Now!”

Failing to Identify Strengths

Lack of Definitions and Models

Walking the Line Between Guidance and Control

Gatekeep - Nathan Campbell, 2026 ACTFL National Language Teacher of the Year

Progressive Leadership System

Building Experience and Perspective

Modeling Qualities of a Strong Leader

Girlboss

When to Guide, When to Let Go

Clear Expectations

The Secret of the Shared Drive

References

Social Accounts:

Ben’s German Club Ideas List

Book Study: Learner Feedback for Language Growth by Nickel, Strauss, and Budke

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Comprehension-Based Language Teaching

Bill Langley-Bostick — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 10:59:46 GMT

This post was originally shared on my old personal site, but Ben told me that someone shouted this post out recently at a conference so I figured I needed to get it posted over here. This was an assignment that I had to do for a course and we were all invited to share our work with the world, so here it is! I hope it’s helpful :)

I used to think teaching with comprehensible input (CI) was inherently equitable. I’d argue, “it’s the only thing we KNOW students need to acquire language”. I still think that’s true. And while CI is still the first thing I consider when planning for student language acquisition, I have reflected and learned a lot about what it means to be equitable in a world language classroom. In this post, I want to share some thoughts around equitable teaching practices in the world language classroom and how Universal Design for Learning (CAST, n.d.) could help us ensure that we give all our students what they need to be successful language learners.
As I work towards making myself more conscious of whether I am enacting equitable teaching practices, I want to keep in mind my goals for my students. If I don’t know my goals for my students, I can’t make sure that everyone has an equitable chance of achieving those goals. So, what are my goals for my students? I want them to be more confident communicators at increasingly higher proficiency. I want them to learn about themselves and the world. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I want them to show respect and empathy for the people and cultures they perceive as different.
What is Universal Design for Learning?
Universal design for learning (UDL) is a framework that aims to make education accessible to the most students possible, with the idea that if we teach to the students who need the most support, everyone will benefit. There are three principles of UDL: Engagement, Representation, and Action and Expression (CAST, n.d.).
Engagement (the ‘why’ of learning)
When planning for learning, we need to consider “why” most students need to learn our content, and whether the content is engaging enough for most students. Another way to think about this principle is: Is this content relevant to the needs of my students?
Suppose I can first find a topic that is interesting to students. In that case, I can make the language of that topic comprehensible to the students in my classroom and lower the affective filter, leading to opportunities for students to engage with content that is relevant to their interest, increasing the likelihood of acquisition of language related to the topic of interest (Venditti, 2021). Lowering the affective filter? I think that’s good for everyone in the room. Although teaching with CI can do this, it is essential to remember to review the topic and any resources we use thoroughly to check for bias, misrepresentation, or stereotypes of target language speaking communities, because comprehensible language that promotes bias does not stop promoting bias because it is comprehensible.
Representation (the ‘what’ of learning)
When planning for learning, we represent the content (words, phrases, structures, or culture) in multiple ways. I have heard from Michele Kindt (personal communication, 2020–2023) that we need to offer robust exposure to content. Here, robust exposure means that rote repetition of vocabulary or structures is not enough. Students need to hear, read, and see language represented in multiple contexts to build a stronger mental representation of the target language. There are so many CI teaching strategies to introduce and offer robust exposure to language: ClipChat, TPRS, Personalized Questions and Answers (PQA), TPR, and more. A toolkit of comprehension-based activities can ensure that we represent our content in varied and meaningful ways, supporting UDL’s principle of representation.
We also need to ensure that students have robust exposure to cultural topics. I reiterate the need to assess materials that we use in class for potential bias, as curricular materials can “present sanitized versions of language and culture” (Baggett, 2020, p. 45) that do not show the breadth and beauty of the cultures we share with our students.
Action and Expression (the ‘how’ of learning)
In UDL, action and expression refer to how students express their growth (Alghamdy, 2023). This can be during formative or summative assessments, and it is essential to provide student choice in demonstrating what they can do with the new language and content they have learned. At CI conferences that offer coaching (see Neubauer & Wesely, 2023), coaches are encouraged to highlight how teachers accept student answers. Acceptable answers can be single words, nodding yes or no, whole sentences, and sometimes even responses in the first language. Permitting students to answer in a way that is comfortable to them and demonstrating that we value any language growth supports the final principle of UDL.
Implementing UDL
Now that we have an idea of how UDL fits into a comprehension-based class, I want to share some strategies that I believe we can take with us into the beginning of this school year:

