I provided post-its with names of places on the map of the forest and she places them on the spot, e.g. la riviere goes on (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
My new Web site
Nyah’s lesson # March 19, 2019
03/22/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentWent over verb charts. When I pointed to the alternation between acute and grave accents in the conjugations, she asked what the difference was, showing (Continue Reading)
Nyah’s lesson # March 20
03/22/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentShe always reminds me to write the English for the French. Comment s’appelle la femme du president? Thinking I meant Trump, she couldn’t remember. I (Continue Reading)
Nyah’s March 21 tprs lesson #
03/22/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentLa porte du garage ne se leve pas, I said as an opener, se lever being a word we only used once some time ago (Continue Reading)
Pushing on
03/21/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentRecently I’ve began a routine of one night yoga, next night body pump, skip a day, then w/o with weights. This week I did a (Continue Reading)
Further notes on how words’ meanings affect thinking
03/20/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentA while back I wrote: “Again I heard a speaker use the term “urban” as a synonym for Black in the ethnic sense. Earlier, the (Continue Reading)
Why do FL teachers focus so much on form?s
03/17/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentThere are two reasons, IMO: tradition and ease of assignment of material. Tradition needs little explanation as the history of the connection between learning psychology (Continue Reading)
draft of initial post to listsservs flteach first
03/13/2019 Pat Barrett 1 CommentDue to various exigencies I got off the listservs flteach, moretprs and latinbestpractices over a year ago. In that time, my granddaughter wanted me to (Continue Reading)
The shrinking society
03/13/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentReturning to my listservs I left over a year ago, I found the number of posts to be drastically reduced; on one list only one (Continue Reading)
The Young Turkettes
03/12/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentCondemned out of the gate. Using a feminine suffix like -ette or -ess dooms me to the nether world of old White guys, which I (Continue Reading)
This encapsulated it all for me
03/11/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhen Sarah Palin said Barack Obama “was a community organizer, whatever that is” to laughter, it encapsulated for me all the contempt for the poor, (Continue Reading)
Thanks to my visitors
03/10/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentI seldom look at my stats and when I do, I am amazed. Who reads my stuff and why don’t they comment? Just today I (Continue Reading)
Yoga and Body Pump
03/10/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentA few weeks ago I took the plunge and started yoga. Fortunately I seem to have found an excellent instructor. One lady said she has (Continue Reading)
Nyah’s March 6 tprs lesson #
03/09/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentLooking at my map of the forest Little Red Riding Hood walks through, Nyah saw a fish in the lake and said “poisson”, the first (Continue Reading)
To go slow or slowly into the night, doing good or well?
03/05/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentPeople of an authoritarian mindset require rigid rules to follow and to enforce. Others believe that rules for language are written on golden tablets in (Continue Reading)
Untangle this
03/05/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentIt was Rachel Maddow, I believe, who said this last night (3/4/19): “He was being dangled a pardon.” The sense, of course, was that a (Continue Reading)
A look at one process or dynamic in cultural institutions
02/22/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentReligion is often depicted as “going to seed” so to speak by becoming rigid and doctrinaire, depending more on transmitted authority than independent, outside-the-box thinking (Continue Reading)
Awkward……….
02/17/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentAwkward is a Viking (Norse) word, so fitting for the barbarians on the Right side of the aisle. Here is a jab from the Right, (Continue Reading)
Living under terror
02/17/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentWe often hear of Americans fearing living under terrorism. Max Boot, in his Invisible Armies, says only two terrorist organizations in the history of the (Continue Reading)
Word of the day
02/16/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe word is “raise” used intransitively. As I was fantasizing about having quad 60 machine guns mounted under the hood of my car to deploy (Continue Reading)
I want to join Elie Mystal’s church
02/16/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentAs pastor, Mystal would be great, calling out the zombies. Today, Feb. 16, 2019, he told us the Trump supporters were zombies and we are (Continue Reading)
Looking for a certain kind of language book
02/15/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentI’ve tried contacting Ray Ortali, author of Entre Nous. He is 90, so he may not be interested in corresponding, but his book is so (Continue Reading)
town and gown
02/10/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentFor some reason I wanted to know in French the expression “town and gown,” maybe because I’m reading a book in French discussing the university (Continue Reading)