How to read a book you don't want to read: Jim Trelease

http://vimeo.com/2273440

Read -- The basic premise is that you take the book "down" the same way they took the tree down. The tree was too large to cut down all at once (ouch—there goes the fence, the tool shed, and the neighbor's garage) so they took it piece-by-piece. So, too, with a 200-page book that's too large to leave until the night before the exam or the report is due. Chop the book into smaller pieces.

Along the way, Trelease also shares insights into reading positions (elevate the feet to the level of the heart and you're pumping less oxygen to the brain and pretty soon you're d-r-o-w-s-y . . . Also, check the brightness of that light bulb. There's one setting that will tire your eye muscles before all others. If the trees guys wouldn't think of arriving without their saw, don't forget that pen or pencil if you're reading. A simple notation in the margin engages a separate section of the brain and increases memory and comprehension. (Keeps you awake too.)

learning meditation

http://www.learningmeditation.com/meditation_room.php?room=find_your_guide&header=find_your_guide_text_version_header&content=find_your_guide_text_version&image=rotation_image6

In our search for answers in our life, we may sometimes turn to others for guidance. Through meditation, you can hear clearly the many voices that sometimes call to us, lead us into action. These "guides" can take on any form: a sphere of light, a wolf, a tree or even another person. The advice they offer is golden since they know you very well. This meditation will help focus you to find these guides and listen to their words.

A Wild Love For the World with Joanna Macy

http://www.onbeing.org/program/wild-love-world/61


A Wild Love For the World with Joanna Macy

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/25-common-phrases-that-youre-saying-wrong.html

25 Common Phrases That You’re Saying Wrong

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/21-common-expressions-often-used-incorrectly.html?utm_source=post&utm_medium=morecommonexpressionsoftenusedincorrectly&utm_campaign=innerlink

21 Expressions You’re Probably Saying Wrong

Listening_Reading _Method 聽讀法。。。

https://www.prudl.com/    （雙語文本聽讀）

https://www.prudl.com/demo

https://www.prudl.com/howitworks/1  (demo video)

https://www.prudl.com/howitworks/2   (shadowing)

http://foreignlanguageexpertise.com/  Dr. Alexander Arguelles.

http://foreignlanguageexpertise.com/museum1.html (聖經以多國語音呈現，）

http://booh.com/blog/bilingual-text-2012  (Bilingual texts)

http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Listening-Reading_Method

The Listening-Reading method, also known as L-R, is a language learning technique which focuses on understanding spoken and written language. The method was described in HTLAL's epic L-R thread.

More systematically about L-R  here. Written and compiled by aYa, the originator of the method. Some links to resources as well. Her most complete notes on the subject in Polish here.

• a bilingual text in L1 and L2
• an audio recording in L2

Examples of sources to use:

• audiobooks plus the corresponding books in L1 and L2
• the material which comes with the Assimil courses (not considered to be true LR by aYa and many others - it's very different from using an audiobook)

Try to find something long and interesting.

Moving from Intermediate Toward Advanced

10:28 -- Bilingual text

The Four Agreements -being impeccable with words

外語教學的歷史－外語教學原來不是一門專業－－

http://historyofmfl.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/4/5/10456380/the_history_of_teaching_and_learning_modern_languages_1.pdf

http://historyofmfl.weebly.com/index.html


十九世紀的外語學習，有錢人的奢侈作風之一，專門學些特定用法，來炫耀自己的文化素養是“蓋高尚”的。。。（聽來很熟悉吧？鄉下人想學點文化，這種心態，到現在還有）

十九世紀末，發明注解發音系統。。。反省為何外語學習成效不彰？學習方法大變革。。。

20世紀，流行的語言學習理念，用外語學外語，不可用學生的母語。

21世紀，重新檢視母語的角色，尊重多元文化，學生的母語，受到尊重，世界各地的英文口音，被接受，你講的內容 比口音更受到重視。網路的盛行，助長了這個發展。

Using the Mother Tongue -- 替使用母語說句公道話，解說上下文－不能少。。

  http://languageinstinct.blogspot.tw/2006/11/using-mother-tongue-to-teach-another.html

Using the mother tongue, we have learned to think, learned to communicate and acquired an intuitive understanding of grammar. The mother tongue opens the door not only to its own grammar, but to all grammars, inasmuch as it awakens the potential for universal grammar that lies within all of us….For this reason, the mother tongue is the master key to foreignlanguages, the tool which gives us the fastest, surest, most precise, and most complete means of accessing a foreign language.

This is a radical notion, but in many ways it makes great sense. The trick is to use the mother tongue sparingly in class. Offer brief explanations and instructions where necessary, but do not do so randomly; Butzkamm suggests particular techniques to use in the classroom. He adds,

In principle, conveying meaning is not a matter of vocabulary, but concerns the text, i.e. it takes place simultaneously on a lexical, grammatical and pragmatic level. The pupil first wants to understand not what an individual word is saying, but what the text is saying, as accurately and completely as possible. An oral utterance equivalent in the mother tongue is the best and fastest way to fulfill this basic need.

