teaching languages better

 Get Pocket (Jeff Haden):

When I was in Sasebo, there was a Japanese guy (Tomonaga, if I recall correctly) who taught Japanese to the Americans. I think it was a volunteer thing he did as a hobby. His day job was working on base in some capacity that I didn't have contact with him.

Teaching to sailors comes up against the problem that they miss class when the ship is gone.

Tomonaga came up with 200 sentences that were common things one might say. Each week he'd go through ten sentences. But he'd teach each sentence by saying this is how you modify it to say something similar.

It was a pretty good way to teach, better than the more traditional methods. And apparently now there's research to explain one aspect of it that made it better.

Although, "Making Out In Japanese" deserves a mention as non traditional language education too.

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