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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
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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

Unions

  06/15/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

The following post to a listserv speaks to the whole issue of why have any sort of professional organization. Here ’tis: I never thought I’d (Continue Reading)

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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

My Eternal Gripe

  06/01/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Over and over again, good-hearted people join the bandwagon of grammar mavens. Grammar maven is a term coined by William Safire as ’language maven’, as (Continue Reading)

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Virginia Tech

  04/21/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

On one of the foreign language teacher listservs the incident at Virginia Tech was discussed in a few posts. One in particular was poignant: a (Continue Reading)

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key clubs

  03/04/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Whenever teachers get to talking about the good old days, I get a sneaking suspicion that either they are not old enough to remember those (Continue Reading)

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Response to mw

  01/07/2007       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

M.W. posted the following to a listserv: *Pat, I teach Spanish. *I want the grammar for communication. *I also would like to know how much (Continue Reading)

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Reaction to Bill VanPatten thread 2

  12/31/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

I finally read all 200 posts on the thread started by the SLA (Second Language Acquistion) researcher and author, Bill VanPatten (bvp). He asked fl (Continue Reading)

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The Power of Language

  12/21/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Just think: George Bush 43 will probably become our most quoted president.

Uncategorized

An addendum to the Who/Whom thread on flteach

  12/10/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

here’s a couple of things to munch on if you believe the teaching of SE to students is simply a matter of setting out and (Continue Reading)

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Bibliography on the Doctrine of Correctness

  12/05/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

The original work, as far as I know, on this topic is great for nostalgia buffs wanting a return to the fifies: Robert A. Hall, (Continue Reading)

grammar & language change

Bibliography on History of English

  12/05/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

A general treatment of English, incl its history, is the ubiquitous David >Crystal’s The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. > >An easy read but (Continue Reading)

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Jean Aitchison’s quote

  12/02/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

The Grammar Mavens (Steven Pinker’s term) cite rules of English only to denigrate those who “break” them. The rules they refer to are not the (Continue Reading)

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ACTFL conference 2006 Nashville

  11/26/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

This year at ACTFL did more to rally my spirits this last year of my tenure as a foreign language teacher than any except my (Continue Reading)

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Laying the groundwork for learning

  11/11/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

As I was sorting my picture files out in the garage and thinking about how students will talk and write about the pictures after we (Continue Reading)

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Me and the African Diaspora

  11/04/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

My wife and I bought a pig-in-a-poke, tickets to a performance at ASU, but it had to do with the influence of African dance on (Continue Reading)

African Diaspora

Good program showing how to argue

  10/30/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

While I cannot recommend it for everyone, those who want to follow intelligent arguments could do worse than to listen to npr’s Intelligence Squared on (Continue Reading)

Basics

An effective and long-lasting terror network

  10/30/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

At long last I have found a reference to the terror network I think of when our fearless leader talks about terrorists and religious extremists. (Continue Reading)

Politics

The sad decline of grammar :-) OR The Mo the Merrier

  10/29/2006       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Recently on one of the language Lists a discussion brewed up over the use of “less? in places where the grammar mavens insist on “fewer’. (Continue Reading)

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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
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