Lead with input
- Ensure that students are getting the necessary ingredient for language acquisition. Use language that you’re confident most students will understand.
Work in collaboration with students to find relevant topics that will engage them in meaningful personal and linguistic growth
- Consider using a beginning-of-the-year survey to gauge interest in different topics and look for common themes of what students say is relevant to their lives and how they want to use language.
Conduct an audit on your curricular materials to ensure no bias, stereotypes, or misrepresentation.
- Check out Learning for Justice’s Hidden Bias reflection tool to begin your reflection.
Vary your activities and content
- Students need robust exposure not only to language but also to cultures and perspectives. Use a variety of activities to recycle vocabulary, and incorporate multiple perspectives.
Accept and demonstrate appreciation when students give responses
- Language learners will develop at their own pace. Honor what students CAN do so that we know when we can ask more of them.

To close, I want to look at my goals for students and reflect on how UDL can help me achieve them, and hopefully help your students achieve their goals. First, I want my students to be confident communicators. By offering robust exposure, language students will develop a mental representation of language, and by enacting the UDL principle of Action and Expression, I hope to empower students to use the language that they have to participate in class communication in a way that is comfortable for them whether the response is a non-verbal cue or paragraph length discourse. Second, I want students to learn about themselves and their peers. The UDL principle of Engagement guides us in choosing relevant and engaging content. I can find out what topics interest students and select a topic that will resonate with as many students as possible. From there, however, my responsibility as the teacher is to ensure that I share multiple and respectful perspectives from other cultures through auditing my materials. This leads to my final goal: I want students to respect and have empathy for cultures that are not their own. When we aim to make our language teaching universally accessible to our students, I believe we can meet all of these goals.
Note: Right after I wrote this, I saw NNELL’s Journal Learning Languages published an article on this exact same topic! Check it out! https://nnell.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/NNELL-Journal-2025_Final-with-Klett-Ad.pdf
References
Alghamdy, R. Z. (2023). The effect of universal design for learning on the proficiency of English as a foreign language students’ acquisition of reading and vocabulary skills. Arab World English Journal, 14(2), 146–160. https://doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol14no2.11
Baggett, H. C. (2020). Relevance, Representation, and Responsibility: Exploring World Language Teachers’ Critical Consciousness and Pedagogies. L2 Journal, 12(2). https://doi.org/10.5070/l212246037
CAST. (n.d.). Universal design for learning. CAST. https://www.cast.org/what-we-do/universal-design-for-learning/
Neubauer, D., & Wesely, P. (2023). K-12 world language teachers’ use of conferences as professional development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 124, 104042. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2023.104042
Venditti, E. (2021). Using comprehensible input in the Latin classroom to enhance language proficiency. The Journal of Classics Teaching, 22, 22–28. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2058631021000039

Comprehension-Forward Grammar Instruction

Bill Langley-Bostick — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT

Gaslight

Are Students Made to Attend to Meaning?

Treating Language Like Other Subjects

Gatekeep - Gonzalez Bueno, Manuela. “S-PACE for Teaching L2 Grammar: Adding Structure to the PACE Model.” Applied Language Learning, vol. 31, no. 1 & 2, 2021, pp. 29–49.

Girlboss

Use Low Cognitive Load Sentences to Focus Attention

Using Student-Friendly Grammar Language

References

Social Accounts:

Lightbown: 10 Generalizations

Book Study: Learner Feedback for Language Growth by Nickel, Strauss, and Budke

Bethanie Drew’s Blog

Ep. 41: SLAyyy The Role of AI in Language Education

Bill Langley-Bostick — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 10:00:00 GMT

SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone Website

Gaslight

Is AI for Students or for Teachers?

The Humanity in Teaching

You Can’t AI Your Way to Communicative Competence

Gatekeep - Çelik, Ö. (2025). Evolution of foreign language education in the age of AI. ELT Research Journal, 14(1), 61-77.

Teachers as Filters of Knowledge and Designers of Learning Processes

Ben Rants, Extensively

Girlboss

How to Make the Classroom a Safe, Inclusive Learning Environment

Productivity Hacking - with the Teacher’s Competence

References

Social Accounts:

SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone Website

Book Study: Learner Feedback for Language Growth by Nickel, Strauss, and Budke

The SLAyyy Field Guide

Bill Langley-Bostick — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:38:26 GMT

The SLAyyy Field Guide is LIVE!

What started as a class project to make a dictionary of key terms has taken off.

The SLAyyy Field Guide began as a place to gather the ideas and language that help us talk about language teaching and learning as part of a class project. The class I made the dictionary for was “Advocacy for Second Language Learning”. It is now growing into a knowledge hub with podcast episodes, key terms, tools, activities, and sources—all in one place.

