[minstrel: Vivat the Dream]

[hrjones at socrates.berkeley.edu]

On Fri, 9 Jul 1999, J.A.McGowan wrote:

> >It's the sort of thing that made Latin the bane of countless generations
> >of school children -- whereas my immediate reaction was to try to develop
> >"mathematical" formulas for producing the different forms based on stem
> >differences. (Guess why I became a linguist.)
> >
> >Tangwystyl
> 
> Signs (vowels) of the Latin subjunctive, as I learned them:  "we fear a
> liar," or alternatively, "we beat a friar."  Both given to me by my Latin
> teacher.  I had a very good teacher.  We wound up writing short stories in
> Latin.

"Creative writing" is one of the techniques I've added to my list of
"things that really work when teaching languages". When I took Breton, we
were really plodding through all the textbook exercises with very little
enthusiasm ... until the professor said, "Ok, forget about the writing
exercise in the book -- make up your own stories about anything you like."
We ended up with this intertwined set of interactive storylines, very
loosely based off the characters in the textbook, that involved things
like revolutionary, anti-nuclear fish and lesbian elopments to Paris. One
of the advantages of studying a _lot_ of different langauges, is that I've
been exposed to a wide variety of teaching tricks and can't wait to try
out the stuff I've decided works best.

Tangwystyl
(anybody want to learn Medieval Welsh?)

*********************************************************
Heather Rose Jones         hrjones at socrates.berkeley.edu
**********************************************************


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