Pat’s Polemics

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)