You’re stuck in line at the DMV. (In other words, you’re at the DMV.) How do you you use the time? Maybe you check Facebook. That’s fine—probably better than checking it when you’ve got time to do something else. Maybe you make a shopping list. Maybe you don’t “use” the time at all; maybe you […]
Tag Archives: teaching
Language: The School Subject That’s Not a School Subject
If you grow up on a desert island with at least one other person, you will not automatically know physics. You may know the effects of what is studied in physics—say, when the other person pushes you out of a tree—but you will not know the academic discipline called physics. You will be fluent in at […]
What Is Indwelling Language? or, A Rarish Word For a Rarish Thing
Almost everybody studies a language at some point. Almost nobody actually acquires a language in the process. For the past several years, I have been polling middle school students, high school students, their parents, and other adults with the following question: “Have you had a bad experience trying to learn a foreign language?” I let them […]