Practical Proficiency Podcast · Devon Gunning | La Libre Language Learning

#38 - 3 Strategies to Make Grammar Your Friend, Not Your Boss - Proficiency-Based Grammar Instruction

·36 min·1 clip

Devin starts by thanking listeners and inviting them to send questions for future episodes. The show presents itself as support for teachers making the shift to proficiency-oriented instruction. From there, the focus turns to the familiar mess of grammar teaching. Devin names the problem clearly: students can get buried in flashcards and endless irregular forms if everything is taught at once. The episode pushes back on that instinct. Rather than trying to present every irregular preterite form in one pass, Devin recommends focusing first on the high-frequency ones. The language around that point is plain and practical, which fits the show’s style. The argument is that teachers do not need to teach every exception before students can talk about the past. They need the forms that matter most, in a sequence that learners can handle. Devin uses the idea of a smaller set like the sweet 16 or the super sevens to show that selection matters. The episode also brings in the verb *quedar* as a classroom example. That comparison helps show how a structure that differs from English can be taught through meaning and use instead of explanation alone. The contrast between *te queda* and *te quedan* is used to make the grammar feel usable, not decorative. Devin keeps coming back to the idea that teachers should not ask students to absorb more than they can process. The tone stays conversational and teacher-facing throughout. It is a short, direct case for teaching grammar with more restraint and more intention, with classroom examples doing the heavy lifting.

As heard by us

A practical reset for teaching past tense without overwhelming students with irregular forms.

This episode stays close to a real classroom problem: how to teach past tense forms without dumping every irregular form on students at once. It makes the case for narrowing the target, beginning with high-frequency forms and then building outward, with quedar used as a…

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Make grammar easier to teach without drowning students in every irregular form.

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