Group items tagged

"Listen or download audio of 100 characters of text in many different languages. Perfect for language students engaged in self-directed study."

"This is a fab HTML5 language learning site which tests your language skills through a series of games with 1500 words. The site collects stats on your performance. The current 21 languages include English, Spanish, German, French, Chinese, Japan, Italian, Russian, Polish and many more."

"As I stood in the school hall, during an assembly on National Languages Day, I felt such pride, but equally astonishment at how the children had embraced the task of saying hello in as many languages as possible. I watched in amazement as the 34th child stood up in front of the school to share his knowledge of yet another greeting from a different country. I don't know whether it was the sheer volume of children or their confidence whilst standing in front of the school and speak a different language that struck me most, but whatever it was, made me reflect on how I had come to be in this moment."

"It is often claimed that people who are bilingual are better than monolinguals at learning languages. Now, the first study to examine bilingual and monolingual brains as they learn an additional language offers new evidence that supports this hypothesis, researchers say. The study, conducted at Georgetown University Medical Center and published in the journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, suggests that early bilingualism helps with learning languages later in life."

I shudder, thinking back to my differentiation for EAL students at the start. I Google translated the whole PowerPoint, brimming with pride at my achievement. It was sadly, as the kids would say, an epic fail. It didn't make sense. The students were…

Guide to getting started with languages with younger pupils.

Languages Special

A great site for learning Mandarin with fun games. Some of the instructions are in Chinese.

A superb app for any one looking at learning basic Mandarin Chinese. Play the game to listen and see the language. There are many different types of questions, but most are multiple choice or click and drag from a selection of choices. Questions start out easy and there is support and 'hint' buttons to help you. You can download each lesson as you reach it, or download everything if you plan to use it offline. All the language you have met is stored in a word bank and use your microphone to compare your pronunciation to the recordings.

"nstruction in English and in a child's home language in the preschool and early elementary years leads to the best outcomes for the youngest dual-language learners, both in terms of academic-content achievement and as English-language proficiency, a new research review and policy brief concludes."

A key new position statement from ACTFL

Where in the world are you? Use knowledge of geography and languages to identify the locations of random Google street views.

This is a fun geography game where you are transported to a random part of the world through Google Street Map and you must explore and guess where you are. It's a wonderful way to expand children's knowledge of the world. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/PSHE%2C+RE%2C+Citizenship%2C+Geography+%26+Environmental

The BBC Primary Mandarin site is a wonderful place to begin learning Mandarin Chinese with videos and other resources. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Mandarin+%26+Chinese+culture

This is a wonderfully designed site to learn Mandarin Chinese. It uses a huge collection of Chinese TV programmes and movie clips with interactive and dual-language subtitles. Click on a Chinese character is see the translation and hear the pronunciation. You can set your ability level and also what sort of media you are interested in. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Mandarin+%26+Chinese+culture

The Online Encyclopedia of Writing Systems and Languages Alphabets and other writing systems Writing & Speech | Types of writing systems | Abjads | Alphabets | Alphasyllabaries | Syllabaries | Semanto-phonetic scripts | Undeciphered scripts | Alternative scripts | A-Z index | Direction index Constructed scripts For natural languages | For conlangs | Phonetic scripts | Adapted scripts | Fictional scripts Languages Tips on learning languages | Language-related articles | Celtic languages | Alphabetic index | Index by writing system | Videos Language learning software | Learn Hebrew online Multilingual pages Useful phrases | Idioms | Numerals | Numbers | Colours | Kinship terms | Signs | Tongue twisters | Language names | Country names | UDHR | Tower of Babel | Songs

This is a superb site for finding downloadable podcast for kids to learn Mandarin. Not all the resources are free, but there are lots of really useful resource that are, including over a hundred audio files lessons and for learning pinyin. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Mandarin+%26+Chinese+culture