Day of the Dead, National Novel Writing Month, and Krashen's bibliography

Today is the Day of the Dead, and I would be remiss if I didn't post this.  It's a beautiful little story that illustrates effectively the sense of exuberance of many Day of the Dead celebrations, a concept that some Americans struggle to understand. 

It's also National Novel Writing Month, which means I'm going to take a swing at writing one of my novels again.  I wrote 576 words yesterday, and so far this morning, I've written another 406.  Both of these are pretty far off of the 1200 daily average one needs to hit the target 50,000 by the end of the month, but I'll make it!  I'm pretty sure I know where the story goes next. 

Stephen Krashen just posted a bibliography to the moreTPRS listserv.  It is a collection of a whole lot of studies done in the last 50 years, comparing the effectiveness of implicit language learning versus explicit language learning.  I post it here mostly so I can find it again.  If I ever end up getting a doctorate in language acquisition, this is probably where my reading will begin.

SKrashen: Evidence that "implicit learning" (subconscious language acquisition) results in L1-like brain processing.

When I find stuff I don't have time to deal with

Acceso is a bundle of digital learning materials for intermediate-level Spanish learners (2 really good semesters of college or 2 good years of high school).  It's meant to replace textbooks.  I'll have to evaluate this before next school year; I already have people asking me about Spanish 4.  If this isn't too underneath their ability level, I might try to use it.  (Found here. http://www.oercommons.org/courses/acceso.)

National Novel Writing Month starts in November.  Their website is here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/en  I don't know if I have a point with this, but every year, I think, "It's NaNoWriMo in November.  Maybe I'll write a novel."  So I'm noting it here in case I want to do somthing about it; maybe I'll judge student interest in having some sort of novel-writing support group.