Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 51

• Call me by my name.

  By ljd42 on January 11, 2020

  

  “Call me either one. I don’t care.” It always surprises me when a student gives that sort of reply in response to my asking “Do you want to be called Liz or Elizabeth?” (or the equivalent, of course, depending on… Read More ›

• William is pretending he’s a hamburger…

  By ljd42 on January 9, 2020

  

  William is pretending he’s a hamburger… but I’m not fooled.

• Fake news in Fakebook… I mean Facebook.

  By ljd42 on January 7, 2020

  

  This ad just appeared in my Facebook feed. Clearly fake news!

• Which languages?

  By ljd42 on January 6, 2020

  

  “This is America. Speak English, or go back to where you came from!” I hear that too often from Trumpian Americans who feel threatened by immigrants and others whom they don’t understand. The best story about that was told by… Read More ›

• Bella Luna update

  By ljd42 on January 4, 2020

  

  I suspect that Bella Luna has been waiting with bated breath for me to review it once again. We end up going there for dinner about once a month, after all, since Barbara works upstairs in the same building. A… Read More ›

• Irregardless

  By ljd42 on January 2, 2020

  

  Irregardless of the price, I am buying a new computer. Well, no, not really. Not any time soon, at any rate. But that’s not the topic of this post; the word “irregardless” is. “That’s not a word!” you cry. “If… Read More ›

• 366 days of math

  By ljd42 on December 31, 2019

  

  You definitely want 366 days of math. Check it out as we are about to enter a new year! The American Mathematical Society offers us a page-a-day desk calendar, in the usual form factor, with a mathematical tidbit for each day… Read More ›

• The surprising truth about Donald Trump

  By ljd42 on December 29, 2019

  

  The shocking truth about Donald Trump! The book A Warning (by “Anonymous: a senior Trump administration official”) reveals it. Well, no, it doesn’t. I lied. But I figured that I would start with a lie, in keeping with the subject. Now for the… Read More ›

• A Latin Christmas Carol?

  By ljd42 on December 27, 2019

  

  Verb or noun? Two options from Gretchen McCulloch: Good King Wenceslo Good King Wenceslas Good King Wenceslat Good King Wenceslamus Good King Wenceslatis Good King Wenceslant Good King Wencesla Good King Wenceslae Good King Wenceslae Good King Wenceslam Good King… Read More ›

• Gyu-Kaku for the second time

  By ljd42 on December 26, 2019

  

  Veering slightly from the Jewish-American tradition, Barbara and I made a second visit to Gyu-Kaku (Japanese and Korean, not Chinese) for an excellent Christmas dinner. See my post of September 13 for a review of our first visit, so I’ll… Read More ›

• Carols for editors (and writers too)

  By ljd42 on December 24, 2019

  Listen closely to the words (and don’t pay attention to the quality of the singing, which isn’t the point):

• Conviction

  By ljd42 on December 22, 2019

  

  Denise Mina’s latest novel, Conviction, is about podcasts — in part. It’s also about family. And murder. And #MeToo. And mystery. And true crime. And power and wealth. And betrayal. And trauma. And Ukrainian gangsters. (How up-to-date!) And storytelling. Not to mention… Read More ›

• “Why don’t high schools teach CS?” asks Mark.

  By ljd42 on December 20, 2019

  

  Say what? Of course high schools teach CS! Weston has done so for decades. Surely Mark Guzdial knows better, but his recent blog post asks that very question. So what’s going on? It turns out that I have MB (Massachusetts Blindness)…. Read More ›

• “Untranslatable” words (redux)

  By ljd42 on December 18, 2019

  Six months ago I wrote an essay in my blog about “untranslatable” words. If you haven’t read it, you may want to do so now. The bottom line was that when someone claims that a word in some language is… Read More ›

• There’s no such thing as too many books.

  By ljd42 on December 16, 2019

  

  More shelf space may not be an option. More shelf space requires more shelving, which in turn requires more bookcases, which in turn require more room. Sigh. I gave a few hundred away just over a year ago, but that… Read More ›

• It’s 50 years later; would I still be able to write something like my master’s thesis?

  By ljd42 on December 14, 2019

  

  I can still teach linguistics — but could I still write a linguistics thesis? On April 10, 1969, I submitted my master’s thesis, The Development of Embeddings in the Speech of Young Children. Just now, for a somewhat complicated set of… Read More ›

• Russian Script Hacking for Beginners

  By ljd42 on December 12, 2019

  

  Is it Korsunsky or Korsunskiy or Korsunski or perhaps even Korsunskyi? Would it help to see it written out in Cyrillic rather than in our Roman alphabet? Related question: what’s the capital of Ukraine — Kiev or Kyiv? Actually, it’s… Read More ›

• Every vote counts!

  By ljd42 on December 11, 2019

  

  How do elections work? Does your vote really count? Could your single vote really make a difference? See below. But first… Regular readers of this blog know that I teach a course every summer to rising tenth-graders where one unit is… Read More ›

• A negative decrease?

  By ljd42 on December 9, 2019

  

  Hmm… so I guess that means that my score increased?  

• Coffee shops with books: A personal connection

  By ljd42 on December 8, 2019

  

  As you know, many coffee shops and small restaurants want their customers to feel at home, so they have comfortable chairs and shelves with random books on them. The intent, I suppose, is to create an ambiance like a living… Read More ›

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