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Growing With Proficiency The Podcast
Welcome to Growing With Proficiency: The Podcast! Are you a World Language teacher who is looking for ideas, strategies, activities, and inspiration to create a World Language class where you and your students enjoy using the language to learn about the world and each other? Do you want to transform your class into an acquisition-driven instruction space where you intentionally provide a ton of comprehensible input?
If you are, you're in the right place.
Let's start this journey together. Head over to IG, and send me a DM @claudiamelliott to let me know what topics you would like me to cover in an upcoming episode.Join my free Facebook community, Growing With C. Also, check out my blog to start discovering some of these ideas and strategies at growingwithproficiency.com
Growing With Proficiency The Podcast
Re-Release Episode 84: One of the Most Downloaded Episodes of Growing With Proficiency — The Power of Reading with Dr. Stephen Krashen
In a season when we just can't do it all, having clarity about what truly impacts our students’ proficiency journey is key. And this episode? It's the one you’ll want to replay over and over again.
This conversation with Dr. Stephen Krashen is one of the most downloaded episodes of the podcast—and for good reason. Dr. Krashen, the architect of the comprehensible input hypothesis, shares the powerful role of reading for pleasure in language acquisition and how simple, self-selected books can create big results.
This episode is a reminder of what really moves the needle in our classes—and what we can let go of.
☕ Grab your cafecito and press play. This one is a must-listen (again).
💡 Big Takeaways:
- Reading is the most powerful tool for acquisition—it builds vocabulary, grammar, writing, and even empathy.
- Easy and self-selected reading works—comic books, picture books, and leveled readers count (and they stick).
- Grammar doesn’t create accuracy—input does—and output naturally emerges from rich, repeated input.
- Students gain more from reading than formal study—it boosts knowledge in history, science, and beyond.
- Heritage learners thrive through pleasure reading—it’s how they stay connected to and expand their language.
- Good input doesn’t need to be perfect—even “bad” or imperfect input helps learners grow.
Resources:
Article: The Power of Reading (PDF)
More Resources:
How to Teacher Guide: How to Shift to A Comprehensible and Communicative Teaching Approach
Growing With Proficiency The Blog
Growing With Proficiency The Spanish Teacher Academy Waitlist
Growing With Proficiency TPT Store
Join my Free FB Community: Growing With CI
Connect with me in IG: Claudia @IG
