Group items tagged

1) How did social media - and social network sites in particular - gain traction in the US? And how should we think about network effects? 2) What are some core differences between how teens leverage social media and how adults engage with these same tools? 3) How is social media reconfiguring social infrastructure and where is all of this going?

"Truespel is the World's first "pronunciation guide spelling system" based American English, the world's most important language." Hem, cough.

Learn how copyright issues affected Sieglinde Schoen Smith's new book, based on her interpretation of a 1906 German children's book of the same title. One of the 2008 Growing Good Kids (sm) Excellence in Children's LIterature award; connected to the Junior Master Gardner Program and the American Horticulture Society.

[Davies/BYU] 400+ million word corpus of American English, 1990-2009. Compare to the BNC and ANC. Large, balanced, up-to-date, and freely-available online.

On May 14, 2012 a 15-second video presented in American Sign Language will appear on the CBS Super Screen at Times Square, where more than 300,000 pedestrians traffic daily. This is possibly the first video placement by a Deaf-run agency at Times Square, one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world. This public service announcement is produced by Abused Deaf Women's Advocacy Services and underwritten by Convo Communications. ADWAS wants to thank Convo for making this momentous event possible!

Support fair trade and sustainable employment in developing countries. Ten Thousand Villages connects the stories and wares of world artisans with the North American marketplace.

The mission of MPIR is to provide FREE access and introduction to the wonderful world of Old Time Radio. Turn that TV off, throw it out the door. Your mind is better, and gets better reception! Old Time Radio are radio plays from the 30's 40's and 50's, long before television. Rich, in history, American culture, and good clean family entertainment.

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

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.

This tutorial will help you chose the right focus words to emphasize when speaking with a North American Accent.

Stories from an American Life

"When it comes to history, science, and global affairs. Americans are notoriously uninformed. Too many of us shrug off our inability to" do math" or speak a second language. And in effect, we assume that these capacities are somehow dispensable, however they are not. Higher education in America is experiencing a similar misassumption......."