We heard loud and clear your request for more conversation time and for more opportunities for children to express themselves. This is why we extended the coaching session and used it as a means to get their input and discussed strategies on how to stay focused. Also, we decided to create two groups because of the difference in the level of French amongst students. We make use of multimedia (PP presentations, pictures, videos, songs) on a weekly basis to keep kids engaged and to get the children to speak about different topics. This helps also to retain their attention.
We decided to tweak the program a bit given the different personalities in the class
I have been asked many times for a French reading site that kids can practice at home. One of the best resource is called Tumblebooks. Just pick a book in French or English, and you have the option of it reading to you, or your child may read by himself/herself.
We are having lots of fun and we hope your kids are enjoying the sessions. We put in a lot of time and thought into developing an enriching French program for the kids and your feedback is only going to help us make it better.
Parents, please encourage the rewriting of the new words or sentences a number of times (5 to 10 times) to memorize them. We also want them to memorize the songs we practiced. There is no better way to learn the structure of French sentences. Songs will help them in their writing and essays.
I hope all of you are doing great. I am thrilled with some results that we start seeing in some of your children. They are getting much more comfortable, they sing louder and are much more active in the learning. Parents, if you are helping at home, keep up the good work! It really does make a difference when kids are supported at home in their French learning.
We were asked if the next winter session starting in January will be a repeat. The answer is NO. We will have a new theme at every session throughout the year from September to June. Children can join anytime as the classes are taught independently. However a child who has been attending more classes will automatically be able to recognize more words and be more familiar with French sounds and reading.
This Grammarathon and Readathon Program is designed to help your kids do better at school by improving their reading comprehension, their writing and oral skills. We follow the Ontario Curriculum for French Immersion. The focus is to provide a challenge appropriate for their level. The 2.5 hours are intense and packed with various academic activities. But we make it fun and we also sing. The sparkle in their eyes is confirmation enough that they are enjoying it. And when I see them improving and mastering new sentences, it just makes my day :)
Parents, make sure they are well rested and had a good breakfast in the morning to maximize the benefits of the session. As I mentioned in a previous email, I encourage the rewriting of new words or sentences a number of times (5 to 10 times) to memorize them. Learn the songs we practiced! There is no better way to learn the structure of French sentences. Songs will help them in their writing and essays. Children do better at school when you support their French learning at home.
Learning a language is not a matter of reading and memorizing some vocabulary words. “Acquiring a language is learning a skill “ just like learning the skill of riding a bike”. Practice makes perfect! Practice in this case is to read, listen, write and speak. Those are the four areas that we focus on at My French Club. When words are put in a context, in a story or in a song, suddenly words come to life and words as well as structure can be memorized better.
It takes time to learn a language. Be patient and support your children’s French education at home. You will find plenty of resources on our website http://www.myfrenchclub.ca along with some valuable advice on the blog. And if that is not enough, feel free to drop me an email with your questions :)
Listening to French music is highly beneficial for your little ones and it will stick to their long term memory. It teaches them the sounds of the French language…yes, every language has its own music, its own melody. We picked a very trendy catchy tune “elle me dit” by Mika. It has lots of rhymes and easy sentences that kids can reuse in their essays or oral conversation. We give the chance to every kid to read it out loud many times and we explain to them the lyrics. We were so excited and jolly, I wish you parents were there to see us :) However at this point, I am done! My kids have been playing it nonstop at home, that I can’t get it out of my head! If you have the same problem, let me know. We’ll place a group order for earplugs :)
Regarding the program, well we are very lucky! We almost have as many students as mentors. So your kids are getting lots of one on one attention. Every kid was greeted with a unique card that has a positive affirmation for him/her. I had also developed activities for each one of them because even though some of them are in the same grade, the levels of competency vary.
Please refer to the booklet of your child to see what was covered. Kindly ask your child to write 10 times the new words or new sentences in order to memorize them better.
Learning a language is not a matter of reading and memorizing some vocabulary words. “Acquiring a language is learning a skill “ just like learning the skill of riding a bike”. Practice makes perfect! Practice in this case is to read, listen, write and speak. Those are the four areas that we focus on at My French Club. When words are put in a context, in a story or in a song, suddenly words come to life and words as well as structure can be memorized better.