My hope is that it becomes useful when you are lesson planning, writing curriculum, creating activities, or simply trying to make sense of an idea you keep hearing about. The goal is not to hand teachers a script. It is to make research and classroom-facing ideas easier to find, revisit, question, and use in ways that fit the learners in front of you.

You can explore the Field Guide here:

fieldguide.slayyypod.com

It will keep growing, and I hope you find something useful there as you continue to SLAyyy.

Bill

We missed #Langchat, so here’s what we’re gonna do about it

Bill Langley-Bostick — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 17:15:44 GMT

Back in the Twitter days before it was called X there was a great community of language teachers that would get together nearly every Thursday night and just chat with one another about different concepts and language teacher. And through that I made so many lifelong friends and learned so much and was able to share some of what has worked in my classroom.

However, online checks like #Langchat Are not as common as they used to be.

Here at sleigh, we don’t want to just talking at you but we also want to talk with you so next Monday, July 27 at 8 PM Eastern we will be doing our first live text chat to talk about the upcoming school.

I know that I will be doing my best to reach out to all my old Lang chat friends and I hope you bring along yourself and someone else who could take some time with fellow teachers to just talk about the new year

In the meantime, you can go ahead and introduce yourself below!

Join the chat

-bill

Name the function, not the grammar

Bill Langley-Bostick — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 12:20:31 GMT

Using metalinguistic terminology when giving students feedback might be the surest way to gatekeep student communication.

“You used the wrong subjunctive trigger.” “You used the imperfect you should have used the preterite.”

These ARE pieces of feedback that one could give their student, but does this feedback actually do anything for students? Or when they hear the feedback do they get lost in the metalinguistic jargon because now not only do they have to try to understand and produce their L2, they have to try to reconcile their ability to communicate with their ability to recognize the names, uses, and forms of metalinguistic items. Functionally naming the language we use in class aims to inform students of what they are trying to say rather than how they said it wrong. Instead of “Use the preterite here instead of imperfect,” I might say “You used the form that describes background conditions/actions, you want to use the form that shows that an action happened once.” It’s the same feedback, but a different perspective. It shifts the vibe from “you did something wrong” to “you communicated something, let’s work to make it more clear.”

Every language form is used for SOMETHING: hypothesizing, describing, comparing and contrasting, narrating. The list goes on. So naming language forms functionally starts with considering what is the actual purpose of communication? Another way to think about it: If my student doesn’t know the term “subjunctive” how can I explain its use for our present context to make it make sense. For something like the subjunctive, I may call it “the form of desire,” “the form of recommendation,” “the form of uncertainty,” or something similar; depending on the communicative goal for the class/unit.

Dynamic Assessment treats formative assessment, summative assessment, and instruction as intrinsically linked: every instructional move doubles as a assessment, and every assessmen

t doubles as a teaching moment. The mechanism behind that link is mediation: the teacher intervenes in the learner’s process, not just at the end of it, and the intervention itself reveals what the learner can do with support, not just what they can already do alone. That’s the whole point of working in the ZPD — you’re not measuring a fixed score, you’re testing how much scaffolding closes the gap, in real time, mid-task.

Mediation only works if it lands in language the learner can act on immediately. That’s where functional naming stops being a nicety and becomes load-bearing. If the mediating move requires the student to first decode a grammar term before they can even locate what you’re talking about, the mediation has already failed — you’ve inserted a vocabulary lesson into a moment that was supposed to be a communicative one. Functional naming keeps the feedback in the same register as the task itself, so the student can take the mediation and immediately try again, which is the entire mechanism Micro-Feedback depends on.

Mediation itself comes in two grains. You can mediate the same communicative function across the whole class — everyone gets fed the same frame, the same job, and feedback tracks how each student executes that one function. Or you can individualize: different students get different mediation depending on what they specifically need in that moment. Neither is more correct; they’re just different tools for different goals, and which one you reach for says something about whether you’re checking a function class-wide or meeting individual gaps.

In my classroom, mini-feedback happens two ways. One is form-focused mini-stories, where students label the language themselves with functional naming — that’s a blog post in its own right, with its own mechanics worth unpacking separately. The other is sentence stems, which is where I want to stay for now.

On Fridays we watch Tierra Incógnita. I want the viewing to mostly be about enjoying a Spanish TV show, but students need a task to anchor their attention, so I bring out whiteboards and sentence stems — this is the uniform-function version of mediation: everyone’s tracking the same job, just with their own content.

One example: as we watched an episode, I had each student pick a character to follow. On the board: “X quiere que Y…” One sentence. Students’ first job is just to notice — which character wants something from someone else? They’ve got the frame; they just need to find a moment that fits it.

