Random Quote
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
---- Malcom Forbes
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
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
---- Sheik Abd-al-Kadir
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
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
---- Thomas A. Edison
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
---- J. Robert Oppenheimer
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
Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
---- Edward R. Murrow
Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.”
---- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 -1832)
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
---- Abigail Adams (1744 - 1818)
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
---- Terry Pratchett
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
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
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
---- Gail Godwin
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
---- Fred Allen
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
---- Thomas A. Edison
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
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.
---- Robert Copeland
As soon as I buy the moose head, I have to go pick up some KY jelly.
---- Mary Roninette Kowal
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
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
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
I love Grammar Translation
I’ve recently had an epiphany. I’m going back to the root of language teaching. The traditional method of grammar translation is the best way to teach English. Clearly if students cannot use grammar correctly they will never be able to use the language.
Over the last 15 years it has truly become apparent that Communicative Language Teaching is just another fad that is quickly fading away just like The Silent Way and TPR. The only truly effective way to learn a language is to translate word for word classical works of prose.
I know this is true because over the last 6 months I’ve been doing this for my Korean study and now I am fluent in Korean with native like command of the language. I’m considering taking on part time work teaching other foreigners Korean since Korean language teaching has also been suckered into the belief that CLT is the way. Practitioners of CLT should be burned at the stake like the witches of the 17th century.
Come join me in returning to the roots of language teaching by focusing on grammar translation.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Tuesday Apr 1, 2008 at 06:02 PM
Public_Service_Announcement | Teaching |
Mr D wrote 46 words on Tuesday Apr 1, 2008 at 06:42 PM
Indeed, I think I’ll join you. Language is clearly a product that needs to be placed into learners’ heads. By their teacher. And only in the classroom. They all learn the same things at the same time, so that’s the only way. Grammar-translation here I come!
Sean. wrote 15 words on Tuesday Apr 1, 2008 at 06:46 PM
Yes! my first convert! - you and I shall rule the English language teaching world!
Nathan Hall wrote 17 words on Tuesday Apr 1, 2008 at 07:31 PM
And Stephen Krashen is a heretic and needs to be burned at the stake!
Long live Esperanto!
JMac wrote 17 words on Tuesday Apr 1, 2008 at 10:18 PM
Happy 4.01. Need more days like this!! What’s the name of the best book for studying again?!?
Sean. wrote 34 words on Tuesday Apr 1, 2008 at 10:35 PM
The name of the book is English in 12 weeks - an Charlie Brown Approach to Language Acquisition Essentially you stick the book under your pillow while you sleep and learn English through osmosis.
Jess McCulloch wrote 66 words on Thursday Apr 3, 2008 at 09:06 AM
I’ve just last night been thinking about using more grammar translation in my senior Chinese classes. Like most language teaching methods, it sure has it’s place, but on it’s own might not be enough. Language teaching and students is so variable and there are so many avenues to explore and ways to explore them that we need to try lots of different ways of getting there.
GK wrote 89 words on Thursday Apr 3, 2008 at 07:43 PM
I’m not really sure if you’re joking or not - I’ll assume not…
Look around at the ‘other’ people that have learned this way and think about how long it takes them to learn and what is their understanding of the nuance of language (pragmatics - etc). You are coming form a very different place - having the benefit of critical analysis etc. as skills you have already developed through your primary learning system. There is a WHOLE lot one needs to take into consideration before promoting this idea.
Sean. wrote 42 words on Thursday Apr 3, 2008 at 07:59 PM
GK,
Korean students are perfectly capable of critical thinking - I know as I’ve seen it in action. In any case look at the date of this post - April 1st - this post was written with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
GK wrote 33 words on Thursday Apr 3, 2008 at 10:08 PM
Of course - April 1st….I tend to forget.
Korean students and critical thinking…seriously - I think not (on the whole).
But that is just 17 years experience - so I could be wrong.
Sean. wrote 20 words on Thursday Apr 3, 2008 at 10:18 PM
My 11 years of experience beg to differ. We both have extensive experience in Korea, but clearly very different experiences.
GK wrote 32 words on Thursday Apr 3, 2008 at 10:41 PM
Well - also experience at university not in Korea - and I think that is the real test….but to each his own. I guess it is the way you look at it.
Mr D wrote 53 words on Tuesday Apr 8, 2008 at 07:53 PM
I’ve been teaching EFL since ‘93, now in ten countries. I only spent two months teaching at a university in Seoul. I found the students perfectly capable of critical thinking, and completely willing to use their ability. The only thing holding them back was the prejudice and dreadful methodology of their (western) teachers.