During the last session, we sang and learned all about Greetings, presentation, how old I am , where do I live…
Repetition is the key! It takes time to familiarize yourself with a new language. Be patient and support your children’s French education at home. You will find plenty of resources on our website http://www.myfrenchclub.ca along with some valuable advice on the blog. And if that is not enough, feel free to drop me an email with your questions :)
My French Club
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Sunday, January 6, 2013
How to give kind criticism and avoid being critical
Photo by timsamoff
Here is a great article about how to give kind criticism. I really enjoyed it and thought it would be useful to have it posted on this blog. Zen Habits is definitely one of my favorite blog.
Courtesy of Zen Habits at http://zenhabits.net/how-to-give-kind-criticism-and-avoid-being-critical/
Can you give someone criticism without hurting their feelings or making them angry? Can you do it kindly?
I think that’s a difficult proposition for most people, but in truth it’s possible to give criticism with kindness and have a decent chance of having the person take it constructively.Today, we’ll look at how to give criticism with kindness, so that the person who receives it is more likely to take it well.
We’ll also look at why criticism is often the wrong approach to take: positive suggestions are even better.
Why We Give Criticism
I think it’s important to step back and look at why people give criticism. There are a few common reasons (although there are many more possible reasons):
- To help someone improve. Sometimes criticism is actual honest feedback, meant to help the person we’re criticizing. We want to help them get better.
- To see a change that we would like. If we regularly read a magazine or blog, for example, there might be something that often bothers us that we’d like to see changed. Perhaps the person uses too many list headlines, or has too many spelling and grammatical errors. So criticism is meant to help get that change enacted.
- To further the discussion. Criticism can be a way to get a good, intelligent discussion about something going, to take it to a new level, to explore new areas of the discussion, to give an opposing viewpoint, to impart new knowledge.
- To hurt someone. Often we just don’t like someone, and want to get at them, attack them. Criticism in this case is destructive.
- To vent our frustrations. Sometimes we are just frustrated with something, or are having a bad day, and need to vent that negative anger.
- To boost our ego. Some people like to show how powerful or intelligent or knowledgeable they are, and use criticism as a way of doing that. They are puffing themselves up, challenging others, doing an Alpha Male thing.
Using criticism to help someone improve, to see a change affected, or to contribute to a discussion, are all good reasons for doing it. Now the question is, how to do it kindly, without attacking, so that your purposes are accomplished.
Why Criticism Hurts or Angers
People don’t often take criticism well, even if it’s done for good reasons (one of the first three reasons above, for example). But why? Why can’t they just simply see it as a way to improve?
Well, there are many reasons, of course, but here are just a few:
- The criticism is mean-spirited. If you use insulting or degrading language, or put down the person in any way, they will focus on that, and not on the rest of the criticism.
- It focuses on the person. If you focus on the person (“You’re a lousy writer”) instead of their actions, you will make them angry or defensive or hurt.
- They assume you’re attacking them. Even if you focus on actions, many people take all criticism as an attack on themselves. No matter what your intention or language. They can’t take criticism in a detached, non-personal way. You can’t change that about them, other than pointing them to last week’s article (which will also probably be taken as an attack).
- They assume they’re right. Many people assume what they say or do is right, and that the criticism is wrong. They don’t like to hear that they’re wrong, whether it’s true or not.
How to Deliver Criticism Kindly (and Not Criticize At All)
Looking at the above reasons that criticism isn’t taken well, the keys are:
- Don’t attack attack, insult, or be mean in any way
- Talk about actions or things, not the person.
- Don’t tell the person he’s wrong.
- Don’t criticize at all.
By offering a specific, positive suggestion instead.So instead of criticizing, which is rarely taken well, offer a specific, positive suggestion. Let’s take a look at the elements of this method, why it works, and how to do it:
Suggestion, not criticism. As people sometimes will assume that you’re attacking them personally, no matter how nice your criticism and how much you focus on actions, a criticism is often not the way to go if you want 1) for them to improve; 2) to see actual change; or 3) to contribute to a meaningful discussion. Instead, suggest a change. A suggestion can be positive, it can be seen as helpful, it can be seen as an instrument for improvement and change. People often take suggestions well (but not always). So a suggestion is more useful than a criticism in many cases. Not always — sometimes it can be useful to give a nice criticism if someone is open to it. But in many cases, a suggestion is better.
