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Why stories are good for us

  10/03/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Frank Smith wrote the following: “Stories are our way of making sense of the world. If we can’t make up a story about something we (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes
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Subjunctive

  09/25/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

A post on a language teacher Listserv referred us to a site dealing with Spanish grammar. There the subjunctive is treated. I got frustrated reading (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Memorization

  09/24/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Here’s a post on language learning that reflects the common belief that we learn our native language the same way we learn algebra. “It’s not (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Anytown

  09/13/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Back in 77 or so, I volunteered as an advisor to a human relations youth camp. The kids were all 16, about 120 of them, (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes, Culture

Two Days in Middle School

  08/31/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

I had to throw over my job teaching Sp at a charter school so I’m subbing now, 2 days at a Middle School, and how (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

similarities between teaching and psychotherapy

  08/20/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

True confession time: I’m a bit of a mystic. Not in the sense that I believe in things unseen but in the sense that I (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Proficiency and Mastery

  07/27/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

My own take on them is that proficiency is a term from SLA (second language acquisition) and refers to what a student can do with (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

How Much To Practice – a post

  07/26/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Here are some examples to add to my response to Amy Pento’s response to Mary Young re: practice. Go to the flteach list and read (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Warm Fuzzies

  07/21/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Kristy Placido put a message out on moretprs thanking everyone and acknowledging the honor of receiving an award at NTPRS. She made it very clear (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Response to What’s Interesting About Grammar

  07/02/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

After the initial responses on this thread, I stopped responding to individual posts and printed out all the subsequent posts up to the point where (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Teachers should tremble…..

  06/27/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Why should teachers tremble? Listen to several things my 5 year old granddaughter has said recently. She starts kindergarten July 23. When I asked her (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Old Ship of Zion

  06/26/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

No, I haven’t turned religious; it’s just the title of a great book I just finished. It’s by William F. Pitts, deceased, who did field (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Extrapolating from rules… does it work?

  06/26/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

This to me is at the heart of the controversies in foreign language teaching. Teachers believe that teaching the intricate grammatical, phonological and syntactic rules (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

The relation between writing and language

  06/19/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Recently in a post on a listserv a member showed a great deal of concern about a statement that an American had gone to France, (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Teaching Spanish-Speaking Children in the 50s

  06/14/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

As I was reconfiguring my library I came across a book titled Teaching Spanish-Speaking Children by L.S. Tireman, published in 1951. I was 10 and (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

certification, reasons for

  06/09/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

In response to a job-seeker highly qualified to teach Chinese EXCEPT for not having a h.s. certificate, I responded on a List thus: Having seen (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Self-censorship

  09/25/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Recently I posted to the blog some comments about what goes on in my school. I thought it was balanced, but someone kindly pointed out (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Fun & Games

  09/24/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Catalogues for language teachers usually have a section on games, quite a bit smaller than the section on how to teach the….. IO pronouns, subjunctive, (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

“skills”

  09/24/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

The term “skill” is so often used in language learning we don’t seem to question it. But one person, I know for sure, did: Frank (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

Research in the Classroom

  09/10/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

From time to time, I read posts where the writer/teacher assures me that he has observed certain phenomena and no amount of SLA research will (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

School marms

  09/10/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

A recent post from a native speaker of Spanish appeared on one of the Lists. In it, she declared that the “v? and “b? of (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes

What I do in the classroom – concrete examples

  09/06/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

I’ve been asked to provide concrete examples of what I do in the classroom that has students using verbs in various persons and tenses (even (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes, Foreign language teaching & learning

Brain Research

  08/08/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Interesting in-service today on brain research. Not that we all hadn’t heard most of it before. But it was well presented. I’ve just always been (Continue Reading)

Anecdotes
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