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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 this webinar, expert in eBooks Meredith Wemhoff discusses ways to engage and support learners with special needs using eBooks and audio. Using the case-study of an independent all-boys school located in Surrey, the school provides special needs students an opportunity to succeed and thrive. Many arrive to the 80-year-old institution with low self-confidence, often due to struggles they faced in traditional educational institutions caused by learning and language difficulties. This means providing a collection that meets the individual learning needs of the school's 470 students, who range in age from 8-18. ​​​​​​​ During this eye-opening webinar, Meredith will share the story of selecting, launching and promoting a digital library service that helps address learning challenges. Attendees will come away with best practices for bringing ebooks and audiobooks to their school and real-life examples of these practices in action. Don't miss out, register today!

If you want to learn how to learn English vocabulary, you need to know which words to learn.\nIf you are a teacher, you also need to know which words your students need to learn.\nCambridge English Lexicon was first published in 1980, and the fifth printing was in 1991. There might have been further printings, but it seems to be out of print now.\nTHE GOOD NEWS is that Amazon does have a few second hand copies available at very cheap prices, so get in quick if you want to buy one of these rare gems!

via @icpjones and @BloggersELT Nice review of my 'Why Do I Need a Teacher When I've Got Google?' book Thank you http://ow.ly/1ciT6k - Ian Gilbert (ThatIanGilbert) http://twitter.com/ThatIanGilbert/status/62494296447782912

"However, like everything YouTube does, captions face a tremendous challenge of scale. Every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded. How can we expect every video owner to spend the time and effort necessary to add captions to their videos? Even with all of the captioning support already available on YouTube, the majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me. To help address this challenge, we've combined Google's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions, or auto-caps for short. Auto-caps use the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice to automatically generate captions for video. The captions will not always be perfect (check out the video below for an amusing example), but even when they're off, they can still be helpful-and the technology will continue to improve with time. In addition to automatic captions, we're also launching automatic caption timing, or auto-timing, to make it significantly easier to create captions manually. With auto-timing, you no longer need to have special expertise to create your own captions in YouTube. All you need to do is create a simple text file with all the words in the video and we'll use Google's ASR technology to figure out when the words are spoken and create captions for your video. This should significantly lower the barriers for video owners who want to add captions, but who don't have the time or resources to create professional caption tracks."

VerbaLearn is jam-packed with great features to help you study more efficiently, track your progress, score higher and simply save you time! VerbaLearn's patent pending system will automatically remove words as you master them so you don't waste time studying like you used to. You can learn your words by listening to customized mp3 files or practicing examples online, track your progress, and even review all your words from your homepage whenever you need a brush-up.

Create an interactive online lesson with this brilliant site. Upload and curate all the resources for a lesson in one place and access them with one click. The site works with Office files, PDFs, flash files, small videos, images and internet links and even connects to Google Drive and Dropbox. Then simply share the link with anyone who need to use view it. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Planning+%26+Assessment

An amazing language learning site which helps learners of MFL remember words for over 200 languages by associating them with visual clues/mnemonics and score points by showing you remember the language in a variety of ways. You can listen to audio of the words you are learning. The site tracks your progress and analyses where you need improvement and it will adjust the words you are shown accordingly. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Languages%2C+Culture+%26+International+Projects

"PopuLLar is a European Union, funded, innovative, education project designed to harness music, the primary social interest of secondary school students, in to their language learning. There is a huge need to motivate secondary school students, in particular, to learn languages, focus digital competencies and be creative; and music is the key. The project will ask students to write their own lyrics to songs of their choice. They will then translate their songs in to the target language they are learning, The students will then record their song (audio or video) and share it with students all over Europe. Students will be able to combine their love of music, with creativity, literacy, digital competencies, group collaboration and, most importantly, use LWULT languages. PopuLLar is a project that is 'Owned' by the students, they work autonomously and collaboratively, teachers are guides to the project process."

Folk music in many European languages http://folkdc.eu/ The Digital Children's Folksongs for Language and Cultural Learning (Folk DC) project is a European Union project designed to motivate young language learners to engage with language learning through using Folk songs, and activities around the songs. The songs are in 10 European languages (Czech, Danish, English, Finnish, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Turkish). The project will be producing a complete package for schools (Autonomous Teacher Training Tool kit - ATTT) so that schools all over Europe can take part in the project. The project culminates in a simultaneous, live concert in 5 countries, streamed over the Internet to audiences all over Europe. School choirs will sing folk songs in non-native languages that will be streamed to the other concert venues and also made available to an Internet audience. Schools can take part in this project by: Using the resources produced by the project Suggesting your own language, culture and music activities, inspired by the project Watching the live concert (at the venue or online) - see how you can join Adding folk songs of your language - see the project Wiki You can ask more information about how you can take part here. The project will introduce an understanding of the number, richness and culture of other languages when children start to learn a foreign language and begin to understand the meaning of additional languages. It will engage children in fascinating and engaging activities that will resonate in to the future and answer the need for materials that can directly engage and motivate children to enjoy their learning.

As you know, teachers know everything. But there are some mere mortals out there who still need to ask questions. This is a fabulous site with over 80 specialist areas to ask questions to the cloud. The community will then help you find an answer. The areas include English and other languages, computing, maths, science, history and much more. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Cross+Curricular

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10 Best Online Rhyming Dictionaries . My first message  on wordpress ! Your comments needed !