Supercharge Communication Skills

It’s the start of a brand new school year! I want to fire you up for the task ahead with one of the most wonderful recordings that I know of, Andrew Pudewa’s “Nurturing Competent Communicators.” As Andrew comments, “If you were to walk up to me on the street with a baby in your arms, and say, ‘Mr. Pudewa, I heard that you know something about helping people become good writers and speakers of the English language, and I would like this baby to be a good writer and speaker twenty years from now. What should I do?’, this is the talk you would get.”

The job of an English teacher or a homeschool parent is, as Andrew argues, “to get reliably correct, sophisticated English into students’ brains.” Since one cannot get something out of a brain that isn’t already there, somehow language must be implanted if students are to write and speak well. In “Nurturing Competent Communicators,” Andrew discusses two very simple and yet effective means for accomplishing this challenge: reading aloud and memorization.

Although these life-changing tools are available to everyone, they are mostly overlooked. Why is this? The fact is that reading aloud is dropped by many parents as soon as their children can read. Memorization fell out of fashion thanks to the influence of John Dewey, who believed it stifled creativity and perhaps even caused harm. Yet both the listening to and the memorization of correct and complex language, in the form of high quality books and poems, plant sophisticated language in the brain, which later blossoms into writing and speaking ability.

Andrew Pudewa’s engaging presentation of these truths will inspire you to start an enjoyable language journey with your own kids! This lecture is free and you can even download it to your device if you want to save it for future use.

Here is the link to the recording: Nurturing Competent Communicators [Andrew Pudewa] | Institute for Excellence in Writing (iew.com)

If you do not have an IEW account already, you will need to create one. Then add the audio download to your cart, and follow the prompts to “purchase” it…it’s free so it won’t cost you anything.

Next, go to “Your Account” at the top of the page, then click on “Files” tab. You should see it listed there.

FYI: I bought 5 recordings recently and they did not appear in my “Files” tab. I had to live chat IEW and told them the files weren’t showing up and they had to fix it. Some kind of glitch on the website, I guess, but I have bought many of the recordings and that was the only time I have ever had a problem with them.

Please contact me through my Contact tab if you need help or have questions.