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Ning community for visitors to www.ictineducation.org and the newsletter, Computers in Classrooms

Advice for language learners General warning: what follows may or may not apply to you. It's based on what linguistics knows about people in general (but any general advice will be ludicrously inappropriate for some people) and on my own experience (but you're not the same as me). If you have another way of learning that works, more power to you. Given the discussion so far, the prospects for language learning may seem pretty bleak. It seems that you'll only learn a language if you really need to; but the fact that you haven't done so already is a pretty good indication that you don't really need to. How to break out of this paradox? At the least, try to make the facts of language learning work for you, not against you. Exposure to the language, for instance, works in your favor. So create exposure. * Read books in the target language. * Better yet, read comics and magazines. (They're easier, more colloquial, and easier to incorporate into your weekly routine.) * Buy music that's sung in it; play it while you're doing other things. * Read websites and participate in newsgroups that use it. * Play language tapes in your car. If you have none, make some for yourself. * Hang out in the neighborhood where they speak it. * Try it out with anyone you know who speaks it. If necessary, go make new friends. * Seek out opportunities to work using the language. * Babysit a child, or hire a sitter, who speaks the language. * Take notes in your classes or at meetings in the language. * Marry a speaker of the language. (Warning: marry someone patient: some people want you to know their language-- they don't want to teach it. Also, this strategy is tricky for multiple languages.) Taking a class can be effective, partly for the instruction, but also because you can meet others who are learning the language, and because, psychologically, classes may be needed to make us give the subject matter time and attention. Self-study is too eas

free system for voice communication on the Web. It allows groups of people such as students and teachers to participate in discussion groups using their computers, using both synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous chat. It is commonly used by schools and universities for providing a 'voice board' for teaching purposes.

In fact, some of the greatest obstacles to world-language education are parents who recall their own miserable experiences. Many Americans were introduced to foreign languages in middle school or high school classes that emphasized conjugation of verbs and other dull grammatical tasks rather than relevant communication skills. "Language teaching in the U.S. has been ineffective," Stewart says. "We start it at the wrong age. Teacher skills are not great. There's a focus on grammar and translation." The result: "Adults who took three years of French don't speak a word," she states.\nBut the trend toward competency and away from conjugation is helping create a new generation of language learners, one that gains real-world skills with many practical applications.

the key here lies in the paragraph I clipped: the focus should be on competency rather than on conjugation.

An online library of free videos for learners everywhere - our goal is to gather a set of resources to help you learn just about anything, meet people who make a difference in their communities, and even discover new parts of the world. Next Vista for Learning wants to post your educational videos online, too. Everyone has an insight to share and yours may be just what some student or teacher somewhere needs!

"Nous vous souhaitons la bienvenue au Moissonneur du Projet pilote de dépôts institutionnels de l'Association des bibliothèques de recherche du Canada (ABRC). Le présent Moissonneur est le service de recherche du Projet pilote de dépôts institutionnels de l'ABRC et rassemble des documents de chacun des établissements participants du Canada. De cette façon, les utilisateurs peuvent faire une recherche ininterrompue à tous les dépôts à la fois, à l'aide d'un point d'accès commun."

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

"Introduction In recent years, the world has witnessed a growing wave of local initiatives in support of public schools. Teachers, cultural associations and civil society have been playing an active part in grassroots experiments aimed at helping schools in the creative elaboration of new educational methods, also exploiting information technologies. Here answers are coming from those directly faced with educational issues, in contrast with the more common top-down reforms, where experts' committees draw up didactic experimentation plans to be put forward to willing teachers. Experiments like that are often very effective but, unfortunately, they rarely get known beyond the immediate sphere of their promoters. Moreover, they tend to be short-lived because promoters don't have the strength to sustain them and a suitable supporting network is lacking. They are like drops in the ocean: they apparently cannot change the entire educational system. But the ocean of whole human community could be flooded by many such contained experiments that would transform it, if the most meaningful of them could be fostered, spread and developed. ..."

"MIT researcher Deb Roy wanted to understand how his infant son learned language -- so he wired up his house with videocameras to catch every moment (with exceptions) of his son's life, then parsed 90,000 hours of home video to watch "gaaaa" slowly turn into "water." Astonishing, data-rich research with deep implications for how we learn. About Deb Roy Deb Roy studies how children learn language, and designs machines that learn to communicate in human-like ways. On sabbatical from MIT Media Lab, he's working with the AI company Bluefin Labs"

Wheeler reports on findings that "Speaking two languages confers lifelong cognitive rewards that spread far beyond the improved ability to communicate" (¶1), and "The chief benefit of being bilingual is stronger 'executive control,' ... the chief building block of higher thought" (¶5). Wheeler, David L. (2011). Being bilingual: beneficial workout for the brain. Chronicle of Higher Education, Research: February 20, 2011. Retrieved August 19, 2011. from http://chronicle.com/article/Being-Bilingual-Beneficial/126462/

A huge site with lots resources to teach English as a additional language. Find games, ideas, lesson plans, quizzes and a helpful online community of students and educators. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English+As+An+Additional+Language