Items will be posted with the newest at the top.

updated: 28 February 2004

7 March - instructions for the final individual assignment, evaluate your professional development, are on the documents page

4 March - added a separate page with popular movie clips about language teaching, language learning, and language learners in action

28 February - Reorganized schedule and documents pages, with the latter now divided into two pages: documents & media clips

25 February - Among the several imaginative projects with high-quality content that we received this week, here is Maria Chantal Berthet's PowerPoint project (.pps, 341K)

If you have trouble getting the file to work within your browser, download and save the file and then open it within PowerPoint. Or try this compressed version (.sit, 241K).

22 February: video clips, some of them (fair warning!) rather sleazy

21 February: Second-language standards for Portland Public Schools and Oregon University System

NOTE: The sound files you reach from the link below are large, so click and play them only if you have a fast internet connection.

16 February: more participant pictures and corrected email addresses

16 February: Writing task: "Guide for Language Learners and preparation for next meeting

11 February: Just for fun: videos of: 1) a very young Robert Redford performing in German, opposite Alec Guiness, under trying circumstances; 2) Danny Kaye doing his version of French, Italian and German

10 February: outine of the upcoming meeting

10 February: more media files

10 February: The single page with schedule, assignments and documents has been split into two: 1) schedule & assignments and 2) documents & media.

3 February: 1) Sound files for imitation or actual Oral Proficiency Interviews (English, French, German, Spanish); 2) concise list of course documents that can be downloaded from the course website; 3) the first of the course participant pictures (on the email list).

28 January: 1) Detailed outlines for past class meetings are available as PDFs, with annotations about anysignificant changes that occurred during the class. 2) There is a brief outline of the next several meetings. 3) The main Table of Content for the site now includes a link to the list of participants who have agreed to make their email addresses available to the class. (NOTE: Please check your listing by sending an email to yourself from the list.)

17 January: Here is an NPR report about the difficulties of scoring tests on a large scale. We'll revisit it later when we talk about standards and assessments

Click here to start streaming QuickTime audio (.mov, 4.6MB).

16 January: Here is an audio example of an anecdote about a language-learning experience (an unpleasant one).

Click here to start streaming QuickTime audio (.mov, 6.9MB).

Two men talk about student course evaluations, about their experiences taking final exams, and then about a French class, where the teacher's emphasis on placement of written accent marks seemed unreasonable. Note their vivid vocabulary and how clear a picture they give of the experience. But they also analyze a bit, which gives us a good opportunity to ask a pedagogical question: How important is it for students to learn a language's system of written accent marks or other special characters?

10 January: posted first assignments and emailed that information all students who had provided addresses;

8 January: emailed initial information to all students who had provided addresses to PSU