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Isabelle Jones

When do people learn languages? - 0 views

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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
International School of Central Switzerland

Profile Publisher - ReadWriteThink - 4 views

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    "With this interactive tool, teens can create printed social networking or magazine/newspaper profiles for themselves, peers or family members whom they have interviewed, or fictional characters from books they have read. Featuring components of popular online social networking applications, this tool engages teens and provides a means for adults to talk about safe, responsible online behavior, such as having an awareness of who could be seeing online profiles and limiting highly personal information."
Fiona Joyce

Lire & RéCréer - site de lecture pour les enfants et leurs parents - histoire... - 3 views

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    Pour lire, chanter, colorier, rire, s'émouvoir avec papa et maman. Pour réjouir les yeux et oreilles des jeunes et des vieux enfants.
Isabelle Jones

Crossword Builder - 0 views

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    Asymptopia Crossword Builder is a JavaScript education application that runs in any modern internet browser but does not require an internet connection. The simple controls allow teachers or parents to create unlimited math crosswords, or supply their own word:hint pairs. Support has recently been added for French, Spanish, pt-Brasillian, Kiswahili, and special characters (accents, tildes etc), in general. Some suggested uses include: cities, countries, lattitudes and longitudes to teach geography and spherical trig, simultaneously; Periodic table word:hint pairs; Language[i]:Language[j] word:hint pairs, for foreign language learning exercise; Terminology practice with virtually any other subject.
Andrew Graff

TPR Foreign Language Instruction and Dyslexia - 2 views

  • For language teachers, this accepted presumption of incapacity is a huge hurdle, because it keeps many children and adults from even dipping a toe into the language pool!
  • TPR was and is a wonderful way to turn that presumption on its head and show the learner that, not only can we learn, but under the right circumstances, it's fun!
  • When we are infants our exposure to language is virtually inseparable from physical activities. People talk to us while tickling us, feeding us, changing our diapers... We are immersed in a language we don't speak, in an environment that we explore with every part of our body. Our parents and caregivers literally walk and talk us through activities - for example, we learn lots of vocabulary while someone stands behind us at the bathroom sink, soaping our hands until they're slippery, holding them under warm water, rubbing or scrubbing, all the while talking about what we're doing and what it feels like. In this way, movement and feeling are intimately tied to the process of internalizing the language.
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  • Classes are active - you are not in your seat all period. The focus for the first weeks is on listening and moving in response to what the teacher says.
  • There is heavy emphasis on listening comprehension, because the larger your listening comprehension vocabulary is, the larger your speaking vocabulary will become.
  • Lots of language is learned in happy circumstances, especially while you're having fun.
  • In a TPR class, grammar and syntax are not taught directly. Rather, the teacher designs activities that expose the student to language in context, especially in the context of some kind of movement.
  • I'm asked with some regularity about appropriate foreign language instruction for students with a dyslexic learning or thinking style. I'm quick to recommend finding a school or program that includes - or even better - relies on TPR as its principal instructional strategy.
  • Typically, the initial TPR lessons are commands involving the whole body - stand up, sit down, turn around, walk, stop.
  • Fairly soon, the teacher quietly stops demonstrating, and the students realize that they somehow just know what to do in response to the words.
  • You're also encouraged to trust your body, because sometimes it knows what to do before your brain does!
  • As class proceeds, nouns, adverbs, prepositions are added until before you know it, students are performing commands like, 'Stand up, walk to the door, open it, stick your tongue out, close the door, turn around, hop to Jessica's desk, kiss your right knee four times, and lie down on Jessica's desk."
  • It's just that the instruction is designed to facilitate language acquisition, not learning a language through analysis, memorization and application of rules.
  • But consider your native language: you did not need to learn the grammar and syntax of your native language in order to learn to speak it. You learned those structures, unconsciously as you learned to speak.
  • The first is that in a TPR classroom, the focus is not on analysis of linguistic structures, but on internalizing those structures for unconscious use.
  • When we use TPR strategies to teach, our goal is truly to be able to understand, speak, read and write the language, not "about" the language.
  • I think this creativity, the synthetic rather than analytic experience, the low stress, and generally accepting environment engineered by the teacher, are a large part of the reason so many students, including students with learning challenges, find TPR classes so effective and enjoyable.
  • Within these real experiences, students are free to generate all kinds of expressions using the language they're studying, and to lead instruction in unique directions.
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