Education
14Dec
14 Dec 2021
How Should Languages Be Taught in School?
It's not a good idea, in my opinion, to demand grammatical accuracy from language learners in school, because so few of them end up speaking the language. What does it matter whether they are able to nail niceties of grammar at the age of 12? To me, it doesn't matter. If there's some way of making them enjoy the process of language learning so that they expose themselves to the language, they [...]
Read more How Should Languages Be Taught in School?11Aug
11 Aug 2021
Why Many People Fail at Language Learning
Right now I've been at my Arabic for three years and my Persian for two, I can't say that I speak either language particularly well. I really struggle. My Farsi is now better. I've had the opportunity to use it a bit here and there around Vancouver, North Vancouver, especially West Vancouver. I'm now exploring Egypt in Arabic with Mohammed, my tutor, and I do struggle in our conversations, [...]
Read more Why Many People Fail at Language Learning29Aug
29 Aug 2019
Universities – Who Should Pay?
I’m going to stray a little bit from my usual focus on language learning and I’m going to talk about education, in general. I’m going to talk universities and, specifically, refer to the strikes that we’re experiencing here in Canada in the Province of Quebec where university students have been striking for weeks now in […]
Read more Universities – Who Should Pay?03Apr
3 Apr 2018
Language Acquisition: Do Children Learn Faster Than Adults?
I think that children learn faster than adults. There is ample evidence of this, for example amongst immigrants to Canada. Rare is the immigrant family where the children don’t speak English, or French, much better than their parents. Can Adults Learn More Like Children? I also think, however, that adults can learn how to learn […]
Read more Language Acquisition: Do Children Learn Faster Than Adults?06Mar
6 Mar 2018
What Is Literacy?
We have literacy proliferation these days. I just Googled emotional literacy, physical literacy, health literacy, social literacy, and different kinds of literacy. I was amazed at what I found. So what is literacy? To me literacy means the ability to read. The invention of writing is one of mankind’s most useful creations. With writing, we can record things. Writing […]
Read more What Is Literacy?