If you’re an intermediate level language learner, and want to improve your second language skills, here’s a great idea. And it works.  Rent or buy some DVD’s American-made movies, but be SURE the special features include both dubbing AND subtitles in the language you’re learning. Configure the languages so the dubbing and subtitles are in the foreign language your learning and start watching/listening. By receiving the information through two channels you get double (or more) the learning benefits since the dubbing and the subtitles are not the same. The dubbing has to be made so that it matches the lip movement of the actors and the subtitles are created by a different company that has more choices in how to translate. The result is that you get the same information in two variations.  It’s great because one channel reinforces the other.  You’re getting two ways of expressing the same idea, and that helps the language ’sink in’ faster. Not only that, but you get to see good movies, not boring teaching assignments. Isn’t boredom the number one reason it’s so hard to learn a second language if you’re American?  You can also try variations, like subtitles only, dubbing only, watch the dubbed version in Spanish with English subtitles.  I just did this with “Band of Brothers”, the six DVD HBO special about WW II, and it was terrific. I went through about 15 hours of it in two days, and I learned a lot.  Have you ever heard of someone learning a foreign language for 7 hours a day and enjoying it???  Try it and let me know if it works for you.

Some authors seem to be veritable book making machines. How do they do it? Not the way Shakespeare managed to write 36 plays (more or less). See what Carol Hoenig has to say on the subject.

http://whereistand.com/blog/carolhoenig/235

Just as many textbooks are written by writing teams–at least the producers of the Simpsons acknowledge the show has multiple authors–some well-known ‘authors’ don’t write their own novels either. But that doesn’t prevent them from showing up at book signings. Think that best selling author is
author?
Think Again

You won’t talk to a professor or have your work graded by one, but you can get the syllabus and contents to 1800 M.I.T. courses for free at

< a href=”http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm”</a>.

And so why hide the html when you know it’s there somewhere. My contribution to transparency.

The corridors of the MLA convention and the gaggle of undergrad and grad students showing off their hermeneutic decodings need not be restricted to the children of hard working parents who have gotten bilked by their kids as they shell out 30 to 35 grand to send the budding deconstructionists off to learn how to use such words as subaltern or phrases like “the presence of absence” in order to satisfy narcissistic cravings for a sense of superiority. The National Endowment for the Humanities has recently instituted a grant program that is available to community college faculty and staff to develop humanities projects for student populations often associated with trades and vocations. These matching grants are due by May 1, 2008, so hurry!!! And to assist you, here is a direct link to the application page. Yes, I am a community college faculty/staff member who would like to provide greater exposure in the humanities to my students. That’s why I’m going to click this. http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/challenge.html

It may be difficult to swallow the fact that there may well be a link between the fact that Cho Seug-Hui murdered 32 students & teachers at Virginia Tech because he was an English major and was brainwashed by left-wing extremist English professors!!!! At least that’s what erudite author Phyllis Schlafly has written in the highly respected on-line news and information source the Christian Worldview Network online. Yes, so evil and nefarious are English professors nowadays–who would rather teach courses in anti-American rhetoric (disguised as literature) than Shakespeare–that they may have brainwashed Cho Seung-Hui to such a degree that he took it upon himself to commit what he may have thought was an act of goodness and sacrifice when he went on his killing rampage. Why this informed opinion would be propagated within the virtual pages of a Christian organization is hard to discern, but thank goodness we have God-fearing, thoughtful Christians who see the true decadence and menace alive and well on college campuses in the United States. Perhaps after reading the entire article, you, dear reader, will understand why it is your Christian and patriotic duty to rail against college English departments, their faculty, and the misguided and impressionable English majors among you. Here for your edification is the complete article explaining the problem of the Nefarious Practices of College English Department

And you thought Christian Conservatives were moronic for rejecting the facts about evolution! I hope after reading this avatar of noetic abilities, you will reconsider.