According to the rules of biology, the brain evolved to be efficient. So why are emotions so powerful in our thinking? What is their role? And importantly, how can we harness them for education? Mary-Helen Immordino-Yang, an affective neuropsychologist at the University of California, has done much research […]
Prosody comprises both sound and meaning. Speakers who convey the intention behind a statement are communicating not just the facts of the utterance but the speaker’s feelings about the information and their relationship with the other person. A key component of putting that meaning into speech is working […]
When a student turned in a paragraph that was clearly written by an A.I., I shoveled the paragraph into my own A.I. and asked it to give her feedback. Then I printed both and gave the paper back to her. “Now wasn’t that easy?” I said. She […]
Monday, I asked my evening students, “What do you remember from last week?” They thought for a minute, then Grielda said, “Paco lost his leg!” Ana chimed in. “There was a fire, a . . .an explosion.” It was not the present simple, conjunctions, or paragraph organization. […]
Being able to speak effortlessly is a great luxury. As a native speaker, I can more or less assume my messages and intentions are clear. I know my objective in a conversation, and I use my voice to support that objective. In addition to strategic […]
In his ground-breaking work, The Literary Mind (1996, Oxford University Press), the cognitive scientist Mark Turner, quotes the following lines from a Robert Browning Poem, Porphyria’s Lover. The rain set early in tonight, The sullen wind was soon awake, It tore the elm-tops down for spite, and did […]
At first glance, Rashid seems like a difficult guest. He’s coming out of war-torn Syria. His father died in the conflict, and Rashid has enemies in Jordan. But when Rashid’s uncle and his wife agree to host the young man in their small, Houston home, no one thinks […]
Drama helps us make sense of the world. It explores what happens when people make certain choices, and in doing so it shapes culture and values. This was the intention of the original Greek playwrights. They wanted to show multiple points of view around an issue so people […]
Being able to speak effortlessly is a great luxury. As a native speaker, I can more or less assume my messages and intentions are clear. I know my objective in a conversation, and I use my voice to support that objective. In addition to strategic […]
I recently started using an app to learn German. I liked it more than I wanted to. As a language teacher, I would like to side with my colleague who says, “There’s no substitute for a teacher in the classroom.” But I don’t feel like taking on […]
English Endeavors 