- Positive. Much criticism is negative. That hurts the discussion, because things can take an ugly turn from there. It hurts the person receiving it, making it less likely that they’ll take it as a way to change. Instead, be positive: “I’d love it if …” or “I think you’d do a great job with …” or “One thing that could make this blog even better is …”. And don’t do it in a sarcastic way … be genuinely positive. This keeps the discussion positive, and people are more likely to receive it in a positive way.
- Specific. It’s easy to give vague criticism: “You’re a sucky writer,” “I can’t stand this blog,” or “You really should write better posts … this one is lame.” Anyone can do that. Being specific is more difficult: “I don’t like to see numbers in your headlines all the time,” “The first two paragraphs of your posts are long and rambling,” or “Your face is lumpy.” It’s harder still to make a specific, positive suggestion: “I’d love to see more images of kittens on Zen Habits,” or “Make my day and write a post about how to criticize your boss without him knowing you’re doing it,” or “I would appreciate fewer ads and more content.”
- Be kind. It’s important that you be gentle and kind in your suggestions. People have a hard time accepting any criticism, gentle or not, but if it’s harsh, it’ll almost always have bad consequences. Instead, ask yourself, “Would I like to hear that about myself?” And: “If so, what would be the nicest way to say it?”
- Relate to actions. Never criticize the person. Always criticize the actions. And when you’re making suggestions, make suggestions about actions, not about the person. Not: “Maybe you could become a less lumpy person?” Better: “I suggest you get face smoothener … it did wonders for me!”
The Bilingual Factor
Being bilingual has its benefits.
While researchers previously believed that learning two languages interfered with a child's learning and intellectual development, it has been found that this experience actually strengthens cognitive functions. Bilingual individuals are quicker at mental exercises: when monolingual and bilingual children in a 2004 study were asked to complete a computer exercise that involved sorting blue circles and red squares by shape (which is more challenging than sorting them by colour), the bilingual participants did so in a shorter amount of time. The main difference between a monolingual and a bilingual is an increased ability to be aware of changes in the environment.One study showed that brain activity in a bilingual when completing a monitoring task (requiring monitoring of surroundings) was less than that of his monolingual counterpart, signifying greater efficiency in that task. Bilingualism can have advantages for individuals of all ages, from the infant in a bilingual environment to the bilingual senior. Children learning more than one language gain a greater understanding of language structure in both languages. Some studies show bilinguals to be less likely than others to present symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. The more proficient a bilingual is in each of the two languages he knows, the greater the benefit. Benefits of bilingualism may include:- protection against dementia- improvement in task-switching abilities- improvement in ability to plan, solve problems, stay focused, and keep information in mind - becoming more culturally-aware- increased chances of getting a job in which speaking another language is valued- better performance in school
Sources:
http://www.cal.org/earlylang/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Things you can do during a vacation
Here is a list of ideas for activities that your child can do while on vacation. They will give your child a great variety of learning experiences and make their trip meaningful. En français, of course :)
1. Keep diaries of the trip
- sequence or record of places, specific details
- feelings of impressions of what is experienced. This teaches writing, organizational grammar, spelling and creative skills)
3. Map the route being followed
4. Calculate distances between cities, lunch stops, motels
5. Predict and estimate distances and times
6. Keep a record of fuel costs, compute mileages, average daily costs
7. Prepare a report to share with the class about the highlights of your trip
8. Take a library book or read a magazine for kids
9. Sketch places of interest and write up a brief story of each
10. Prepare reports on specific visits (museum, beach, grandma...)
Enjoy your vacation!
5 Facts About Bilingualism
I met a woman at a friend's house a couple of years ago who told me that she'd hired a French nanny for her three young children so that they could learn French. I liked the idea and wished her well. But as she and her husband were both American, I secretly doubted that the experiment would bear much fruit.
I ran into her again a few weeks ago and we got to talking about her child care situation. She told me that all three kids -- who now range in age from three to seven -- were bilingual and that she had just finished ordering them some new books on Amazon France.
