The best teachers are the best storytellers.

Uses are always much broader than functions, and usually far less contentious. The word function carries overtones of purpose andpropriety, of concern with why something was developed rather than with how it has actually been found useful. The function of automobiles is to transport people and objects, but they are used for a variety of other purposes--as homes, offices, bedrooms, henhouses, jetties, breakwaters, even offensive weapons.

Language is not a genetic gift, it is a social gift. Learning a new language is becoming a member of the club -the community of speakers of that language.

We are learning all the time - about the world and about ourselves. We learn without knowing that we are learning and we learn without effort every moment of the day. We learn what is interesting to us... and we learn from what makes sense to us, because there is nothing to learn from what confuses us except that it is confusing.

It is difficult to distinguish deduction from what in other circumstances is called problem-solving. And concept learning, inference, and reasoning by analogy are all instances of inductive reasoning. (Detectives typically induce, rather than deduce.) None of these things can be done separately from each other, or from anything else. They are pseudo-categories.

You can't see other people's point of view when you have only one language.

The teachers who get "burned out" are not the ones who are constantly learning, which can be exhilarating, but those who feel they must stay in control and ahead of the students at all times.