A poster posted: “I remember being taught, and therefore have always taught my students, that when you modify a body part, you need the definite (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
Connections between culture and language
10/07/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentI read the following post on a Latin list: “I tell my students, as some of you have heard me say, that language does not (Continue Reading)
Why stories are good for us
10/03/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentFrank 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)
“my” as possessive pronoun
10/02/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentA discussion on one of the listservs revolves around whether the neat categorization of ’my’ as a possessive adjective and ’mine’ as a possessive pronoun (Continue Reading)
Subjunctive
09/25/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentA 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)
Memorization
09/24/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentHere’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)
Hold it! Hold it! Hold it!
09/24/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentProtests. Warnings. Outrage. Denials. Empathy. Sympathy. More outrage. More protests. Jena, Louisiana? No, Columbia University. Guess who’s coming to speak? Good ol’ that guy whose (Continue Reading)
Spreading Democracy to Jena and…..?
09/22/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentI am a sixty-five year old African American woman and a retired school counselor. I am just appalled at what is going on around the (Continue Reading)
Anytown
09/13/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentBack 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)
Response to David’s post
09/08/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn a message dated 9/8/2007 8:26:57 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, pbarrett@COX.NET writes: David, the attack of 9/11 led to the attack on Afghanistan, not on (Continue Reading)
Response to Godfrey’s post re multiculturalism
09/08/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentHere is Godfrey’s post: So it seems you are saying that informing American students about other people and their cultures will not have a strong (Continue Reading)
Ebonics Redux
09/01/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentHere it is again. The Houston Police Department has put out an oh so clever “ghetto dictionary of Ebonics”. Just as we saw in 1994, (Continue Reading)
Two Days in Middle School
08/31/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentI 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)
Reply to Godfrey
08/25/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentI don’t have the room here to demonstrate how languages balance themselves when some form is “lost” i.e. becomes moribund and eventually dies out. I’m (Continue Reading)
Adding new words
08/25/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentTwo examples from my own speech of how words can be misinterpreted. About 45 years ago I made a friend (he’s still a very close (Continue Reading)
Reply to Alex’ post – what is communicative teaching?
08/23/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentTalk about Pandora’s box!! It’s like asking a politician what he’ll do for us. OK, communicative approach…. With a teaching certificate, you must have taken (Continue Reading)
similarities between teaching and psychotherapy
08/20/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentTrue 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)
To consider
08/19/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentJust off the top of my head, an example of folk etymology on my part. I thought “sleight of hand” was spelled “slight”. Altho both (Continue Reading)
How People Slide Around in Arguments
07/28/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn a recent long and heated exchange on a listserv I saw something over and over which seems to be inherent in human thought processes. (Continue Reading)
Proficiency and Mastery
07/27/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy 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)
How Much To Practice – a post
07/26/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentHere 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)
Now We Know What It’s Like….
07/23/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentJosh Rushing, reading from his book, Mission Al-Jazeera, tells of operating out of Washington, D.C. for the English-language service of Al-Jazeera, the Middle Eastern news (Continue Reading)
Good Old Timothy Mason
07/22/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentBack in the 90s, Timothy Mason was a frequent contributor to flteach. He has a series of responses to the battle between Krashen and Ron (Continue Reading)