This past semester, students in a new Sophomore Seminar offered through East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Berkeley Language Center have taken significant steps toward understanding the complexity of language in multilingual environments like Berkeley.
Rather than focus on the speech or writing practices of bilingual individuals, however, participants [...]
more→It was the first day of school. As I stood near the front entrance of Mr. Larry’s 6th grade all-boy advisory an African American mother walks in with her son who was on crutches. Mr. Larry was speaking to another parent and student and so I took it upon myself to welcome this [...]
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In Stephen Jay Gould’s (1992) enlightening collection of popular science essays, Bully for Brontosaurus, he traces the evolution of a simile through school science textbooks from the 19th century on. He wonders how it happened that the “dawn horse,” eohippus, became linked in size to the fox terrier, despite such a reference being [...]
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While working as a Macedonian language teacher with foreigners, I noticed peculiarities that are common for the English speaking students who have no or only little second language acquisition experience. Their name is Mr. Experts* and they come to Macedonia as experts in politics, economy, law, war, peace, and other serious matters. They all have [...]
more→We’re now envisioning the end of the fall semester, my first as a graduate student at Berkeley. After ten years as a junior high teacher of “core curriculum,” I received an appointment to teach French 1 upon returning to Berkeley. I wrote the following journal entry three days before instruction began in August:
le 24 août [...]
more→As I raced towards my friend who returned from Germany to the United States (after nearly a year) tonight, I yelled out loudly, to the surprise of several suitcase-toting passengers at the San Francisco International Airport, “Nummer Eins!” My friend embraced me, leaned down, stooping a little to compensate for the nearly foot-and-a-half that he [...]
more→As a young’n, I hated reading and writing. I mean, I liked reading fun books, but I never did too well writing about them or any other subject matter, and since I lacked in one, I started to hate them both. Writing is a soft science, and my parents never approved of soft [...]
more→My name is Katie. I’m white. English is my first language. I was born in Southern California and had lived there almost my entire life before transferring to CAL. My siblings and I had access to a quality elementary school, junior high, and high school education. Learning a second language was not something that had [...]
more→I’m studying abroad in France this semester, and just to keep in touch with my Russian interests, I decided to take a Russian history course. The first hour of the first class was all in French, and I was able to follow most of what was going on, as well as take notes (there have [...]
more→I’m inspired by Usree’s posts and will try to post a little more regularly here too…hope that others join in! I’ll get back to an old post on “Raspberry Jam” soon, but am immediately moved to write about my crash course experience in French 1 for a research project I’m involved in. It’s been a [...]
more→Quand j’étais une élève au collège, j’ai du choisir une langue étrangère pour les quatre ans prochains. Après avoir passé beaucoup de temps à penser, j’ai décidé que le français me convient le plus. Je suis vietnamienne, et je sais qu’il [...]
more→When I was 13 years old, the only thing that I wanted to do with my life was to become a ballerina. I considered myself a devotee of the pas de bourrée, the pirouette, the rond de jambe, and at that age I couldn’t see myself doing anything [...]
more→I wrote this a few years ago, and don’t think it would come out quite the same now, but thought it would be worth sharing here anyway…
–daveski
94년 여름, 한국말로 인삿말 밖에 못하던 제가 처음으로 한국에 visit할 때 들었던 말입니다. 광화문 근처에 살던 제 친구 집에서 exploring the neighborhood하느라고 경복궁 광장에서 walking around 했었습니다.
And then I [...]
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