Wow! I thought. Impressive. And then I felt a pang of envy. Both of my kids are learning French in school. But they are a long way from bilingual. And even though the British Education Secretary has proposed that every child in the U.K. learn a foreign language from age five, that may actually be too late.
To wit, five facts about bilingualism:
1. Bilingualism affects brain development from infancy. A fascinating article in The New York Times explains the ways in which the brains of babies in bilingual households develop differently from those raised in a mono-lingual household. Apparently, while bilingual babies take longer to distinguish phonetic sounds in either language, once they do come to recognize them, they can then hear them in both languages, while mono-lingual babies lose this facility by the time they are one. Even in the womb, one study showed that babies born to bilingual mothers not only prefer both of those languages over others -- but are also able to register that the two languages are different. Wow!
2. When learning a foreign language, it's best to start early. Younger learners still have the ability to develop near native-like pronunciation and intonation in a new language. They are also more open and curious (as a rule) to foreign peoples and cultures. There are also cognitive benefits to learning an additional language early. Bilingual children have greater neural activity and denser tissue in the areas of the brain related to memory, attention, and language than monolingual learners. These indicators are associated with long-term positive cognitive outcomes (see below).
3. But you can still learn a foreign language as an adult. While it's true that our ability to hear and understand a second language becomes more difficult with age, the adult brain can be retrained to pick up foreign sounds more easily again. According to a study at University College London, the difficulties that adults have in learning languages are not biological, but perceptual. Thus, given the right stimuli, adult brains can overcome the habits they have developed to effectively crowd out certain sounds and learn new ones. Neat!
4. Bilingual people do better academically. Yet another reason to raise your kids speaking two (or more!) languages is that it enhances academic performance. Students who learn a foreign language out-score their non-foreign language learning peers in the verbal and -- surprisingly, perhaps -- math sections of standardized tests, particularly in the area of problem solving. They do better in school and are also more open to diversity, according to François Thibaut, who runs The Language Workshop for Children, which has nine schools around the East Coast of the United States.
5. Bilingual people also do better in other areas of cognitive functioning. In addition to their double vocabularies, bilingual children have stronger and more flexible cognitive abilities. Mastering two or more languages helps them solve logic problems and handle multi-tasking, skills that are often considered part of the brain's so-called executive function.
source:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/delia-lloyd/bilingual-education_b_1007760.html
I ran into her again a few weeks ago and we got to talking about her child care situation. She told me that all three kids -- who now range in age from three to seven -- were bilingual and that she had just finished ordering them some new books on Amazon France.
Wow! I thought. Impressive. And then I felt a pang of envy. Both of my kids are learning French in school. But they are a long way from bilingual. And even though the British Education Secretary has proposed that every child in the U.K. learn a foreign language from age five, that may actually be too late.
To wit, five facts about bilingualism:
1. Bilingualism affects brain development from infancy. A fascinating article in The New York Times explains the ways in which the brains of babies in bilingual households develop differently from those raised in a mono-lingual household. Apparently, while bilingual babies take longer to distinguish phonetic sounds in either language, once they do come to recognize them, they can then hear them in both languages, while mono-lingual babies lose this facility by the time they are one. Even in the womb, one study showed that babies born to bilingual mothers not only prefer both of those languages over others -- but are also able to register that the two languages are different. Wow!
2. When learning a foreign language, it's best to start early. Younger learners still have the ability to develop near native-like pronunciation and intonation in a new language. They are also more open and curious (as a rule) to foreign peoples and cultures. There are also cognitive benefits to learning an additional language early. Bilingual children have greater neural activity and denser tissue in the areas of the brain related to memory, attention, and language than monolingual learners. These indicators are associated with long-term positive cognitive outcomes (see below).
3. But you can still learn a foreign language as an adult. While it's true that our ability to hear and understand a second language becomes more difficult with age, the adult brain can be retrained to pick up foreign sounds more easily again. According to a study at University College London, the difficulties that adults have in learning languages are not biological, but perceptual. Thus, given the right stimuli, adult brains can overcome the habits they have developed to effectively crowd out certain sounds and learn new ones. Neat!
