Random Quote
Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.
---- Jack Lynch
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
To have another language is to possess a second soul.
---- Charlemagne
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
---- H. G. Wells
"It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.'"
---- Sam Levenson
I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.
---- Albert Einstein
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
---- Mitch Hedberg
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
---- Arnold Lobel
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
---- Sheik Abd-al-Kadir
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
---- Arnold Toynbee
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
---- J. Robert Oppenheimer
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
---- M. Cartmill
The voodoo priest and all his powders were as nothing compared to espresso, cappuccino, and mocha, which are stronger than all the religions of the world combined, and perhaps stronger than the human soul itself.
---- Mark Helprin, Memoir from Antproof Case, 1995
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
---- John Ciardi
it's probably not a good idea to underestimate my ability to make an ass out of myself—just when I seem to have it under control, I'll turn around and surprise you.
---- Tenser said the Tensor
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
---- Doug Larson
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
---- Franklin D. Roosevelt
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
---- Isaac Asimov
Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.”
---- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 -1832)
Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation.
---- Kin Hubbard
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
---- Evan Esar
Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation.
---- Author Unknown
This may be the most interesting blog theme I've ever seen. http://eflgeek.com/index.php Definitely in my top 5 at least.
---- Steve Dembo
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
---- Malcom Forbes
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
---- Fred Allen
Second Language Acquisition
A new category all about second language research as I take this unit. I receieved my books for this course yesterday, but not my other class on managing second language programs… Hmm.. will they arrive late - who knows.
While reading the introduction to the Text The Study of Second Language Acquisition by Rod Ellis I read one particularly striking passage:
...unless we know for certain that the teacher’s scheme of things really does match the learner’s way of going about things, we cannot be sure that the teaching content will contribute directly to language learning
pg 4
the reason I found this passage striking is that one of my colleagues at my past job is probably the best natural teacher I know, but he doesn’t really see a need or use for theory.
Both myself and another friend have talked to him about this but he continues to deny the applicability of theory. He sees it as dry ivory tower type writings. Ellis further goes on to state a fact which I have believed for a long time:
Every time teachers make a pedagogic decision about content or methodolgoy, they are, in fact, making assumptions aobut how learners learn. The study of SLA may help teachers in two ways. Frist, it will enable them to make their assumptions about learning explicit, so that thye can examine them critically. In this way, it will help them to develop their own explicit ideas of how the kind of learns they are teaching acquire an L2. Second it will provide them information that they can use when they make future pedagogic decisions.
pg 4
I have always said that having background knowledge allows the teacher to make more principled decisions about what they teach and to reflect on what works or does not work.
For example, In November of last year I was looking for work. I had to do a teaching demonstration at the university, so I prepared a lesson that has worked for me numerous times. However in this case it failed. At the end of the lesson, thinking on my feet, I explained why the lesson usually works and why I felt that it had failed in this particular instance. I ended up getting a job offer, but due to extenuating circumstances am now starting a position elsewhere. What I mean to demonstrate by this anecdote is that knowledge of theory clearly enabled me to outperform other applicants despite conducting a demonstration lesson that failed.
I hope this course continues to be as interesting as the introduction.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday Feb 18, 2004 at 04:29 PM
SLA | teaching_application |
