By Beniko Mason

In 1999, Contee Seely and Blaine Ray published a commentary on Jeff McQuillan and L...

By Beniko Mason

The Student Who Taught Me a Lesson

One of my students, Mr. Tanaka, was a middle-ag...

By Beniko Mason

Because we want to help students enjoy language acquisition, we often consider brin...

By Beniko Mason

About 20 years ago, I began recording Story-Listening sessions so that students who...

By Beniko Mason

One concern I often hear from teachers is:

“I would like to use more acquisition-b...

By Beniko Mason

What is Story-Listening?

Story-Listening (SL) is an approach to language acquisiti...

By Beniko Mason

Story-Listening, Speaking, Output, and Acquisition

Recently, a teacher asked me an...

By Beniko Mason

When I reported the vocabulary acquisition rates (remembering rates) of college stu...

By Beniko Mason

The assumption is natural: students are reading and acquiring language. Adding outp...

By Beniko Mason

One of the most common questions I receive from teachers is about grading. They u...

By Beniko Mason

After a story, many teachers want to know if students understood it correctly. You ...

By Beniko Mason

I began a reading program at Shitennoji University Junior College in 1985. Miyako w...

By Beniko Mason

Everyone assumes that immersion works. Go live in the target country. Take ESL clas...

By Beniko Mason

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"From Pun to Plot: Remembering and Forgetting in Story-Listen...

I Was Wrong About Mr. Tanaka

By Beniko Mason
A reflection on trusting input

Mr. Tanaka was a man in...

Today, many teachers talk about “comprehensible input.” They have read Stephen Krashen’s work and un...

How Vocabulary Really Grows
By Beniko Mason

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“Is This Conscious Learning or Acquisit...

How Story-Listening Clarifies the Input Hypothesis

By Beniko Mason

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"Beyond Linear...

Introduction

Teachers often ask: Isn’t reading a picture book aloud just as good as drawing while t...

Introduction

For decades, educators have debated the most effective way to teach English as a forei...