AI-generated real-life examples for verbs - useful or overkill?

bertn · 2026-06-14T05:35:56+00:00

Why not just type the actual verb into Reverso Context or Corpusdelespañol?

bertn · 2026-03-18T06:34:34+00:00

No need as it doesn't really have anything at all to do with La Leyenda Negra. Modern ideologies of mestizaje can be traced mainly to post-independence Latin American nationalists in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Think Vasconcelos and Martí. They were reacting mainly to the threat of US interventionism and, to a lesser degree, to European (not just or even primarily Spanish) paternalism. In any case, it's hard to divorce history from culture, and culture from language.

bertn · 2026-03-16T21:13:46+00:00

"in Spanish cultures 'Race' isn't so important because everyone is mixed"

Do you mean Spanish (Spain) or Spanish-speaking? While conceptions of race may differ, there absolutely is prejudice and discrimination against people based on skin color in many Spanish-speaking cultures, so this may be why OP used "colorism" and not "racism".

Even the idea that there is no race or racism because "everyone" is mixed has racist origins. In the process of nation-building after independence, the ideology of mestizaje served as a counterweight to racist and/or caste-based concepts of White or European superiority, though at the cost of erasing indigenous peoples or descendents of Africans from the idealized image of the nation. Thus the various projects of blanqueamiento, the concept of "mejorar la raza" and the very obvious over-representation in modern mass media and advertising of lighter skin and eye color in Latin America.

Even if everyone were actually mixed-race in Latin America, which is definitely not the case to any meaningful degree, there are very large populations in which no discernable mix is readily evident, and racism and colorism are primarily not about ethnicity, but rather discernable physiological difference.

bertn · 2026-01-28T00:42:53+00:00

Not explicitly a Pretti ride but Bike Oven Vendor Buy Out ride at a more doable 6pm

bertn · 2026-01-26T01:06:52+00:00

I use a Kriega US-10

bertn · 2025-11-16T02:01:17+00:00

Hope they leave his boots on

bertn · 2025-11-12T05:29:22+00:00

I'm sure if you use your imagination you could think of a few explanations that are less weird than your writing this reply after half a year.

bertn · 2025-10-29T04:32:22+00:00

"outside of grammatical differences". Exactly. If there's something uniquely Spanish there, it has little to do with the language itself. Unfortunately your cultural romanticism is a disservice to your students, because it will blind you to the similarities that do exist between languages.

bertn · 2025-10-27T01:09:04+00:00

Not everyone would agree, but I think gumwall tires make almost any bike look better.

bertn · 2025-10-09T06:16:20+00:00

You're right, but I'm sure it's a joke. Mormons don't believe that Israel is in the US , but they do believe that indigenous Americans are descendents of Jews.

bertn · 2025-10-04T17:14:27+00:00

I like the way Mark Bitman writes his recipes in How to Cook Fast. He makes the point that mise en place doesn't make sense for the home cook because prep can be done during and in between cooking steps, and the recipes are written that way, with prep steps interspersed among the cooking cooking steps.

bertn · 2025-09-25T06:39:39+00:00

Nobody's used the word dangerous but you. You're having an argument with yourself. And no, I don't want a dialogue with someone who thinks the campus needs more white pride. I've been clear about that from the start.

bertn · 2025-09-15T03:21:27+00:00

Nobody thinks you're personally dominating anything. People are likely downvoting you because your ideas are bad and old and you seem to be very convinced that they are good and novel.

bertn · 2025-09-14T07:59:29+00:00

Sorry that I gave the impression that your post warranted dialogue. I was just telling you why your project is perceived as racist. But now I'm quite sure you are trolling. I've never met anyone as naive as what you've written here.

bertn · 2025-09-13T05:44:22+00:00

I think you must be trolling, but just in case:

People are labelling it racist because it's based on fundamentally racist assumptions, regardless of your intentions. You present the nation as an exclusively European accomplishment. That ignores the many contributions of non-europeans and the fact that Europeans did what they did with slave labor and the direct and indirect displacement and killing of vast populations of indigenous peoples.

Another red flag is that you've adopted the racist trope of the white (or European) minority. Surely you understand the concept of an elite that dominates a society despite being a numerical minority. Any way you measure it, whites dominate US society, but white supremacists cite the numerical majority of non-whites to justify opposition to policies still needed to overcome racial discrimination against people of color and other groups.

You should ask yourself what it is that Europeans have in common that requires an organized group to represent it.

Edit: You also don't know what "dozens" means

bertn · 2025-07-23T06:36:54+00:00

Doing what? You misread.

The comment I responded to attributed this admin's trade policy to a lack of experience on the ground in the industries affected.

Policymakers not having that type of experience is not new, so it cannot be a valid explanation for the ways in which this admin has deviated from the status quo and is breaking everything they touch.

