Yes, we do. The easiest and quickest way to send them is by emailing us a scanned copy at info@reallanguagerightaway.com. You may also mail them to Hippocampe Publications / PO Box 576 / Downers Grove, IL 60515.
Level 1 is targeted for students ages 6-9, although it can be used with beginners of all ages. Level 2 builds on the language in Level 1, and it is written for late elementary school or middle school, children ages 10-13. It is possible to start older beginners with Level 2. If you aren’t sure which level best suits your program, feel free to contact us at info@reallanguagerightaway.com.
You might like to start by purchasing a Teacher Starter Kit, which will provide you with one of each of the components of the program for a discounted price.
No, the eBook is designed to be used solely for projecting the conversations onto a Smartboard or screen. The document is locked and cannot be copied or printed.
All of them have been purchased from clipart.com. We spent a great deal of time searching to find images that would be clear, compelling to students, and visually pleasing.
With the exception of the Teacher’s Guide, no. If you are using the RLRA materials with your students, you should have classroom sets of the Student Activity Books or the Partner Conversations books. Our Annual PDF License allows you to print as much as you want from the Student Activity Book.
You will find a variety of downloadable products on our website. All of our Audio CDs, eBooks, and Teacher's Guides are offered as digital downloads. Our High School Packs are only offered in digital form. To purchase, you will check out with the shopping cart, and once we receive payment, you will receive an email with a link that will allow you to save the items to your computer. Please note that digital products are to be one copy per teacher and are not to be shared.
If you are using our first edition materials and you need to purchase more copies, please contact us at info@reallanguagerightaway.com.
This depends on the age of your students, how often you see them, and how quickly they are learning. We might use the same conversation for two weeks with a class of kindergarteners or first graders. Remember that the conversation is the starting point, but the goal is for students to internalize the language and be able to transfer it to different situations. Our Student Activity Books and Teacher’s Guides provide the activities that allow you to do this. We find that the most effective way to use the conversations is to have the students practice as much as possible.
As you start using the program, keep in mind that there may be a training period where you teach the students the routine of using the dialogues. Sometimes allowing students to practice means letting go of some control, but we promise you, it’s worth it!
In Level 1, grammar is not explained explicitly, although the instructor can always choose to point things out to their students! In the Level 2 materials, we begin to explain verb conjugation and other simple grammatical matters. The Teacher’s Guides for Level 2 include grammar evaluations.
At the beginning of our teaching in the elementary school, we were following the same advice—don’t show the young students the written word until they have had a lot of exposure to it. However, as we began experimenting with different ways of getting students to practice the language, we found that it was much easier for students to recall the language and pronounce it correctly if they had the word right in front of them. We don’t want to hold back anything that will reinforce the language for the student, so we provide images, act things out, include English translations at times, and show them the written word from the beginning. We have seen enormous success with this, and we have seen dramatic improvement in our students’ recall and pronunciation of the language.
There are many ways of keeping this interesting. In our classes, students generally have an assigned partner for a certain number of weeks. However, students move around the classroom quite a bit and there are ample opportunities to change partners. You can set the students up in two lines facing each other and have them cycle through. You can also set up two circles, the inner circle facing the outer circle. We like to play music and have the students sing and walk in their circle until the music stops and they have a new partner. You can also number the students off or have them choose numbers from a hat. These are just a few ideas; there are many ways to make practicing and changing partners interesting and fun! For more information, check out this blog post.
The mixer cards are a very important component of the program. They can be used in many ways. The most common way is for students to circulate around the classroom, talking with many of their classmates and practicing the conversation using the information on the card. This allows students to practice the conversation in a more spontaneous way (without reading it from the book or Smartboard), and it requires them to use and recall different responses.
Some useful expressions cannot be represented by an image. We want to be sure that the students know exactly what the expression means, so we include the translation. It is a useful way for everyone to be on the same page. This way the instructor doesn’t need to speak English to explain.
Yes, we do! Read more about it on our blog.
Yes. We find that especially with young learners, exclusive use of the target language creates a kind of a magical atmosphere. When language class begins or when the students enter the language classroom, students expect to function in another language. Many of our youngest students don’t even know that we can speak English! We do use written English translation to aid comprehension, and we don’t hesitate to ask a student to explain something in English to the class.
We have created a variety of videos to support our materials. They can be accessed for free on our youtube channel.
We have had fun creating a number of stand-alone lessons for our TpT store. You can access it here.
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