Random Quote
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
Drink coffee! Do stupid things faster!
---- unknown
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
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.
---- Edward Abbey
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
---- Robert Frost
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
---- H. G. Wells
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
---- J. Robert Oppenheimer
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
---- Albert Einstein
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
---- Isaac Newton
A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats.
---- anonymous
To have another language is to possess a second soul.
---- Charlemagne
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
---- George Orwell
Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
---- Terry Pratchett
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
---- Thomas A. Edison
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
---- Fred Allen
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
---- Evan Esar
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
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
---- Pablo Picasso
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
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
---- Abigail Adams (1744 - 1818)
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
---- Doug Larson
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
As soon as I buy the moose head, I have to go pick up some KY jelly.
---- Mary Roninette Kowal
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
---- Gail Godwin
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
Learners Errors
I’ve just read The Significance of Learners’ Errors by S.P. Corder (1967) as one of the articles required for my SLA class. I found this article particularly interesting as the issues it raises, almost 40 years ago, are still highly relevant today. It is quite clear that this article is heavily influenced by Chomsky, not just because it mentions chomsky but also that it was written in the period when Universal Grammar was the pre-eminent explanation of language acquisition. While UG is not exactly the most applicable theory to the classroom this article delves into other areas of interest to the classroom teacher.
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WYSIWYG
I have 3 word a day’s running on my other web site, but Merriam-Webster only runs an email subscription service, so I rarely see their word a day. Anyhow over at Semantic Compositions there is a post about WYSIWYG from Merriam Webster.
SC says that he doesn’t really feel that it is a word worthy of the dictionary, but I feel that while it is awkward it certainly is utilitarian enough as well as very common amongst those who are involved in any sort of web design.
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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Feb 21, 2004 at 11:30 AM
About_Language | Vocabulary |
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Teach English, Study Korean
Korea Herald - Readers opinion by Timothy Chambers
But is learning Korean “worthwhile”? One teacher I met was doubtful. “Look,” she said, “I’m only going to be in Korea for a year. So why should I torture myself learning a language I’ll never use again?”
The rhetorical question deserves an answer, which is: If you want to teach English in Korea, then study Korean because it will make you a better teacher while you’re here and a better person after you’ve left.
This is so true. Being a language teacher it is very useful to take up language study regularly as it reminds one of what it feels like to be on the other side of the desk.
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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday Feb 20, 2004 at 09:05 PM
Teaching | teaching_application |
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Avatar
Noun
- The incarnation of a Hindu deity, especially Vishnu, in human or animal form.
- An embodiment, as of a quality or concept; an archetype: the very avatar of cunning.
- A temporary manifestation or aspect of a continuing entity: occultism in its present avatar.
Todays word of the day.
It’s interesting to note that this definition does not really cover avatars in the internet sense of the word. By that I mean message boards and messenging services where next to the authors post is usually an image of some sort. I suppose that #3 comes closest in meaning to this.
Using Weblogs in Education
I read a post at Teachnology about another post at Edublog regarding teaching about or with weblogs and potential resistance by other educators. Some of the more obtuse comments the author reporst hearing include:
I’ve seen many educators who just can’t see possibilities with it. It is a little disconcerting at first. It is not a way that educators traditionally teach or communicate. Their immediate reaction seems to be one of trying to make it fit into something they already know. They want to convert it to a “regular” web page and don’t see how. Then they view it through one lens like a list of links, assignments, or random thoughts and they immediately toss it out as being of no value to what they do or want to do. Some equate it with teenage diaries and can’t get past that. Then some complain about the writing that their students do on the posts or comments.
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