4. Bilingual people do better academically. Yet another reason to raise your kids speaking two (or more!) languages is that it enhances academic performance. Students who learn a foreign language out-score their non-foreign language learning peers in the verbal and -- surprisingly, perhaps -- math sections of standardized tests, particularly in the area of problem solving. They do better in school and are also more open to diversity, according to François Thibaut, who runs The Language Workshop for Children, which has nine schools around the East Coast of the United States.
5. Bilingual people also do better in other areas of cognitive functioning. In addition to their double vocabularies, bilingual children have stronger and more flexible cognitive abilities. Mastering two or more languages helps them solve logic problems and handle multi-tasking, skills that are often considered part of the brain's so-called executive function.
source:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/delia-lloyd/bilingual-education_b_1007760.html
Why Bilinguals Are Smarter?
SPEAKING two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.
This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development.
They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other. But this interference, researchers are finding out, isn’t so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles.
Bilinguals, for instance, seem to be more adept than monolinguals at solving certain kinds of mental puzzles. In a 2004 study by the psychologists Ellen Bialystok and Michelle Martin-Rhee, bilingual and monolingual preschoolers were asked to sort blue circles and red squares presented on a computer screen into two digital bins — one marked with a blue square and the other marked with a red circle.
In the first task, the children had to sort the shapes by color, placing blue circles in the bin marked with the blue square and red squares in the bin marked with the red circle. Both groups did this with comparable ease. Next, the children were asked to sort by shape, which was more challenging because it required placing the images in a bin marked with a conflicting color. The bilinguals were quicker at performing this task.
The collective evidence from a number of such studies suggests that the bilingual experience improves the brain’s so-called executive function — a command system that directs the attention processes that we use for planning, solving problems and performing various other mentally demanding tasks. These processes include ignoring distractions to stay focused, switching attention willfully from one thing to another and holding information in mind — like remembering a sequence of directions while driving.
Why does the tussle between two simultaneously active language systems improve these aspects of cognition? Until recently, researchers thought the bilingual advantage stemmed primarily from an ability for inhibition that was honed by the exercise of suppressing one language system: this suppression, it was thought, would help train the bilingual mind to ignore distractions in other contexts. But that explanation increasingly appears to be inadequate, since studies have shown that bilinguals perform better than monolinguals even at tasks that do not require inhibition, like threading a line through an ascending series of numbers scattered randomly on a page.
The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. “Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often — you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,” says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. “It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving.” In a study comparing German-Italian bilinguals with Italian monolinguals on monitoring tasks, Mr. Costa and his colleagues found that the bilingual subjects not only performed better, but they also did so with less activity in parts of the brain involved in monitoring, indicating that they were more efficient at it.
The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life).
In a 2009 study led by Agnes Kovacs of the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, 7-month-old babies exposed to two languages from birth were compared with peers raised with one language. In an initial set of trials, the infants were presented with an audio cue and then shown a puppet on one side of a screen. Both infant groups learned to look at that side of the screen in anticipation of the puppet. But in a later set of trials, when the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen, the babies exposed to a bilingual environment quickly learned to switch their anticipatory gaze in the new direction while the other babies did not.
Bilingualism’s effects also extend into the twilight years. In a recent study of 44 elderly Spanish-English bilinguals, scientists led by the neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism — measured through a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language — were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset.
Nobody ever doubted the power of language. But who would have imagined that the words we hear and the sentences we speak might be leaving such a deep imprint?
Yudhijit Bhattacharjee is a staff writer at Science.
source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html?_r=0
This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development.
They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other. But this interference, researchers are finding out, isn’t so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles.
Bilinguals, for instance, seem to be more adept than monolinguals at solving certain kinds of mental puzzles. In a 2004 study by the psychologists Ellen Bialystok and Michelle Martin-Rhee, bilingual and monolingual preschoolers were asked to sort blue circles and red squares presented on a computer screen into two digital bins — one marked with a blue square and the other marked with a red circle.
In the first task, the children had to sort the shapes by color, placing blue circles in the bin marked with the blue square and red squares in the bin marked with the red circle. Both groups did this with comparable ease. Next, the children were asked to sort by shape, which was more challenging because it required placing the images in a bin marked with a conflicting color. The bilinguals were quicker at performing this task.
