One often hears comments like this: I took four years of French and made good grades but when I got to France I couldn’t understand (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
My new Web site
Great idea of mine…. but is it tprs?
12/12/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentToday I texted Nyah about when we were going to meet. She answered with ‘oui’. So I texted back Ah! Vous parlez francais and she (Continue Reading)
The centrality of music to the Black religious experience
12/10/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentI’m sure I’ve written up this incident here before but cannot find it. It points to the centrality of music and esp of rhythmic music (Continue Reading)
tprs stories as a Rorschach test
12/10/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentAs our students create their stories in the story-asking feature of tprs, we might see their productions as a kind of Rorschach test. What do (Continue Reading)
Hernia
12/06/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentA pause in my exercise program. I got a diagnosis yesterday of hernia and I’ll be called today to schedule surgery. I have no idea (Continue Reading)
A bit more reflection on tprs
12/04/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentToday I tried to survey blogs on tprs again. One in particular I wanted to join in on and it is via Word Press, the (Continue Reading)
Family only words
12/03/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn my family as a kid we used the word breakfast food for cereal even when we ate it at night before bed (a custom (Continue Reading)
Nyah’s lesson #55 Dec. 3, 2018
12/03/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentWe continued today with the mermaids or sirens who can transform themselves and eat men. (???) I will continue with this post, transcribing parts of (Continue Reading)
My psoas
12/03/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentSay what? Well, it’s a bit like a sore ass as pronounced down south but it is a core muscle I did not know about (Continue Reading)
My Urdu lesson on the election
12/02/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy friend has been gone for over a month now; he’s in India. I hope he’s back. We meet Tuesdays and today is Sunday so (Continue Reading)
a path from learning to acquisition?
12/02/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentUsually it is best to put these tidbits into a larger piece but I wanted to get this onto the blog before I forgot it. (Continue Reading)
Further evidence of Trump’s mob connections
11/30/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentNot hard evidence but inferences from behavior. Notice how in his 90 minute press conference after the elections he chastised and mocked Republicans who had (Continue Reading)
more grammar baloney
11/28/2018 Pat Barrett 1 CommentThis site, Stack Exchange: English Language & Usage, gripes me no end. You have to have a ‘reputation’ on the site to post anything and (Continue Reading)
Nyah Lesson #53 Breakthrough
11/26/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy problem has been in asking the story, getting her to come up with “cute answers.” Today finally she did. I structured the story as (Continue Reading)
Run for the border
11/26/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentTrump has created another crisis that he is milking to gin up his base. By sending troops to the border in violation of the Constitution (Continue Reading)
cc and stenopad
11/24/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn our own time we see the way words or parts of words (and in this one case an abbreviation) survive when the original meaning (Continue Reading)
Battling the Right on its Home Turf
11/17/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentOur grandson attends high school in an extremely Red part of the U.S., the East Valley of Maricopa County, AZ. I would imagine Fox News (Continue Reading)
Skitter
11/14/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentDefine skitter without demonstrating it, i.e. using just words. Great word, chiseling precisely a type of movement. Think of a spider skittering across the floor. (Continue Reading)
A sop to tradition
11/14/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn the good old days, scholars mastered several languages in order to work in them. Most scholars in English-speaking countries learned German and French in (Continue Reading)
What a difference an education makes
11/11/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentYears ago, I think I was still in undergrad school, I began to notice and talk about a distinct difference I pick up between people (Continue Reading)
Nyah’s lesson 68, Nov. 9 VR #49
11/10/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentInteresting how it hit her that the ‘a’ and ‘avait’ of ‘il y a’ and ‘il y avait’ is not ‘is’ and ‘was’, like in (Continue Reading)
Quotes from Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind
11/09/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentI just finished Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind. He says all conservatives are reactionaries b/c they don’t arise until something changes. People who just live (Continue Reading)
What Conservatives Think
11/09/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentHere’s how conservatives see the country. Minorities of color vote for Democrats b/c they give them free stuff – that’s the conservatives’ term for it: (Continue Reading)