Touch Typing and Learning English

Reading through the webheads' messages, the topic of touch-typing came up. I'm of the generation that was taught to touch type in school. I remember there were some parents who didn't want their daughters learning to touch type because they were afraid it would restrict their future opportunities to secretarial work. And then a decade later typing classes were so unpopular that many schools stopped offering them. Fast forward a couple decades to the early nineties and I remember how my colleagues who were about 10 years younger than me would say they were too old to learn to use a computer, then they'd look at me and say, but you're older than me, why aren't you computer-phobic? Making the transition from my clunky portable typewriter to a fancy electric IBM (with typeset balls for different fonts!) to using Wordstar on an Apple IIe to WordPerfect to Word has all been a pretty natural progression. Today students learn keyboarding skills from an early age, and no one doubts the value, but who would have thought that my 9th-grade typing class in 1969 would turn out to be one of the most useful courses I ever had?

Occasionally a few of my Quebecois students will feel that they are somehow being very patriotic to la belle province by refusing to learn English. They conclude that if they only speak French they will help this province keep its uniqueness. I point out to them that learning English by no way means they need to lose their French. But if they expect to trade with not just Canada and the US, but with Japan and China and India and Russia....they'd better face the fact that it's not going to be in French. Even within Quebec, recent studies have shown that at every level of the employment ladder, bilingual employees make on average $7000 more per year than their monolingual counterparts.

I wonder what the differential is for those without typing skills.

Dabbling in Music

The Dabbler has been dabbling in everything the last couple of weeks: blogging, RSS, html, not to mention painting, music, writing and cross-country skiing. The so-called session "off" that I am enjoying this winter has me as busy as ever. I'm working on an ESL textbook, but at the same time learning as much as I can about web-based tools while playing drums in a band and trying to paint a masterpiece or two. In this post, I'll talk about my latest musical experience.

My band is made up of 5 obstreperous musical neophytes. We're all Boomers, parents and pedagogues of some sort or another. Last year we performed bits and pieces of various tunes for a student awards ceremony. This year we decided to work toward recording a CD. Mind you, nothing we sing is original, we just want to force our tunes on our families anytime, anywhere.

Yesterday was our first recording session which meant all the pressure was on MEEEEE.....as the drummer. Each instrument will be recorded on a different track, the drums first, then the guitar and bass, then the keyboards and the last track will be the voices.

I learned that recording music is a grand exercise in cheating, I mean editing. So if I hit the crash a nano-second too late, we go back to that section and our friend on the equipment pushes the button to rerecord my attack on the cymbal at just the right moment until I get it right. We got through the six tunes we've prepared so far and now I get to go to Florida for three weeks while my bandmates record the other tracks!!!

Although most of our songs are in English, I'm the only anglophone and I don't sing. The first song we ever played was called "La complainte du phoque en Alaska" or more simply "La Phoque". It's a very sweet Quebecois tune about a lonesome seal in Alaska whose girlfriend left him to join a circus in Chicago. The only problem is that the word for seal in French is "phoque" which means my family might be a little uncomfortable playing our CD for their friends. When we played for the awards ceremony everyone in the audience--teachers, parents, business people--were singing along with us, and I'm sure that not a soul found anything censorable with the lyrics!

The tunes we recorded yesterday were:

La Phoque (Beau Dommage)
Bad Moon Rising (or: Baboon Rising) (CCR)
Every Breath You Take (Sting)
Dust in the Wind (or: Just in the Wind) (The Scorpions)
Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd)
Give a Little Bit (Supertramp)

Once we get everything recorded and I find out how to add audio, I'll add a link. If you already know how to add an audio link--please advise me in a comment!

Winter Winds

What would we do without the arts to warm us through this arctic season. Right now here in Quebec the temperature is -27*C and with the windchill it's -40. You may remember that -40 is where Fahrenheit and Centigrade are equal so don't even think of converting it! It's COLD. When it gets this cold the sun shines brightly and the sky releases no snow. For us, snow means a heat wave. Honestly. In fact, we know it's spring when we get a big snowfall since it's too cold to snow in the dead of winter. One thing though, as penetratingly cold as the temperature is, winter skies are an artist's fantasy--the pinks and purple swaths of color show the subtleties and restraint of a professional aquarellist.