Fall 2006, First Edition

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Breaking the Barrier Quarterly

Each season we'll send you:

Teaching Tips and Timely Resources Guaranteed to Enlighten and Entertain The bell rings. The door closes. Class begins! Start each and every class you teach (from beginning to Advanced Placement) with the following Warm-Up drill. It is guaranteed to help your students speak the target language right from the get-go, and it's also a whole lot of fun!

Click on the first link for an in-depth description of this Warm-Up activity. Short on time? Click on the second link for the "Executive Summary."

John Conner Tackles his Favorite Subject Each month I write a column for Think Spanish magazine. This wonderful publication has articles of great cultural interest to students studying Spanish.

I enclose for you here an article that I wrote for last December's issue. It covers a classic topic, one that has intrigued (as well as frustrated!) language students for generations. What is it? Of course! The differences between the preterite and the imperfect. After reading the article, test yourself with the ten practice exercises. The answers are hidden at the bottom of the page. For more practice, the other link connects you to a terrific site developed by Colby College professor, Barbara Nelson. ¡Buena suerte!

Breaking News of Our Products, Workshops and Travels We're pleased to announce that we've added beginning French to our suite of audio products. This double CD set accompanies the Breaking the French Barrier, Level 1 text, and provides practice in pronunciation and vocabulary, as well as interactive questions and an adventure series that we've produced in the spirit of old-fashioned radio theater. We were incredibly fortunate that Mirabelle Kirkland, one of France's best young actresses and film directors, agreed to be our lead voice on the CD. We will bring you an exclusive interview with her in our winter edition of Breaking the Barrier Quarterly.

This fall our travels take us well beyond the Northeast where we will attend the annual state conferences of language teachers from Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Right before Thanksgiving we're headed to Nashville, the site of ACTFL 2006. Here all of our authors will be on hand, and John Conner will present his popular workshop The Ideal Lesson Plan: Grammar-based and Dynamic! If you or your colleagues plan to attend any of these conferences, we encourage you to stop by to say hello.

A Discussion Forum is Forthcoming We're putting the finishing touches on a Discussion Forum, scheduled to launch in a couple of weeks. In addition to posting John Conner's responses to some of our most frequently asked questions, we want to open up the discussion for broader participation. We'll send you an e-mail when the Discussion Forum goes live, and we encourage you to join in on the exchange of ideas.