I’ve read two books recently dealing with learning foreign language, one by the noted Dr. Pimsleur.\u00a0 I found both to be enlightening about learning, and instructive for teaching.\u00a0 Dr. Pimsleur said that it’s a good idea to learn the dozen or so most used verb concepts in any language, and gave his list.\u00a0 Accordingly, I had a class on the verb “to want.”\u00a0 I gave three structures: I want to do something\u00a0 (want + infinitive verb)\u00a0 I want\u00a0 something\u00a0 (want + noun) and I want someone to do something (want + clause).\u00a0 I “explained” all these before we did the practices, and my example was “I want all my students to speak English.” \u00a0\u00a0 I asked the students if they could think of such a sentence in English.\u00a0 One student said, “I want my mother to cook better.”\u00a0 And another said, “I want my English teacher to be well.”<\/p>\n
These days, I’ve been going to classes, but most of the rest of the time, I’ve been in bed.\u00a0 I’ve had a respiratory infection, but have resisted going to a doctor, since with my allergies I’m wary of what might be given.\u00a0 I have no energy.\u00a0 I’ve been reading a lot but haven’t had energy to write.<\/p>\n
Years ago, as I was president of library board in my small village, we often discussed the future of the library in the face of the electronic age.\u00a0 One thing I said was, “No one is going to take a computer to bed to read.”\u00a0 Alas, or Hurrah, depending on your feelings, here we are with the electronic reader in bed, not to mention the laptop to write this post.\u00a0 I find the e-reader to be wonderful since I can receive books over the internet, almost magically it seems to me.<\/p>\n
In case you’re wondering the exercises for “I want” here they are.\u00a0 Groups of 6 stood in a circle facing each other.\u00a0 I gave them a tennis ball to toss around.\u00a0 When you got the ball, you had to speak the whole sentence “I want to—-” choosing a word from the chalkboard, or another that you knew, and you had to act it out, such as run in place.\u00a0 After this had gone on for a while, I went to each group with a bag of candy (very Rousseau) and asked “Do you want a piece of candy?”\u00a0 They had to answer “Yes, I want a piece of candy.” And then they got the candy.\u00a0 Some said, “I want two pieces,” and I said, “Go to the supermarket.”<\/p>\n
Onward, to the verb To KNOW.\u00a0 How to give active exercises for that?\u00a0\u00a0 Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve read two books recently dealing with learning foreign language, one by the noted Dr. Pimsleur.\u00a0 I found both to be enlightening about learning, and instructive for teaching.\u00a0 Dr. Pimsleur said that it’s a good idea to learn the dozen or so most used verb concepts in any language, and gave his list.\u00a0 Accordingly, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":449,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions\/449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingwithjulia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}