Thank you for reading and for commenting.

I read the article for which you provided a link. I wonder, however, re: the intersection of the forgetting curve and learning disabilities.

Re: reinforcing learning in the classroom: Lots of recycling of previously learned material, thus making the old seem new, and the new seem old. Also, students use the language, and in the process, activate the long-term memory.

Remembering information is difficult task. We understand the forgetting curve. At Mango Languages we incorporate many areas for quizzing so that the user has many opportunities to reinforce the knowledge and foreign language they are learning.

Here is a link to the theory on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve

How do you reinforce learning in the classroom?

I agree with much of what you have said. However, given that race is socially constructed, and socially constructed by those who deem themselves as racially superior, the ability to self-identify is complex and complicated.

Why not let people decide what to call themselves - and decide whether to use terms of culture, of race, of heritage, etc, etc? Why should the choice belong to society, how to label people and groups of people?

It's our race-obsession that is strange, not other people's discomfort with it.

BTW: I *do* teach the vosotros. :)

When I studied Spanish in grade school, we learned the Mexican variety, and we weren't taught the "vosotros" forms of the verbs -- "That's not used any more," we were told. Of course, the first time I corresponded with an IBM colleague in Spain, I found out that isn't true. Sed cuidado.