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# Difficulty : Rating 1 (easiest) to 5 (hardest) of the difficulty of learning the language for an English speaker. Many additional factors will affect the difficulty you will experience when trying to learn a given language, especially the other languages you already speak. Such a rating system has obvious limitations but I take great care in assessing the difficulty of each language. Many of these ratings have been discussed on the language forum (see for example the discussion about Korean). People always complain that the rating given to their native language is 'too low' - I wonder how they would now since they never had to learn it as a foreign language. If you can make a case for a different difficulty rating for a specific language you are welcome to bring this up in the language forum. # Popularity : Subjective rating of how popular the language is with Western learners. This obviously varies a great deal from country to country, but is a good overall indicator of the availability of learning material for the language. I visit many physical language bookshops as well as some online ones and think I have a rather objective basis for establishing 'popularity' of a language with foreign language learners in the number of courses and books available for each language. # GDP : Nominal GDP of the countries where the languages is spoken. This gives an indication of the economic importance of the language on the international scene. We have not used PPP GDP as it emphasizes non-tradable goods. When a country uses several languages we used the percentage of speakers of the language multiplied by the country's GDP. If you feel that economic factors are meaningless in language learning, please disregard this column. # Countries : Number of countries where the language is an official language or where there are important communities who speak this language at home. This gives you an indication of the spread of the language across the globe. Some languages (English, Spa

In the United States, about 70 new federal grants for language education to school districts over the past year, more than half include Mandarin programs. A number of National Foreign Language Center's long-standing recommendations gained support. These include development of the language capabilities of U.S. heritage speakers, teaching languages to higher levels, development of improved K-12 programming in critical languages and articulation among K-12 programs, higher education programs, study abroad, and the world of work. NFLC website

LANGUAGES AND LEARNING - THE PATH I HAVE FOLLOWED "with my "Languages and Learning" blog at http://amandasalt.blogspot.com I also joined Twitter, although I found it a lonely and pointless activity initially. I now find it to be one of my main sources of CPD (Continuing Professional Development) and also a place where people are generous with their praise and genuine in their concern. A visit to the Isle of Wight for a languages and ICT conference, organised by the amazing Joe Dale (www.joedale.typepad.com), added to my enthusiasm, and as I approach the end of this academic year, I have created a wiki for my pupils (http://spanishingrosvenor.wikispaces.com) and also dabbled with Audacity, Goanimate, Voki, ToonDoo, Animoto and Voice Thread, amongst others.Today I ran workshops on all of these as well as an overview of blogging, Twitter and Diigo."

LANGUAGES AND LEARNING - THE PATH I HAVE FOLLOWED with my "Languages and Learning" blog at http://amandasalt.blogspot.com I also joined Twitter, although I found it a lonely and pointless activity initially. I now find it to be one of my main sources of CPD (Continuing Professional Development) and also a place where people are generous with their praise and genuine in their concern. A visit to the Isle of Wight for a languages and ICT conference, organised by the amazing Joe Dale (www.joedale.typepad.com), added to my enthusiasm, and as I approach the end of this academic year, I have created a wiki for my pupils (http://spanishingrosvenor.wikispaces.com) and also dabbled with Audacity, Goanimate, Voki, ToonDoo, Animoto and Voice Thread, amongst others.Today I ran workshops on all of these as well as an overview of blogging, Twitter and Diigo.

Myths and Reality-Foreign Languages skills for the 21st century? - http://t.co/y9SnR9OIiD

Myths and Reality-Foreign Languages skills for the 21st century? - http://t.co/y9SnR9OIiD

Products to practice different languages created by the Defense Language Institute - Foreign Languages Center

Translate and search! Use your native language to search for images from foreign language websites.

Web presence of the Ohio Foreign Language Association.

Without clear communication, the whole lot is irrelevant. Imagine being in a foreign country, thousands of miles away from home, where the natives speak a language you barely know.

Database of resources for teaching 2nd languages - resources include animations, sound files, activities, software, lesson plans...

In today's world learning another language is by far easier than ever before. We have unlimited access that we never had before. New programs and iterative tactics have made it possible for anyone to learn a foreign language. This website was designed to give you the view access to great system that I have personal used to learn another language.

Companies will definitely increase revenue if they have their presence internationally in multilingual international languages. Most internet users will naturally feel more comfortable and understand a company better if their information, products or services are presented in their native language and will increase the scope of adding new users and customers. If you want to get your website localized ensure that you get the expertise of both a website designer and a cross cultural communications consultancy to have maximum impact on the target audience.

Learn Foreign Languages faster thanks to these tips. More tips published every other day. Improve your vocabulary, your grammar, your pronunciation, and have fun becoming fluent in a new language!

Easy, interactive lessons based on videos for language learning. Learn from flashcards, listening practice, and exercises effortlessly. Watch videos with interactive transcripts.

on-line modules for foreign language teachers

Printing cards is most effective technic in learning foreign language. Here is a simple and awesome generator of printable cards with automatic reflect of image. Just type your words and translation then press "Foreign view" button and "print". Then revolve paper in printer, press "Your language" button and again "Print".

Students of foreign languages, often English and tourists often purchase electronic translators to help them communicate. This article gives the low-down on buying an electronic translator

Dave Dodgson, who teaches English as a foreign language to elementary-school students in Turkey, has students use the web-based tool Wetoku to create split-screen video interviews. In this blog post, Dodgson shares a project in which his students used the tool to record, present and archive an interview related to the study of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." The tool allowed them valuable practice in speaking and listening in their non-native language.

Translation services are used in various aspects of communication, be it for translating a book into another language for publication, communicating with overseas clients who do not understand English, for creating multilingual websites etc.