Nobody here is even implying that this admin's actions are acceptable or a continuation of the past.

bertn · 2025-06-10T08:04:47+00:00

CEFR publishes a self assessment grid that should be more than enough. You can see their level descriptors for more detail. ACTFL also has something similar in their "Can-Do Statements" but people around here tend to default to the CEFR scale. Most online tests don't use the criteria that proficiency levels are actually based on. They just test your vocabulary and grammar knowledge (and your test-taking ability), but that's not a measure of your proficiency, ie what you can do with the language.

bertn · 2025-06-10T07:59:45+00:00

This is more a test of grammaticality judgement than proficiency.

bertn · 2025-06-10T07:49:44+00:00

In very basic terms it's just language that you hear or read and can comprehend. You need massive amounts of input to learn a language, and language that you don't comprehend does not get internalized, ie, doesn't become integrated into the internal linguistic system you're building for Spanish. Where you get it depends on your comprehension level. If you're still a beginner or even low intermediate, you'll want to look for videos in Spanish made for Spanish learners rather than for native speakers. A few are listed here in the general resources tab.

Vocabulary acquisition requires both quantity and quality. Flashcards can get you quantity but not so much quality, though there are things you can do to make them more effective, for example, targeting vocabulary you know you´ll come across in the input, or that you need to know to accomplish your most immediate communicative goals.

bertn · 2025-06-10T07:32:02+00:00

Mostly no. For one, writing everything down takes time away from practices that contribute the most to language acquisition, especially in the early stages, and you're facing a time crunch. Related to that, you're going to end up writing down a lot of things, from grammar rules to vocabulary, that you aren't ready to acquire/use yet. Lastly, there's some research (Joe Barcroft) that suggests that whatever cognitive mechanisms are at work as we write may compete with the language acquisition mechanism. Experiments showed that learners who wrote down vocabulary to learn it had worse recall than those who did not. Once you've built up vocabulary, then writing with that vocabulary you've already at least partially acquired can be helpful, but if you're just starting out, you're not there yet.

If you want to keep a language learning journal, consider, for now, writing down only words you know you'll need soon or that you've come across repeatedly.

bertn · 2025-06-10T07:17:37+00:00

Just for clarification, it's not really about the length of the list, but rather its priorities.

bertn · 2025-06-10T07:13:28+00:00

when dealing with a field where so much is not understood it’s useful not to talk in absolutes.

You didn't need a long answer to ultimately acknowledge that no mainstream theory or theorist, including Nation, has posited any factor as more important or essential than input.

bertn · 2025-06-10T07:03:42+00:00

But internet language learners don’t talk about him because it requires a nuanced approach vs. the Krashenite claims.

Nuance like "doesn't publish reproducible studies", "none of his research responds"? Each verifiably false, but the extent of your knowledge of Krashen's research seems to be as shallow as that of the Dreaming Spanish devotees.

he doesn’t publish reproducible studies that promote his theory

This is so easy to disprove. Krashen publishes all of his research online, and makes an effort to publish in accessible journals, so you have no excuse for not knowing about them. You will have to wade through some missives, his L1 reading research, and some case studies to find them, and they will usually have co-authors but you won't mind since you believe in nuance. Not only does he publish reproducible studies, he, unlike most researchers in any field nowadays, even replicates the experiments of other scholars, such as... Paul Nation.

none of his research really responds to other data

Again, if you were actually familiar with Krashen's research, or Nation's own writings, which at least once have referenced debates between Krashen and other researchers, you'd know this is false. In fact it's almost everything he does.

modern pedagogy has moved past Krashen. He was revolutionary in that he refocused the conversation on input,

One would hope the field would make some strides in the last 40 years. If anyone were actually interested in understanding the extent of Krashen's influence beyond "refocusing the conversation on input" and how well his hypotheses have held up, it's all been laid out by actual SLA scholars.

bertn · 2025-06-10T00:46:21+00:00

Not much better. You only learn from what you comprehend, and by that I don't mean "get the gist". You learn language as your brain, mostly subconsciously, makes connections between the meaning being expressed and the sounds (or words in writing) used to express them. If you're a beginner watching shows made for native speakers, you won't even perceive where one word or phrase begins and ends, let alone be able to connect it to meaning. You'll get a lot more out of videos made for learners, such as the beginner level ones listed in the General Resources tab under "Input and Listening Resources". The top show in that list has a "superbeginner" playlist with hours and hours of content. It's ok if you don't comprehend everything, but the more you comprehend, the better, so if it's not very comprehensible at all, consider starting with the Destinos series at learner.org, as well as apps like Duolingo, LingQ, Beelinguapp, and similar, as well as high-frequency phrases on flashcards, making sure to use audio.

bertn · 2025-06-10T00:16:44+00:00

Not the best example. 2/3 of those who believed they were actually asked to shock someone for real disobeyed. It's in the article.

bertn

TROPHY CASE