Oversikt

Denne uken har jeg bare en ting å si: Hjelpes, så vanskelig det er å holde oversikten over 100 sider, når jeg ikke klarer å konsentrere meg mer enn ti minutter. Men jeg vil. Jeg skal.

Trivia

Etter tips fra Ida googlet jeg ordet trivia, og oppdaget at det i dag ser ut til å være vanligst brukt i quiz. Og det benevner alt fra dagligdags kunnskap til tørre, akademiske detaljer.

Men jeg hadde brukt det om middelaldersk utdanningssystem, der trivia er de tre fagene retorikk, logikk og grammatikk. De tre første av totalt syv Artes Liberales, som er uttrykket jeg har bestemt meg for å bruke i stedet. Rett og slett fordi det er lettere å google. Så får det heller våge seg at jeg ikke finner noen god norsk oversettelse.

Jeg er så dum!

Ok, det er ikke pent å kalle noen dum. Og det er i hvert fall på tvers av all teori om positiv tenkning. Men det er rett og slett den beste beskrivelsen av hvordan jeg tenker for tiden: Jeg forstår rett og slett ikke hva jeg holder på med, og har i praksis ikke gjort noenting på en uke. I går gav jeg opp litt, og fulgte datteren min på kino i stedet. Skulle tro jeg kunne holde følge med en tegnefilm for barn? Niks. Jeg går ut fra at den klønete helten på en eller annen måte beseiret skurken, men aner ikke hva jeg skulle tolke inn i ringen av lys som plutselig spredte seg rundt byen og gjorde alle jublende glade.

Backpacks

The latest measure of how reluctant I am to finnish this thesis: Last night it really sounded like a good idea to include a survey of recommended size and weight of backpacks to the analysis of textbooks.

A not so small part of me keep insisting that six-year-olds are little children that should be allowed to play more and carry less academic weight, literally AND figuratively speaking.

anima sana in corpore sano

Spring has come to my part of the world, unexpected as always. Heavily influenced by rays of sun and whiffs of barbecue smoke my thoughts turn into mush-filled clichés. After half a day of listening to children's songs and nursery rhymes I decide to call it at day and head outside.

All work and no play, might be the bane of young boys and crickets. Luckily we will never know what might happen to me :-)

Time space continuum

For some reason my blog jumped to Pacific time last week. While it would be a blast to join it, I responsibly changed it back to Central European and returned to nurse my wicked neverending flu.

Reader's block?!?

This morning I literally fell asleep over my book, and now I can't bring myself to remember what I read the past half hour... come to think of it, I cannot really make sense of what I've read all day.

I give up for now, prepare a thermos of tea and go for a walk. Hopefully I will be better set when I return for tonight's meeting with Ida and Heidi.

Moliminous

Some of you may have noticed that I subscribe to Wordsmith's a.word.a.day. Yesterday, I read an announcement that Wordsmith were trying to find more useful words this week, and today I got moliminous! The browser window even winked at me while I read it, as if the computer recognized it too. If I did not think so before, I do now: This thesis is a moliminous (massive, laborious) task.

Too stubborn

In my pile of books and articles to read, there's a few in French. My French has been all but neglected the last ten years, and I really did intend to search for English or Norwegian translations of the texts by Henri Holec and Louis Porcher.

But over night one article by Porcher has been digging into my thoughts to the point where I have got to explore it. Le plurilinguisme: des politiques linguistiques, des politiques culturelles, des politiques éducatives seems to offer a unique perspective on foreign language teaching in Norway (among other countries).

Bad English

The last few days my local newspaper (Bergens Tidende) has debated the English language skills of Norwegians. International business contracts are lost, foreign health workers are a hazard and schools have lost all respect for proper education. One writer even quotes some anonymous report saying Norwegians are the worst small talkers in Europe!

And people keep emailing me these articles and message board postings, demanding I do something in my thesis to rectify the situation.

Sure, people! You just sit back and relax while I save the situation. Your patience to wait for my future first graders reflects what we all think: The imminent disaster is not so much in the English skills of our businessmen as it is in the media hunger for scape goats.