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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
Episode 164: Are We Listening? Rethinking Accents, Comprehensibility, and Communication in Our Classrooms and Communities
Are errors or strong accents really blocking communication—or is it about how we listen? 🎧
In this episode, I share why comments about my accent made me reflect on how we approach communication in our classrooms and in our teacher communities. Together, we’ll explore:
- Why the hidden goal of “sounding native” can get in the way of real communication.
- What research says about listening, comprehensibility, and sympathetic listeners.
- How we can become better listeners by valuing diverse voices and stopping the cycle of criticism.
Because communication is a two-way street—and our job as educators is to help students (and ourselves) walk it with confidence.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Dr. Vijay Ramjattan – on antiracism and the reminder that listening is not neutral.
- ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines – defining accuracy as the use of linguistic features to convey meaning.
- Dr. Diane Neubauer & Dr. Reed Riggs – conversations reminding us that most communication is listening and reading, not speaking.
More resources:
- Join the waitlist for Growing With Proficiency: The Spanish Teacher Academy → growingwithproficiency.com/academy
- Follow me on Instagram @claudiamelliott
- ​​📑 Discover culturally rich, month-specific resources for Spanish classes in myTPT Store: Growing With Proficiency.