He adds that “interferences, those unwelcome imports from the mother tongue, are avoided by the sandwich technique.” The sandwich technique? This is when the teacher “inserts a translation between repetitions of an unknown phrase, almost as an aside, or with a slight break in the flow of speech to mark it as an ‘intruder’.” In this way the teacher briefly uses the mother tongue, but quickly re-establishes syntax for his students.

Butzkamm’s arguments are often complex, but they fall well within the structure of communicative language teaching. For example, he suggests that using teaching aids in the mother tongue can “promote more authentic, message-oriented communications than might be found in lessons where they are avoided…. (Also,) mother tongue techniques allow teachers to use richer, more authentic texts sooner. This means more comprehensible input and faster acquisition.” 

In a comment on this post, Butzkamm pointed out that "my argument stands even if there is no such thing as a universal grammar common to all languages...in the Chomskyansense." He continues, 

Mother tongue grammars have paved the way to foreign grammars in as much as they have prepared the learner to expect and understand underlying basic concepts such as possession, number, agent, instrument, cause, condition etc, no matter by what linguistic means they are expressed in a given language. Naturally, if both the target language and the FL have adjectives, relative clauses or the pluperfect tense in common, they need not be taught from scratch, but are directly available for incorporation into the L2 system. However, the path breaking power of L1 grammar is not dependent on the fact that both languages share such grammatical features. One natural language is enough to open the door for the grammars of other languages because all languages are cut from the same conceptual cloth.

At first, some of his arguments sound like those of a CL teacher gone mad. Consider the beginning of this argument, for example: “Mother tongue aids make it easier to conduct whole lessons in the foreign language.” This sounds almost surreal until he explains that using such aids enables “pupils to gain in confidence and, paradoxically, become less dependent on their mother tongue.”

The mother tongue has a role in explaining vocabulary, Butzkamm says, but we have to me careful about it, as his explanation of the sandwich technique illustrates. In language teaching, other approaches do not work as well, he says, and can even be harmful. As importantly, “we need to associate the new with the old. To exclude mother tongue links would deprive us of our richest source” for building associations with words we already know. In general, he says, “the foreign language learner must build upon existing skills and knowledge acquired in and through the mother tongue.” 

Butzkamm is not modest about his ideas. His theory, he says,

restores the mother tongue to its rightful place as the most important ally a foreign language can have, one which would, at the same time, redeem some 2000 years of documented foreign language teaching, which has always held the mother tongue in high esteem.

Hardly the first linguist to argue against the principle of monolingualism, Butzkamm’s arguments may be the most coherent and compelling. Language teachers – especially those whose students speak a common language – should remember a simple truth: knowing and judiciously using your students’ native language can make you better teachers.

Get Print on Tap - Just tap to print with the new NFC Printer

Cost of NOT Teaching Study Skills

Blissful Sleep Meditations

Deepak Chopra Meditation 360p

Mind Movie of The Healing Codes

Rapture: Bliss: Existence -- Consciousness

http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/topics/rapture

I find there is a little spot at the end of every breath
where no one can get to but me. It's pure rapture.

Joe Honeywell

sat-chit-ananda,  

Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence:

The word "Sat" means being. "Chit" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being." I think it worked. 

Joseph Campbell (1904 - 1987)

http://ibelieveinpeople.wordpress.com/2013/03/
So I joined this Meditation Challenge hosted by Deepak Chopra & Ophra. Today was the first day. Though I’ve only ever done meditations on my own this was an interesting experience.

Om Bhavam Namah. Which translates to “I am absolute existence. I am a field of all possibilities.”

Critical Thinking - 批判思考

看新聞， 不能不用critical thinking,
http://www.behance.net/gallery/Critical-Thinking-Posters/771250

瞭解Integrity -- 這個字－誠實與科學態度－是什麼？

大麻－該合法化嗎？

We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/08/health/gupta-changed-mind-marijuana/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

Why I changed my mind on weed

By Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent

"Since there is still a considerable void in our knowledge of the plant and effects of the active drug contained in it, our recommendation is that marijuana be retained within schedule 1 at least until the completion of certain studies now underway to resolve the issue."

Not because of sound science, but because of its absence, marijuana was classified as a schedule 1 substance. Again, the year was 1970. Egeberg mentions studies that are underway, but many were never completed. As my investigation continued, however, I realized Egeberg did in fact have important research already available to him, some of it from more than 25 years earlier.

ekphrasic poem: art whispers

http://www.prose-poems.com/pagetwo.html

Betrothed  by  Genevieve Fitzgerald

This ekphrasic poem is for Marc Chagall’s “Flowers and Feathers”

Even if I am an ugly duckling, I have taken to wearing the necklace you gave me.  It may look silly against my feathers, costume(custom) cut glass, and not really sapphire stones set like blue grapes in a gold vine pattern. But you wanted me to have it, you blue headed unicorn no one else thinks can be real. And though you frightened me at first, I have come now to want for us to be more than just dreaming on my part.

see the art:

http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Marc-Chagall-(inspired-By)/Flowers-And-Feathers.html

Abraham Hicks, to Teachers ...

notice 1:14 -- 1:16. , teach to those who need your teaching..

you don't need to be the teacher  for every human beings in the universe

know those who are not your students

Laughter is an Instant Vacation Movie

Laughter is an Instant Vacation Movie