"We are not aware we are acquiring when we are acquiring, and after we acquire, we are not aware that anything has happened."

This is my favorite Krashen quote because it is at once both silly and correct. He's speaking of language acquisition. In Krashen's world, grammar drills have no use and explicit grammar correction no function. The only benefits would be seen on grammar tests, where the "monitor" can decide the grammiticality of a given item and correct it.

I recall beginning my ESL teaching in Micronesia with Betty Azar's black grammar book (a.k.a. the Black Betty). We filled and drilled, filled and drilled, etc. until the students could get a TOEFL score of above 470. (I was learning the grammar along with the students. It was quite interesting to me!) Then we would write essays and of course the students would not apply any information from the drills into the essays. I almost became a "But I told them the rule!" teacher. This sort of teacher blames the students, thinking that exposure to the grammar rule should automatically translate into success. No success? Show them the rule some more -- only louder! It's an exercise in frustration. (And we changed the classes a couple of years later, ditched the TOEFL and disowned the Azars -- not that it caused a great leap in student success, but at least we were teaching for communication rather than drills.)

Krashen's theory explains this experience and replaces the drills with "meaningful input."

The "Communicative Approach" which is now the hip model in ESL, and what I am trained in, is concerned with "meaningful output."

Somewhere there's a happy medium (she's probably talking to Elvis right now) -- what I like to call the "meaningful quantum revolving door of merry-go-round-put." In this theory the input goes in a revolving door, part of it decides to go grab a snack in the frontal lobe and the another part meets an old friend and goes back through the door as output. Thusly does acquisition occur.

Ballet class...

At her locker in school on "Fun Fair" day:

Cheese fondue, special polish sausage (some wrapped in bacon), bread, and vegetables for fondueing.



At 39 I can still work a fondue pot!

By popular demand in my own mind comes another installment of Tuesday Oversharing. Yet another "women with trees" -- well, trees are handy and plentiful, women less so, but there do seem to be endless opportunities for combinations thereof. Does that makes sense?

Let's call these pics "circa 1985."

Saturday our new family had a walk in the Bernheim forest. We even had our own naturalist along to help Jelly appreciate the frozen, non-green landscape.

Here's Jelly in front of a fairy house that she found. The lesson of the day was about seeing the barren-seeming woods with imagination -- Jelly's got the imagination, but not the attention span to really stare at a twig for more than two seconds. She did find and interesting black shiny thing in this fairy house that stumped the naturalist.






Jelly stands on the frozen river. We really did see some amazing things -- minnows darting beneath the ice, leaves frozen in mid-drift down the river -- things we might not have noticed without the naturalist keeping our pace slow and eyes open.




Kristin and Jelly, plus Agron IV, a minor tree-deity in charge of brown-gray lichens.




Kristin and our guide fondle a large fungus.

I was watching Muppets Season 3 last night, the Loretta Lynn episode (very meta, before meta was cool and then not cool and then cool again). For broadband: here's the best song of the ep on YouTube.

Anyway, Loretta's done a lot of living in her many years, I wondered if she even remembered appearing on the Muppets. That something so momentous as appearing on the Muppets could go forgotten signals a life well lived, in my opinion. So going through the official Mango Haiku oversharing box this morning I was pleased to remember a somewhat painful experience from my past (I had a sprained ankle). I made a brief appearance in the Chinese-made movie called (I think) "Young Monks of the Shaolin."

"Young Monks" was made in 1994, pre-digital.




I'm most comfortable in cultureas that don't worry overmuch about children carrying large knives.




This is the signature "young monk" move -- the two-fingered power lift (aka "bamboo rat with heartache eats bag of Oreos in the evening light.")





Myself and a small herd of foreigners charged the young monks, festooned in cameras, and picked them up, hugged them, and asked if we could buy one. The young monks, unaware of this, were mighty confused the first time we did it.




The movie was shot in a temple in Chengdu, Sichuan where they recently had  earthquake disaster.






This actress gathered her foreigners at the "Traffic Hotel" in Chungdu. I had just come back from hiking Tiger Leaping Gorge and wanted to rest. She got to me by saying "J'taime, j'taime", but if you got anywhere near her she would say "F**k you!"

There was a picture in my old photography book, circa mid-80's, that had a haunting image of a woman alone in a forest of aspens (or some kind of skinny, shadowy tree). I always liked that image -- it certainly has stuck with me. (I have forgotten the photographer or I would link to it.) I guess the feeling was one of making your human-way in a confusing, random natural world. Something like contemplating a riot of stars on a clear night. Anyway, whenever I happen to be in a bare, shadowy forest with a friend and a camera I try to re-create the feeling of the image. Here's my college friend in 1990 in the Kashgar Oasis of Xinjiang Province, China:

And here's Kristin and our friend in Wyoming eighteen years later at Veedawoo -- that's some mighty fine tree-holding.




If anyone knows the original photo, let me know!