Douglas Bower

Though the Worldwide Economic Crisis seems to have the world in a tizzy of worry and despair, Gringos are still coming to Mexico. I remember last year at this time unprecedented numbers of Gringos were walking the streets of my adopted Mexican home of Guanajuato. The city of Guanajuato, that...

The wife and I walked downtown from our East Guanajuato Barrio today. On the way back, I stopped in one of the local Spanish Schools. I wanted to talk with the guy in charge to see about making an appointment to talk about taking classes again. The school was abuzz...

I've enjoyed my return to Spanish class here in Guanajuato immensely. It's been a little strange because basically one ends up taking classes mainly with other Americans with a few other nationalities thrown in for good measure. I haven't been around my fellow Americans in so long that it's taken...

The way in which adult Africans, and I believe many of the adults I've met in the resort areas of Mexico, have developed a high degree of spoken fluency is the same way in which we learned our native tongue as children-Passive Listening. If ever there was a "natural way"...

In second language acquisition research conducted in 1974-75, 1980 and 1987, it was postulated that the acquisition of grammatical forms followed a natural and predictable order. How this happens is contingent upon multiple factors. The learner's age and the learner's circumstances seemed not to be a significant influence on this...

Georgi Lozanov, a Bulgarian psychologist, introduced what he undoubtedly thought an original and brilliant premise: "... students naturally set up psychological barriers to learning - based on fears that they will be unable to perform and are limited in terms of their ability to learn." Anyone who has ever taught American...

Realizing that The Grammar Translation Method of second language instruction did not work to impart spoken proficiency in the target language, in the late 1800's, The Direct Method surfaced in language instruction. The need for a system that worked to teach spoken competence is what drove those to create The...

Going to the host country of the target language has always taken on a sort of mythical quality. It has been believed that you could not learn a foreign language unless you went to the country associated with the target language and engaged in something called Total Immersion. Total Immersion is...

Why should an American learn a foreign language in the 21st century? What and where is the need? If we are not connected in close proximity to our International Neighbors, as are Europeans, then why should Americans learn another language? Why should Americans learn Spanish? Spanish is the most commonly spoken...

If you want to communicate from Mexico to anywhere else in the world, do not use the Postal Service. If it is not the worst in the world, it has to be in the top ten. I have harangued and harangued about this in countless columns and articles. The Mexican...