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December 31, 2019
We’ve come to the end, Musicuentos reader. You and I have been on quite a journey together, and I’m sure I’ve written something through the years that you loved and/or hated. Of 699 posts, here are the top ten Musicuentos posts of all time (actually, since hits have been measured by Google Analytics, which is […]
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December 1, 2019
Every story comes to an end.
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Exactly eleven years and three months ago, I wrote this: Welcome to my acquisition-based language teaching journey. Let’s call it Musicuentos. And let’s get started. Nearly seven hundred posts later, my Musicuentos journey is coming to an end. I made the decision to end my Musicuentos run last January, a month after I was diagnosed […]
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November 3, 2018
The following material is taken from my session for the November 2018 Tennessee Foreign Language Teachers Association. If you read me much, you know that I agree with the broader field that asking “Authentic or learner material?” as a guide for choosing resources is the wrong question. The real question is this: What is going […]
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August 1, 2018
It’s been a life-boosting 10 months. As a rule, I can highly recommend this, whatever you want to call it – a hiatus, a sabbatical, a step back. If any area of your professional life is proving detrimental to your personal relationships and mental well-being, it’s time to: pare down that area to what you barely […]
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December 27, 2017
I was listening to a podcast recently and a successful businessman was talking about the power of a simple thank you. The meditation caused me to think about my year-end posts and how they should change this year. In 2017, I published a grand total of 29 posts prior to this one. I’ll end this year […]
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September 12, 2017
As much as I love my Madhur Jaffrey cookbook, “Quick and Easy” is not exactly how I would have titled it. But this year, I’ve discovered some super tasty Indian simmer sauces at the grocery store. Whoa. Guess what? My family loves them. They gobble up chicken in simmer sauces from a jar as much as or more than […]
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August 12, 2017
Meet Marisa. She’s a really smart Spanish teacher… at a language school in Madrid. Her blog goes back several years, but it just came on my radar in the past year. It’s called “Aprendiendo español callejeando por Madrid,” y de veras, es una joya. Here in the first resource I’m sharing for #AuthresAugust I present […]
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July 31, 2017
Welcome back! (sort of)
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What a whirlwind of a summer! In the last few months, I’ve driven a few thousand miles and flown a few thousand more. I kayaked under a full moon and listened for the “shot heard round the world.” I watched a water moccasin climb a creek bank and ate lobster before watching fireworks explode over […]
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February 11, 2017
Are you a bilingual person living in the culture of your first language? (Example: An American who speaks English as a first language, speaks French as a second, and lives in the U.S. or England.) Would you help me on a future blog post by answering this one question? Check only three: what tasks do you […]
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November 2, 2016
I need an answer to one more poll question if you have 30 seconds. So you’ve become proficient in one or more languages beyond your native language. Did that happen because of a teacher using proficiency-based methods or because of something else? Please take a moment to answer, and THANK YOU. So you’re proficient in […]
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October 10, 2016
Rabbit trails aren’t always a bad thing. Sometimes they turn out to be the yellow brick road with the Emerald City at the end. Here’s the one I hit today: I subscribe to Richard Byrne’s Practical Ed Tech blog’s Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week. Weekly, I get Richard’s great tip of the week […]
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June 30, 2016
Welcome, again
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Finally. It’s been almost exactly four years since Musicuentos.com appeared, and that’s kind of old in the website design world. It’s time for something new, not for the sake of having something new, but in this case to make this site easier to navigate for you who primarily use your mobile devices to read blogs. […]
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