Summer 2007 Edition

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Breaking the Barrier Quarterly

• Dance to the beat of our round-the-corner evening at an exuberant Latino musical, "another West Side Story," that is now headed to Broadway.
• We've found the time and space to act on this bit of advice from our customers: "Why not offer your testing program on CD?"
• Enjoy news of our far-flung travels to meet homeschoolers in Alaska.
• Cindy Beams serves up another recipe from Conchita's Kitchen. This season she beats the heat with her wet and wild gazpacho.

The Play's the Thing. "In the Heights" Hip-Hops from the Barrio to Broadway Last spring, John Conner and Cindy Beams headed to NYC for the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Language, one of our favorite "field trips" of the year. Our NYC travels included a special invitation from Tom Gardner, one of John's former Spanish students and current CEO of The Motley Fool, who has turned the tables by becoming our mentor in the fine art of irreverence and good fun. He took us to see In the Heights, an off-Broadway production that has been hailed as a "Valentine to the Barrio." We take our hat off to you, Tom!

Composed by its star, 28 year-old Lin-Manuel Miranda, In the Heights is set on a steamy July 4th weekend in the Washington Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan. From the hip-hop dance numbers and motley blend of Latino musical styles to the heart-wrenching ballad Paciencia y Fe, get thee and thy Spanish students to In the Heights on your next trip to NYC! And because this remarkable production is now bound for Broadway, Tom Gardner would agree that it's foolish not to invest in advance tickets. No need to find yourself high and dry!

Teacher Testing Program Now Available in CD Format We're not fooling when we say that some of our best ideas come to us when we're relaxed. After hearing from many of you at conferences and by phone that you would like our tests to be available in CD format, we decided to ponder the question over a pitcher of iced tea in the backyard. Our answer: "Why not?"

All six of our texts now have a full testing program on an easy-to-use CD. Each disc contains a four-page test for each of the 12 chapters in all titles. Microsoft Word formatting allows you to edit with ease, adding your own sentences or making slight changes to ours! We also have a full answer key on the CD, too. The testing program is wonderful for classroom use, as well as for homeschoolers and adult learners.

The Long and Winding Road to Meet Homeschoolers in Four Cities

Breaking the Barrier is currently used in virtually every corner of the United States as well as in a growing number of countries around the world. We have long wanted to go to Alaska, a state filled with residents who are independent in their thinking and passionate about language learning. Furthermore, Alaskan students benefit from a homeschooling network that is extensive and well-organized. We asked longtime colleague and BTB contributor Barbara Peterson if she might be willing to head north to explore one of the world's most stunning landscapes. Barbara, an award-winning language teacher from Iowa who currently supervises student teachers when she's not collaborating on BTB projects, didn't hesitate long before responding with a resounding YES!

Click the following link to read a fascinating interview with Barbara about her experiences in Alaska....and you'll see a few more stunning photographs from the "Land of the Midnight Sun" taken by Barbara's very own camera. Enjoy!

There's a Place at Every Table for Breaking the Barrier As summer heats up, why not chill out with my recipe for gazpacho? This cold, tomato-based soup of Spanish origin lends itself to the abundance of fresh, local produce that is now in season. When you add the fact that this soup requires absolutely no cooking, I hope any resistance you may have had to trying it will evaporate! Before I get specific, I want to talk about what I consider to be the fundamental parallels between cooking and language learning!

Every single discipline has an underlying "grammar." From doing your daily sit-ups and stretches to learning a computer program, from tackling a musical instrument to tending a garden, there's an underlying structure that makes it all hang together. To do anything well means mastering this "grammar." In the case of cooking and language learning, the seeds of a strong foundation is the stuff of a bumper crop - quite literally at your fingertips or right on the tip of your tongue. Your reward is the freedom of exploration and expression that are the harvest of well-sown fundamentals. Now let's head for the kitchen, keeping these things in mind:

• Don't worry about making mistakes.
• Don't be afraid to experiment. None of my recipes require that you be rigorously exact in your measurements. Use the freshest ingredients available, and simply eliminate an ingredient if it's of poor quality. Keep the faith that great ingredients will carry the day.
• Have fun.
• Roll up your sleeves and dive in. It's the fastest path to fluency!

Conchita's Gazpacho

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