As I walk around the room checking whiteboards, I’m only giving feedback on the subjunctive word in the second half of the sentence. So when a student writes “Eric quiere que sus padres aparecen,” I tell them: Great job! To make it clearer, we’re going to use aparezcan — because that’s the hope form. Eric doesn’t know if his parents will return. We use the hope form when we want someone else to do something, but we don’t know if they’ll do it.

That one fixed location, the subjunctive verb, every time, is what makes the whole loop work. I know exactly where to look on every whiteboard, which means I can celebrate what a student’s already doing independently, gauge how much support they need to close the gap, and move to the next student without losing the thread of either the show or the feedback.

This is what not gatekeeping actually looks like, down at the level of a single verb, mid-task, on a Friday afternoon. "Use aparezcan, that's the hope form" takes the same half-second as "use the present subjunctive”, it's not slower, it's not softer, it's not letting anything slide. It's just feedback that a kid can act on without first passing a vocabulary quiz to understand what I said.

Ep. 40: Second Semester Wrap-Up

Bill Langley-Bostick — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 21:02:25 GMT

Gaslight

Keeping Up with Grading

Planning Ahead

Class Size!

Don’t Rush

Gatekeep

TPR, Circumlocution, and Synonym Stacking

Brain Breaks - Heads or Tails?

Girlboss

Classroom Management

Having Just a Lil’ Structure

References

Social Accounts:

Bill’s Classroom Survivor Template

CI Reboot - fully online conference for CCLT - use affiliate code SLAYY2026

Next Semester’s Book Study: Learner Feedback for Language Growth by Nickel, Strauss, and Budke

El baile del 41- Jigsaw Reading + Structured Input Packets

Bill Langley-Bostick — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:46:49 GMT

Get the Resources on TPT

This ready-to-use bundle pairs three adapted authentic texts on the 1901 Dance of the 41 — a foundational event in Mexican LGBTQ+ history — with a structured grammar workbook focused on si hubiera... habría (past counterfactual conditionals). Students read, discuss, and write about one of the most fascinating and underteached stories in Spanish-language history.

What’s included (6 components, 35+ pages):

Grammar reference page introducing la segunda oportunidad (si hubiera... habría) with functional labels, word banks, and content-specific examples
Lectura compartida — factual narrative anchor (adapted from Agencia Presentes)
Texto Adaptado A — 1901 broadside analysis (adapted from Los 41 Maricones)
Texto Adaptado B — modern historical reframing (adapted from Carlos Monsiváis, Letras Libres)
Cuaderno de gramática — 15 paired Paso 1/Paso 2 activities across all three texts
Escritura colaborativa — jigsaw writing prompt + IDEAS paragraph planning sheet
Teacher guide with suggested 4-day sequence, content notes, and differentiation options

How it works: Students read the shared text together, then split into jigsaw pairs — one partner reads the 1901 press response, the other reads the Monsiváis historical analysis. The knowledge gap is real: each partner has genuinely different information. The workbook activities build from structured input (Paso 1) to communicative output (Paso 2) before partners collaborate on a counterfactual paragraph using the IDEAS framework.

On the grammar approach: The goal isn’t mastery of a complex form — it’s meaningful exposure and targeted microfeedback opportunities. The structure appears in context before it’s ever named.

On the content: This bundle includes a teacher content note on the historical use of a slur in the title of the 1901 source. The word does not appear in any adapted student text. The material is handled with care and historical seriousness throughout.

Best for: Spanish 3, Spanish 4, AP Spanish Language, heritage speaker courses

Not a good fit for: Novice or early intermediate students (Spanish 1–2)

SLAyyy makes research-informed Spanish curriculum for teachers who care about both language acquisition and the stories they put in front of students.

#Authres: Adapt the Task, not the Text

Bill Langley-Bostick — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:10:53 GMT

Every few months, the advice pops up again: “Don’t adapt the text. Adapt the task.”

I understand exactly where it comes from. For years, language teachers were handed textbook dialogues that no person would ever actually read. The authentic resources movement was a necessary reaction to that. We want students interacting with real language, real culture, and real ideas.

But a few years ago, I started noticing a disconnect in my own room. I was taking the advice to heart: handing students an authentic resource and heavily scaffolding the task I asked them to do with it. But it wasn’t working the way I hoped.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrase adapt the task, not the text. I don’t think it is wrong, but I am wondering if it’s slightly out of order. Task adaptation assumes the text already sits somewhere within the learner’s reach. You can simplify what you ask students to do endlessly, but if the text itself is miles past where they can construct meaning, the task can still be overwhelming.

