Pat’s Polemics

I’ve discussed this on the list before and Susie Gross has written on her use of this term of art. My own understanding came, I (Continue Reading)

My first thought was Helena Curtain. I couldn’t find anything in her book Languages and Children, but I have a manual she provided us in (Continue Reading)

I recall those days very well. I even got e-mails from members of that listserv to me personally full of vitriol toward Terry. I am (Continue Reading)

A person asked on flteach about TPR. She got a number of really good responses, some from moretprs members and some from names I do (Continue Reading)

From a NYT book review of The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk, printed March 21, 2010: “Whatever you wish to do well, (Continue Reading)

From David Lightfoot, The Development of Language, p. 76, note: “Learning” is a slippery term. Languages are learned in the sense that children derive information (Continue Reading)

Somehow I’ve misplaced the posts that discussed the possibility of not using “hay” in Spanish, i.e. “there is”. Maybe it was on another listserv; I (Continue Reading)

No, we don’t want to discourage people. The question I have to Robyn and Carrie and others is this: is it a matter of content (Continue Reading)

A problem I have interpreting the posts Lance refers to is that often teachers write as if that is what they want to do rather (Continue Reading)

A thread on good ol’ flteach asks how to get students to stop patterning the TL on English, e.g. sticking “do” in to make a (Continue Reading)

This exchange between Lance and Marji instantiates the whole point of putting up on a monthly basis a bullet pointed list of what tprs is (Continue Reading)

Tonight I was talking with someone who was holding his own quite well in a lively conversation with 3 Mexicans who do not speak English. (Continue Reading)

Reading over this post from Chris Stolz, I am swept up into a higher plane of discussion of fl teaching. I amuse myself by imagining (Continue Reading)

I know I’ve described this book before, somewhere. It was published in 1892, fourth edition, and is titled The Living Method How To Think In (Continue Reading)

When my friend, Brian and I talk about writing a textbook, we say we will put one word per page in very large type, so: (Continue Reading)

Before I forget, I want to mention a book I don’t own; it’s called Focus on Form by Dougherty and Williams. It might drive tprs (Continue Reading)

Chris has mentioned this more than once and it is something about fl teachers generally that bothers me a lot. Most seem to think that (Continue Reading)

Liddia’s question is just the sort of thing a list of CI principles could answer. I know Brian Barabe is working on one. Bob Patrick (Continue Reading)

Below I’ve reprinted two posts of Terry Waltz’ without her permission, but I’ve asked in the past and she’s always consented to me posting (to (Continue Reading)

Piggy-backing on what Charlotte said, both Brian and I used to take our classes on campus tours; it’s amazing how much you can talk about, (Continue Reading)

I have a monster picture collection, what Terrell called picture files, thousands of them sorted and classified. I found those worked better than stilted pictures, (Continue Reading)

I think I discussed this earlier. I taught Russian for 20 years and found myself not teaching the alphabet, which is different from the Latin (Continue Reading)

From a blog The Backseat Linguist Et tu, Wimpy Kid? What Teachers Get About Language Teaching that College Professors Don’t Posted: 12 Aug 2015 02:43 (Continue Reading)