round robin with the intermediates

Good job by the intermediates, today, with their first round-robin lesson. They all talked in English for a solid hour, which was music to my ears. As was true last semester, the method works beautifully at this proficiency level, so I see no reason to stop using it. I didn't tolerate the tiny, furtive bursts of Korean that I heard today; luckily, there weren't many such incidents. Overall, I'd say the class spoke English well over 90% of the time, which is the sort of goal you'd expect to meet using something like the Direct Method or the Natural Approach. So to compensate for some of the method's flaws, pointed out during last semester's presentation, I incorporated some review exercises at the end of class to check students' comprehension. The kids know that this will be the format from now on: they'll be teaching each other for the rest of the semester, like grad students. I'm glad they're such good sports.


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