The Top 3 Things You Should Remember...

...before you step back in a language classroom this fall.

In the interests of transparency, I must confess the following:  As I write this right now, there are several asterisks holding the place of the number slot in the title [fixed it!].  I'm not really sure, off the top of my head, how many things I want to put down here.  Research shows that if it's much more than nine, it won't stick (hint: if you struggle with memorization, don't study vocab words in chunks of more than that; absolute max - 15).  However, there are definitely some things that every language student, no matter where they are in their journey, from their first day to polishing up their fifth dialect, should keep in mind as they embark on a new phase of learning.

This year, I don't have my own classroom and a captive audience to share these things with.  Luckily though, neither do I have to go through a seven page syllabus and standard procedure for turning in papers before I get to talk about the fun stuff.  So, below, I have shared with you some key things to keep in mind as we start out the school year, or really, any next step or return to the language learning process.

Starting off close to home

It's easy for many of us here in Washington to complain about learning a new language and the accent that goes with it.  After all, we don't have an accent, right?  Wrong.  Or so says Jennifer Ingle, a linguist who did her studies at the University of Washington.

Check out the link below to see a transcript and (even better!) hear the recording and the accent variations that Ingle found.

Pacific Northwest Dialect Spoken Here

The article is a bit old, but only recently came into my life and is still quite interesting.  I was surprised by the truth in it, what do you think?

Here we are!

Well, it looks like we're up and running, folks!  Thanks for checking things out and do come around again!