Powerful interactive resources designed for whole-class teaching. Online educational games, classroom resources and lesson activities for interactive whiteboards and data projectors. Put some fun into your lessons with our exceptional science, maths, English language, literature, history, music physical education and modern foreign languages software." />/css/resourceList.css
"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."
The ability to speak the foreign language in question can safely be described as the principal objective of learning foreign languages. However, it can often prove difficult to assess your pupils' ability to speak the foreign language in the classroom, as time and numbers often conspire against us.
Despite their spectacular growth in both daily life and mainstream education, little research to date has been conducted concerning the use of social networking sites in foreign language learning. The aim of this study, therefore, is to examine the use of such sites to learn a foreign language. Using an auto-ethnographic approach that included self-aware participation, learner diaries and peer debriefing, we investigated the social networking site Livemocha to study Korean from our perspectives as native speakers and experienced teachers of English. Specifically, we focused our questions on aspects of socio-collaborative principles and practice. Results of a grounded, thematic analysis indicate that the site had number of counter-productive pedagogical impediments to language learning that included, for example, flaws in site design. We conclude our paper with suggestions for improved foreign language learning through social networking sites.
This site gives college and university instructors and teaching assistants an introduction to the language teaching methods that are currently used in U.S. universities. The content is based on the material in Modules for the Professional Preparation of Teaching Assistants in Foreign Languages (Grace Stovall Burkart, ed.; Center for Applied Linguistics, 1998). The site was developed for the National Capital Language Resource Center (NCLRC) by Catharine Keatley and Deborah Kennedy under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, CFDA #84.015A.
I have been using Duolingo since November and is it fantastic. Not only is it free, but the system works. I am studying German and Spanish and I am amazed at not only how much I have learned, but how much I have retained.
HOW would you rank "important" languages? If asked to rattle them off, many people start with English, but after that are reluctant to go further. Important how, they ask. One approach would be to look at people and money: surely a language is important if it is spoken by lots of people, in countries with great wealth (and presumably, therefore, power).
This is a beautifully designed resource for learning English through the learner's native language. Because the resources teach the same English, it is ideal for using with English classes with learners from all over the world. The flash resources are great and the lessons are arranged in categories.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English+As+An+Additional+Language
Listen to work documents, homework, PowerPoint presentations, emails, RSS feeds, blogs and novels while you relax, commute or exercise. Proofread, learn a new language, multi-task, and use YAKiToMe! for entertainment. YAKiToMe! speaks multiple languages (English, Spanish, French, German, ...) with both male and female voices using the world's best text to speech (TTS) synthesis technologies.
A useful time saving resource which makes spoken mp3 files from Word documents, text files, PDFs, RSS feeds, webpages and more. Lots of different languages can be converted.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+&+Web+Tools
We have decided to start using this online service as part of the online toolkit for our French courses. While some of its functions may be found in CMS systems and others in more narrowly focused website (i.e., VoiceThread), Schoolshape does so, so much more. In particular it duplicates or even surpasses the capabilities of traditional language lab software. The big differences are 1) its price (more than 1/10 the cost in our case), 2) greater flexibility in terms of use and format support and 3) user friendliness.
From the corporate website:
Schoolshape does everything offered by other language labs, and more besides: CD quality audio recording High quality video recording Audio broadcast Video broadcast One-to-one audio calls One-to-one video calls Audio bookmarking Audio group discussion Teacher-controlled pairing Random pairing Group text discussion (forum) Private messaging Pronunciation exercises Dialogue exercises Audio and video upload and download Supports mp3, flv, wav, wmv, mp4, ogg formats Supports pictures in jpg, gif, png formats Supports flash animations and games Supports YouTube video Download audio for use with mp3 players Supports Windows XP, Vista, 7, MacOS 10.4+, Linux, ChromeOS, iPad 2, Android 2.2+.
The thing that worries most non-specialists teaching language is pronouncing words correctly from a book. This is where Forvo is is priceless. Native speaker users and the site itself have uploaded audio clips of word for us non native speakers to copy. The site has 250+ languages uploaded. I tested the Mandarin section, as I understand that, and it was faultless. An amazing resource.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Languages%2C+Culture+%26+International+Projects