Out of Pod Experience

I only read the first one but I think it's too hard. To me, it's about as difficult as pretty much any other English text I've had to deal with from early grades all the way through college advanced placement classes. Now my natural language skills are particularly good, but I have never done well in school language classes because their teaching style actively undermines my learning style. The problem is that they are trying to push the students' reading comprehension above the level of whoever writes their shoddy test material. They ask questions that don't have one good answer, or the answers they give are either all kind of right or none right. They expect the students to interpret the text in one and only one way: the way the test question author interpreted it.

I've got a much more effective test that is also easier to administer: ask the students to read and understand the passage, then take the text away from them and have them write down what it said in their own words. Now you have to have a well-trained teacher for grading their responses, as most teachers will utterly fail at this. The test grader must be capable of seeing the passage from the viewpoint of the reader/rewriter. The job of the grader is to find as many parallels as possible with the original text, while ignoring all but glaringly obvious disparities. Most teachers will try to find small faults in the work, and it is this style of grading that will actively undermine the student's effort to learn the language in the way that works best for them.

To give an example, if a student claims that Cape Town is a national park with people who look like animals:
a.) a typical instructor response would be that Cape Town is inside a park and is not the park itself, and that there is nothing in the text suggesting that the people are zoomorphic in any way.
b.) a much better response would be to note that the student was able to understand the locale of the city, and remembered reading that the people dress and decorate in a fashion reminiscent of their surroundings.

but isn't that the whole point ?

wasn't it JFK that said ..we don't go to the moon because its easy ... but because its hard

Finland needs to be reabsorbed into the Swedish Empire as they evidently can't be trusted to take care of themselves.

be careful what you wish for ... because this chap might have something to say about it

and I wouldnt wanna **** with him

That is one of the most epic historical texts I have ever read. I like the color the writer added. If history texts read like this all the time, kids around the world might actually retain some of the info

Might also add that Häyhä was also a very modest man and was somewhat uncomfortable with all the fame piled on his name.

Truth or Myth ??


The QI Elves ‏@qikipedia 4h

The Finnish word for pedant, pilkunnussija, translates literally as ‘comma f**ker’.

BOTH correct ? That doesn't really answer the question. And this has absolutely nothing to do with JRR.

He's asking if the story about Häyhä is true or not. (I think)

I feel inclined to suspect that it is embellished but at least contains some nuggets of truth.

the general story is true and Häyhä does have as many kills as claimed with his rifle according to one newspaper article that also gives figures of 219 with a rifle and about same numbers with a submachine gun.
Häyhä however did not kept a personal score at the beginning of the war about 50 were counted by his comrades so that much is debatable at least.
He was shot through a cheek from a close range when their positions were overrun and company was ordered to retreat says the article which might explain why he wasn't killed by that explosive bullet.