Welcome
to a Portal
to Guide
Your Exploration
of the Pedagogy
of Language.

¡Hola! Bonjour, Guten Tag, and Hello, MAT interns!

Welcome to a special region of Planet Gnosis, an open-access web devoted to education, knowledge, and learning. You have entered the Special Methods, Summer 2008, portal, the doorway to your exploration of the theories and methods that comprise foreign language pedagogy.

You will find links to several pages of interest and importance on the left sidebar of this page. For general information about your class and your student responsibilities, and for special announcements about your program of study, visit the MAT Interns page on a regular basis.

Click on Syllabus and Calendar to link to those documents. Other places to explore include the Glossary, a work-in-progress for defining terminology and acronyms that pertain to our profession; the Reading Room, a wonderful site full of surprises and important information; Bio Poems, a reflective assignment related to your choice of becoming a foreign language teacher; and Web Links, another work-in-progress that you will help develop.

I encourage you to explore the other pages of Planet Gnosis. Essays about the challenges and opportunities of secondary and higher education are published on the Gnosis homepage. I write about professional conferences, cultural events, nature, and issues related to teaching and research in education and languages. Guest writers also contribute to our online community of teachers, students, writers, and artists.

The right sidebar on the Planet Gnosis homepage displays links to classes in the MAT program that I have taught during the past four years. Even though they are not current, the class archives include reports and essays that may provide insight and useful information to assist your MAT experience.

The Planet Gnosis right sidebar also features connections to other sites on CornDancer, the host for our integrated family of cybersites, and to professional websites important to educators. The E-Folio is an example of a performance assessment I completed as a PhD student for an ESL endorsement class. I encourage you to explore our developmental website for your own mind and spirit!

My students, I look forward to our mutual exploration of foreign language pedagogy. We are all life-long learners!

Dr. Bowles, aka Dr. FAB

Freddie A. Bowles
Assistant Professor of Foreign Language Education
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Peabody Hall 304A
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, AR 72701
Office: 479-575-3035
fbowles@uark.edu

Posted on Monday, July 7, 2008

   This is the first step toward THE One World Language.
   Step Back: Balderdash and bombast in a binomial!