The collective evidence from a number of such studies suggests that the bilingual experience improves the brain’s so-called executive function — a command system that directs the attention processes that we use for planning, solving problems and performing various other mentally demanding tasks. These processes include ignoring distractions to stay focused, switching attention willfully from one thing to another and holding information in mind — like remembering a sequence of directions while driving.
Why does the tussle between two simultaneously active language systems improve these aspects of cognition? Until recently, researchers thought the bilingual advantage stemmed primarily from an ability for inhibition that was honed by the exercise of suppressing one language system: this suppression, it was thought, would help train the bilingual mind to ignore distractions in other contexts. But that explanation increasingly appears to be inadequate, since studies have shown that bilinguals perform better than monolinguals even at tasks that do not require inhibition, like threading a line through an ascending series of numbers scattered randomly on a page.
The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. “Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often — you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,” says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. “It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving.” In a study comparing German-Italian bilinguals with Italian monolinguals on monitoring tasks, Mr. Costa and his colleagues found that the bilingual subjects not only performed better, but they also did so with less activity in parts of the brain involved in monitoring, indicating that they were more efficient at it.
The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life).
In a 2009 study led by Agnes Kovacs of the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, 7-month-old babies exposed to two languages from birth were compared with peers raised with one language. In an initial set of trials, the infants were presented with an audio cue and then shown a puppet on one side of a screen. Both infant groups learned to look at that side of the screen in anticipation of the puppet. But in a later set of trials, when the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen, the babies exposed to a bilingual environment quickly learned to switch their anticipatory gaze in the new direction while the other babies did not.
Bilingualism’s effects also extend into the twilight years. In a recent study of 44 elderly Spanish-English bilinguals, scientists led by the neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism — measured through a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language — were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset.
Nobody ever doubted the power of language. But who would have imagined that the words we hear and the sentences we speak might be leaving such a deep imprint?
Yudhijit Bhattacharjee is a staff writer at Science.
source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html?_r=0
Sunday, December 2, 2012
How to be a Successful Student (of Life).
Choose to:
1. Have a positive attitude
2. Set, commit to and strive for realistic goals
3. Be flexible
4. Ask thoughtful questions
5. Ask for help when necessary
6. Be motivated by achievement rather than by fear of failure
7. Be respectful of yourself and others
8. Discuss what you are learning with others
9. Reflect on all that you learn
10. Be respectful of time
11. Have excellent attendance
12. Be prepared
13. Explore your intellectual curiosities
14. Be responsible
15. Think balanced thoughts
16. Understand and accept your perceived strengths and weaknesses
17 Put in the appropriate amount of effort depending on the assignment
18. Always attempt a task
19. Be organized
20. Communicate clearly and concisely
21. Accept constructive criticism and make the necessary changes
22. Be independent
23. Face your fears and anxieties
24. Take good notes
25. Let go of the need for approval
26. Relinquish the need for control
27. Have faith in yourself and others
School can in many ways be a microcosm of life. Many situations are replicated: there is a boss to answer to, deadlines to meet, and priorities to choose. Being a good student in school can therefore be a precursor to being a good life student.
1. Have a positive attitude
2. Set, commit to and strive for realistic goals
3. Be flexible
4. Ask thoughtful questions
5. Ask for help when necessary
6. Be motivated by achievement rather than by fear of failure
7. Be respectful of yourself and others
8. Discuss what you are learning with others
9. Reflect on all that you learn
10. Be respectful of time
11. Have excellent attendance
12. Be prepared
13. Explore your intellectual curiosities
14. Be responsible
15. Think balanced thoughts
16. Understand and accept your perceived strengths and weaknesses
17 Put in the appropriate amount of effort depending on the assignment
18. Always attempt a task
19. Be organized
20. Communicate clearly and concisely
21. Accept constructive criticism and make the necessary changes
22. Be independent
23. Face your fears and anxieties
24. Take good notes
25. Let go of the need for approval
26. Relinquish the need for control
27. Have faith in yourself and others
School can in many ways be a microcosm of life. Many situations are replicated: there is a boss to answer to, deadlines to meet, and priorities to choose. Being a good student in school can therefore be a precursor to being a good life student.
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