So, lately, I’ve been experimenting with a different sequence: adapting the text first, and then adapting the task.

Observing the Gap

Picture handing a novice learner a newspaper article. We might tell them, “You don’t need to understand every word,” and then ask for a simple summary.

When I did this, I realized the message my students actually internalized was often the exact opposite. Many walked away convinced they were just bad at the language, when the truth was much simpler: I had asked them to engage with something past their current proficiency. Novices recognize words and phrases. Intermediates start connecting ideas. Advanced learners interpret and analyze. When I was handing all three the same text, it made sense that the results were wildly different.

Building the Bridge

I don’t modify texts because I dislike authentic resources. I do it because I’ve realized how gradual the learning process really is for my students.

Now, when I find an article, infographic, or video I want my class to engage with, I start by asking: What language will they need in order to interact with this resource later?

Then, I try to build a bridge toward it. Sometimes an infographic becomes a dialogue. Sometimes an article becomes a simplified reading. Sometimes a video becomes a shared reading. The goal is never to replace the authentic resource, but rather to prepare them for it.

Flooding the Form

When we talk about adaptation, it’s easy to picture just swapping hard words for easy ones. But I’m finding that is just a small piece of the puzzle.

The real work seems to be identifying the language students will need when they reach the authentic resource, and then flooding them with it. And I mean a specific kind of flooding: not just topical vocabulary, but the form.

If my students will eventually need to recommend solutions to a social problem, I try to saturate the texts they read with the structure that makes recommendations. We see it across a shared reading, individual readings, and activities until that form is familiar long before anyone officially names it. If they’ll eventually weigh competing perspectives, I flood the input with the language of opinion and support.

The point isn’t necessarily that the words get easier. It’s that the form they’ll need shows up so often, in so many contexts, that it stops feeling abstract.

The Case for a Complete Glossary

When my students read adapted texts, I give them a complete glossary for the text. The glossary is not a vocabulary list for students to memorize. Its a reference sheet for them so they can read with a little more fluency.

I do this because I’ve seen how quickly a single unknown word can stop the reading cold, and I really just want them to read. When a student hits an unknown word, I don’t want them freezing every ten seconds to look it up, or quietly giving up three paragraphs in. I want them constructing meaning.

For my classroom, the glossary removes the obstacle so comprehension can actually happen. Support seems to be how learners get enough successful reading experiences to keep reading.

Fading the Support

Eventually, the authentic text comes back. I take away the text supports: he flooding, the glosses, the smoothed sentences. Students meet the real thing on its own terms.

But notice what stays: the task support. This is where adapt the task, not the text finally comes into play for me, at the end. The authentic resource stays exactly as its author wrote it, and I scaffold what I ask students to do with it.

It helps me to think of text support and task support as two separate dials. Across a unit, I slowly turn the text dial from full down to zero, but the task dial stays engaged the whole way.

By the time we get to the unadapted text, students aren’t meeting the topic cold. They’ve already encountered the key ideas, processed the language, and built the background knowledge. The authentic resource becomes evidence of learning, and they get to discover that they understand far more than they could have a few weeks earlier.

In Spanish 4, maybe I give them an AP reading style test and allow them to use the authentic resource. Or when students write at the end of a unit, they can use the authentic resources while they write.

A Progression, Not a Choice

I’m trying to move away from seeing this as a choice between adapted texts or authentic texts. In my room, it works better as a progression:

Modified authentic text → Supported reading → Authentic text and engagement

Running alongside it is the task, doing the heavy lifting at the end once the text supports are gone. The modified text is never the destination; it is just the bridge. And if that bridge carries students to authentic language with confidence instead of frustration, it is doing exactly what it needs to do.

Examples

Here is an authentic infographic from Roy Gallardo Monos, and an adapted text I made for level 1 students to read BEFORE showing them the infographic.

La Importancia De Agua

2.4MB ∙ PDF file

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Roy Gallardo Monos

Here is an example from the Convivencia con Animales unit (Curently free on TPT) that will appear in a revision of the unit at some point.

Authentic article: https://dossierpolitico.com/2024/11/15/vaquita-marina-un-tesoro-mexicano-en-peligro/

La Convivencia Con Animales Texts

2.42MB ∙ PDF file

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Brains crave novelty, but also structure

Bill Langley-Bostick — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:44:54 GMT

Novelty is exhausting. I’ve already got all of the lesson plans together, but we’ve done x activity recently so I can’t just do the same activity, that wouldn’t be novel!

So I scratch it. Start over. Design something new. Something the students haven’t seen before. Something that will engage them because it’s fresh. Because the brain craves novelty, right?