Pat’s Polemics

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Is there any disinterested party who can tell us just what the AP consisits of? Two things I've had contact with:
The Latin AP has little to do with Latin. Most reading is in English and knowledge of Latin is limited to translating and grammar.
The new Russian AP was presented at ACTFL several years ago and it was clear that grammar had been excised; it was all about being able to communicate in Russian. But I don't know if it was ever implemented.

When we talk about AP, we often hear things like, "Oh, they've changed it and it's quite communicative now." But who is saying that, someone who thinks communicative = oral language? Is it someone who

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I see stupidity everywhere. On the Urdu listserv they lamented the fact that students of Hindi and students of Urdu at Berkely U. of C. don't speak to one another. Yet the "two" languages are the same, separated by a script. The underlying tension, as usual, is religion, those identifying themselves as Urdu-speakers being Muslim and those identifying themselves a Hindi-speakers being Hindus.

The ACTFL SmartBrief raises the question as to whether sign language - ASL - should be admitted as a foreign language. Is Navaho, commonly taught here in Arizona, a "foreign language"? Technically, no, but it is taught as one b/c hardly anyone outside the Navaho tribe speaks it and even a lot of Navahos don't. ASL has a grammar quite different from that of English; it has a culture distinct from the general American culture in crucial ways; it is of great social importance, particularly for those in education and social and government services. One of the gate-keeping devices is saying it doesn't have a literature. Neither does Yoruba in the narrow sense of a long history of written literature, yet it is taught in quite a few universities.

Question: do these people think things through?

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A work in progress, to be edited later..........

Even though a possible literary allusion in the words "idiot robots" has been revealed that would soften their effect, I would still caution teachers against using the term in referring to students. Someone might misunderstand, as I did.

My response to the original post dealt with two separate issues that have been staples on flteach for the 15 years I've been on it: prescriptivism and invidious comparisons of students.

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8/28/09
Thought One
When teachers are given materials, ancillaries, they use them passively. But when they make their own, develop them themselves, they are invested and students pick up their enthusiasm.

Thought Two
Testing - how about offering students not a test but an opportunity to write as much as they know about a topic or a variety of topics?
Question: open or closed notes/book?
How credit it? Grade it? Do we have to?
What do we do with it?

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This new category, as of June, 2009, is a work-in-progress. That is, my other blog entries I try to edit so they may be carved in stone as befits them. In this category, I'd like readers of this blog to understand that these ramblings will be modified, refined, contradicted, and heavily edited over time. The input from readers will help with this.

For some reason, despite the edit function on the blog, I feel it is somehow dishonest to go back and edit a blog entry, as if I had never said what I said. I like being responsible for what I say. One reason, perhaps, that I don't get more comments is that the entries seem to be finished products, which they are, and closed to modification. I had hoped there would be a lively exchange under "comments", but such has seldom happened.

Eventually, a particular thread will be polished and then entered under its appropriate category. But, to be honest, so many thoughts occur to me, prompted or not, that I want to jot them down without necessarily fleshing them out.

So, I'll start right now.
I'm finishing the third Malcolm Gladwell book, The Tipping Point. He's talking about Sesame Street and what makes it "sticky", i.e. makes it stick with kids. The answer: MEANING. That's exactly what I’ve been preaching on the Listservs: if something has no meaning, it's not retained and it cannot find purchase in the mind of the learner.

Moving to a different plane....

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