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Grammar For the Birds

As a child I would listen with joy to the calls of the different birds that lived in my Princeton Junction, New Jersey neighborhood. Sometimes when I was walking home from school or the pool I would hear a bird singing to another bird and try to imitate the call, hoping to get some kind of response from another bird. I suppose I must have been doing it wrong because I never got any sort of answer from other birds. Now it looks like studies are showing the reason for my lack of answer may have just been poor grammar on my part. Grammar — in a bird call? Absolutely, according to a seemingly unnecessary study by Kentaro Abe of Kyoto University in Japan.

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For The Record… Part 1

I recently quit the correcting game and stopped correcting people out loud when they made mistakes. SuperGenius David Boles suggested that I should write down the errors and blog about them since stoppering them internally would do me no good. Without further ado, please enjoy the following corrections — For The Record…

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Quitting the Correcting Game

For most of my adult life I have had a pretty bad addiction, and I am trying to put it behind me. Whether it is in the context of a conversation in person, over the phone, or conducted over any of a number of digitial media, I have wasted too much time correcting people — it has to stop now.

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How to Find the Right ASL Teacher

Janna and I teach American Sign Language online and in books through our Hardcore ASL program.  We are often asked by students and schools how one can find the right ASL teacher.
Here are some things you should ask to know:

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How the Superman Syndrome Ruins Student Writing

Hubris is dangerous in the classroom.  The student that believes nothing can be learned that isn’t already known catches nothing.  The instructor that believes in an all-knowing prescience guarantees nothing worthwhile is cast for the capturing.  That battle between student and teacher can dangerously become a war between good and evil — and that fight leaves no winners on the field of learning.

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