Mina P. Shaughnessy, New York: Oxford University Press (1977) “… [T]he young men and women who were to be known as open admissions students fell into one of three groups: (1) those who met the traditional requirements for college work, who appeared from their tests and their school performance to be competent readers and writers…
“Hvileløs is a Norwegian word for restless. But restless doesn’t come within a mile of being as restless as hvileløs, which evokes someone who is fitty restless — as restless as a bewildered bedbug. Norwegians have a word for that, too: forvirre veggelus. Which, again, is ten times as bewildered as your average American bewildered…
Txtng: The gr8 db8. David Crystal. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2008. p 52 Texting is typically between people who know each other well. Language “intimate and local,” and make[s] assumptions about prior knowledge.” “It is a basic principle of discourse analysis that the meaning of words cannot be grasped in isolation, but must take into…
Outliers: The Story of Success. Malcolm Gladwell. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008. Chapter Seven, The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes pp 177–223. He analyzes an account of a 1997 plane crash of Korean Air, one of several by that airline, to show how it was caused by cultural misunderstanding. One factor was mitigated…
The Brain That Changes Itself. Norman Doidge, MD. New York, Penguin Books: 2007. Use for GATESOL Presentation p 308: “Listening to an audio book leaves a different set of memories than reading does. A newscast heard on the radio is processed differently from the same words read in a newspaper.” 298: He writes of “the…
Ur, Penny. “Grammar Practice Activities: A Practical Guide for Teachers.” Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. What kind of text is it? Modular units and activities organized by grammar category. Part of a series of activity- and theme-based handbooks for language teachers. CD with PDFs of exercise handouts. Exercises for elementary to advanced students, children…
I’m glad to see a textbook author with a great sense of subtle humor. Yet I still can’t make myself study. Dorothy Devney Richmond, writing in the Practice Makes Perfect series, is quite entertaining. In Spanish Verb Tenses (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1996) she has lots of fun hiding “Easter eggs” in the practice exercises. On…
Book given me by Molly… Ogulnick, Karen (Ed.), 2000. Language Crossings: Negotiating the Self in a Multicultural World. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University. No Language To Die In by Greta Hofmann Nemiroff p 15: On being first a speaker of German, then English, then French on Quebec: “I have spoken English almost as…
Here’s a good book that Genevieve told me about, when I told her I was reading Vanishing Voices. It’s a little more accessible than that: a journey through areas and peoples who are losing their languages. He begins in Aboriginal Australia, explores Manx and Yiddish, and then on to Welsh, that “should” be dead but…
Lonergan, Jack (1992). Video in Language Teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press. p 4: “The outstanding feature of video films is their ability to present complete communicative situations.” I note this because I’m interested in the idea of using audio instead of video. And while audio doesn’t present the physical visuals of a live or…
Vella, Jane (1994). Learning To Listen, Learning to Teach: The Power of Dialog in Educating Adults. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers. 3–4: “A principle, the philosopher tells us, is the beginning of an action.” Her twelve principles of teaching adults across culture [all this is a direct quote]: Needs assessment: participation of the learners in…
David Sedaris has written a lot of funny stuff about second-language-learning. Here’s this about avoidance: Living in France, he avoids natives whenever he can, since his linguistic inadequacies come into full bloom during live conversation. But if he were in prison, he postulates, then he’d have nowhere to hide. He imagines asking a fellow prisoner…
Derewianka, Beverly. Exploring How Texts Work. Victoria, Australia: Primary English Teaching Association, 2004. I borrowed Beverly’s copy. Here are notes I took, beginning with their page numbers. 3: “A functional approach looks at how language enables us to do things — to share information, to enquire, to express attitudes, to entertain, to argue, to get…
Snow, Marguerite Ann and Brinton, Donna M. (1997). Content-Based Classroom: Perspectives on Integrating Language and Content. White Plains, NY: Longman. Chapter 4: Moving from Comprehensible Input to “Learning to Learn” by Kate Kinsella. p 52-53: “A Rationale for Strategy Instruction” She talks about how some students get good at taking tests without comprehending. Some teachers…
Sarah lent me this book by LouAnn Johnson (Jossey-Bass, 2005). It’s about the teacher-woman on whom the movie Dangerous Minds is based. There are some useful teaching tips in it, some of which I’ll list here for reference: Consider what quality of teacher you’d like to be: super, excellent or good. Super means you dedicate…
I was just browsing YouTube looking for “linguistics humor” and found an amusing little skit by Fry and Laurie, and then this book trailer that I enjoyed. I’ll have to check out the book.
I don’t know if this belongs on my wormlips blog or here, so I’ll try this for now since it has application to my possible experience at SIT, from whom I still haven’t heard about my application status. It feels weird — dishonest, even — to be writing here when I have no idea if…
I was hoping I might hear from admissions yesterday, but no word. Because of the short time between now and the start of school and the massive amount of things I’d have to do first, I am particularly anxious about hearing the verdict. And what would I do if they said no? I won’t think…
This is one from the SIT recommended reading list. Published in 1963 by a white teacher in New Zealand, it describes her lifelong work in the classroom with Maori children and those of British descent. Most inspiring to me are her passion for teaching and her ability to accept cultural differences without judgment. That is,…
