Gaelic
The Monitor Hypothesis is part of Stephen Krashen's theory of Second Language Acquisition. The hypothesis is that the 'monitor' acts to apply conscious, explicit, learned grammar to 'edit' your output. The Monitor only does so when (a) you have enough time, (b) you focus
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There’s two types of modern expressions that present difficulty for speaking ancient languages: * names for things they didn’t have * expressions for things they didn’t say In many cases (1) isn’t so bad. You just have to neologise. How do you say helicopter, television, mobile (=cell) phone,
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We’re now six podcasts deep, and I thought I’d write a little this week about what it looks like for me to put together a podcast. 1: An idea It takes a while for me to come up with ideas, which maybe isn’t a good sign! It
Language
I always marvel when scholar X talks about ‘picking up a new language’ like it’s nothing. Or even like it’s something. Perhaps I’m actually bad at languages. (I don’t believe that people are good or bad at languages, aka language aptitude). For myself, I made a
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Most of my classics background involved a 4 year stint as an external student working almost entirely on Latin. I took intro Latin as an adult, and then 3 years of text-based classes. I wish I had kept better notes! It was still being done with postal services when
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Yes, but its (very-)sub-optimal, hard, and the results might be less than stellar. But you might also have not that much choice. There are few Latin speakers in Australia. A few Gàidhlig speakers. Less ancient Greek speakers. Opportunities for communication events are limited. And what if your situation
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Our friend James helpfully asked: Did you ever have communicative Greek training with a more fluent speaker? If not, how did you get to this point? Do you have a post on what you did? Despite the apparent contradiction, do you think it's possible to therefore get to
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Obviously quite a bit of the education I’m involved with is theological. I think some of the concern I express in this post pertain to non-theological contexts and colleges, but mutatis mutandis. The issue is this: when a student can pursue an entire theological degree online, via distance,
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Even though I have negative free time, lately I've been trying my hand at new things. Firstly, I've put up a few videos on youtube. They are a 'talk-through' of the Greek text of Melito's On Easter, 1-2. There'
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I not-infrequently talk about different types of encountering language with the following schema: Schoolroom Is when you're in a literal classroom with books, and you're learning 'about' foreign language, as something far, far removed from you, as this exotic and abstract 'other&
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This week in my meandering series, let me talk variously about other distance education environments I’ve experienced. I did the mainstay of my Latin studies as an external student at the University of New England (in Australia, not those other New Englands in other former colonies). A four year
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Well, semester 2 at various institutions here is under way, and I feel like some reflections upon distance education are in order. This might be part one of several... I might begin by talking about this semester. Last semester, regular sufferers of his blog will recall, I taught a small