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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
Claude Almansi

RConversation: From Red Guards to Cyber-vigilantism to where next? MacKinnon feb 27 09 - 0 views

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    Will the Chinese people rise above cyber-vigilantism and use the Internet to build a just and fair society governed by accountable leaders? Or will the majority be be happy to wield their new-found powers of online speech in random fashion? That's really up to them. People like Liu Xiaoyuan and Yang Hengjun and a number of others have been raising such questions. It's hard to know whether people beyond the elite intelligentsia will pay attention to such concerns. This is why the suppression and censorship of Cultural Revolution history in China is so dangerous. If people could freely write and debate about what happened under Mao, history would have less chance of repeating itself.
Claude Almansi

"Inspiring+ People - Chloe Cohen" | Universal Subtitles - 4 views

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    "Each week, we will be interviewing people who are truly inspiring. They come from all over the world, and have overcome obstacles that make life that much harder. Their stories are inspirational, and allow us to be grateful for what we have in life. "Many people have come to see disease as a gift in their lives. Often, they learn that they are more than their disease, and once freed by that certainty they go on to live the rest of the story." This week, we interviewed Chloe Cohen. A truly inspiring woman who has been dealing with Multiple Sclerosis for many years. Chloe's inner strength and determination to help her deal with MS allows us to realize that their is hope for everyone. I feel honored to be able to share Chloe's story with everyone, and I hope it gives you as much enjoyment as it has given to me. Women like Chloe are hard to come by. Too many of us give up before we even try, especially, when suffering from a disease such as MS. Chloe's openness and willingness to share her story with all of us is amazing."
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    English captioning in progress - - anyone wishing to join?
Claude Almansi

Unhide That Hidden Text, Please « Innovate Blog - 0 views

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    Adding an alternative accessible version just for blind people is discriminatory. According to accessibility guidelines - and common sense - alternative access for people with disabilities should only be used when there is no other way to make web content accessible. Besides, access to the text version would also simplify life for scholars - and for people using portable devices with a small screen: text can be resized far better than a puzzle of images with fixed width and height
Nergiz Kern

Stories About People (Biographies) in Easy-to-Understand English (ESL/EFL) - 7 views

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    Stories About People (Biographies) Text & MP3 Files There are 209 fifteen-minute audio files. That is about 52 hours of listening.
International School of Central Switzerland

Flash Meeting - 11 views

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    FlashMeeting is an easy to use online meeting application, it allows a dispersed group of people to meet from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Typically a meeting is pre-booked by a registered user and a url, containing a unique password for the meeting, is returned by the FlashMeeting server. The 'booker' passes this on to the people they wish to participate, who simply click on the link to enter into the meeting at the arranged time.
Gramarye Gramarye

Buy an Electronic Language Translator Online - 2 views

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    Two main groups of people can't live without electronic translators.\nThe first group are students who are studying in a foreign language. More often than not, English is their second language (ESL) and being able to look up words quickly is essential to student success. Electronic translators are super fast, and students with electronic translators look up more words more often than people with paper translation dictionaries.
International School of Central Switzerland

Promotion Santé Suisse: Healthy Body Weight - Health promotion - 0 views

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    Overweight is taking a heavy toll on people's health and the economy. Health Promotion Switzerland focus on activities that will increase the number of people with healthy weight. Core target groups are children and adolescents. In cooperation with cantons and other partners, the strategic area «Healthy Weight» will implement policies to halt the trend towards more and more overweight people. Most information in French and German
Dianne Krause

French Speaking People | Make cultural and professional connections in French anywhere ... - 0 views

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    Meet French-speaking people on your travels or in your own country and improve your French. Make social or professional French-speaking contacts.
Cindy Marston

Culture Crossing - 0 views

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    CultureCrossing.net is an evolving database of cross-cultural information about every country in the world. This user-built guide allows people from all walks of life to share essential tips with each other about how to navigate our increasingly borderless world with savvy and sensitivity.
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    CultureCrossing.net is an evolving database of cross-cultural information about every country in the world. This user-built guide allows people from all walks of life to share essential tips with each other about how to navigate our increasingly borderless world with savvy and sensitivity.
Claude Almansi

"Dame Tartine, chantée par Aaron Prevots" | Universal Subtitles - 0 views

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    "Ceci est un sous-titrage "karaoke" de la chanson Dame Tartine, chantée par Aaron Prevots. Voir http://people.southwestern.edu/~prevots/songs/?p=16 Enregistrement sous licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/"
Matt Crow

Speaking Multiple Languages Can Influence Children's Emotional Development - 4 views

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    In bilingual societies, people frequently switch between languages, particularly in emotional situations. Thus, the language that a person chooses to express a particular concept can help to provide cues that reveal his or her emotional state.
Cindy Marston

Visuals for Foreign Language Instruction - 10 views

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    Site contains hundreds of visual aids (illustrations) that can be used to support instructional tasks such as describing objects and people (i.e., teaching vocabulary) or describing entire events and situations (i.e., teaching grammar).
M Jesús García San Martín

Stop and Learn English: People and animals - 2 views

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    Speaking skills. Advanced level. B2
Joel Bennett

Social Media is Here to Stay... Now What? - 0 views

  • Social media is driven by another buzzword: "user-generated content" or content that is contributed by participants rather than editors.
  • I'm going to share my research in three acts: 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?
  • Facebook was narrated as the "safe" alternative and, in the 2006-2007 school year, a split amongst American teens occurred. Those college-bound kids from wealthier or upwardly mobile backgrounds flocked to Facebook while teens from urban or less economically privileged backgrounds rejected the transition and opted to stay with MySpace while simultaneously rejecting the fears brought on by American media. Many kids were caught in the middle and opted to use both, but the division that occurred resembles the same "jocks and burnouts" narrative that shaped American schools in the 1980s.
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  • over 35% of American adults have a profile on a social network site
  • many adults have jumped in, but what they are doing there is often very different than what young people are doing.
  • Teens are much more motivated to talk only with their friends and they learned a harsh lesson with social network sites. Even if they are just trying to talk to their friends, those who hold power over them are going to access everything they wrote if it's in public
  • while you can replicate a conversation, it's much easier to alter what's been said than to confirm that it's an accurate portrayal of the original conversation.
  • 1. Invisible Audiences. We are used to being able to assess the people around us when we're speaking. We adjust what we're saying to account for the audience. Social media introduces all sorts of invisible audiences.
  • Social media brings all of these contexts crashing into one another and it's often difficult to figure out what's appropriate
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    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?
Barbara Lindsey

Top News - Google makes famous artwork more accessible - 0 views

  • said to be the first of its kind involving an art museum. It involves 14 of the Prado's choicest paintings,
  • the images now available on the internet were 1,400 times clearer than what would be rendered with a 10-megapixel camera.
  • "With Google Earth technology, it is possible to enjoy these magnificent works in a way never previously possible--obtaining details impossible to appreciate through [even] firsthand observation," he said during a news conference at the museum.
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  • The project involved 8,200 photographs taken between May and July last year, which were then combined with Google Earth's zoom-in technology.
  • "With the digital image we’re seeing the body of the paintings with almost scientific detail," Zugaza said. "What we don’t see is the soul. The soul will always only be seen by contemplating the original."
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    Spain's Prado Museum has teamed up with Google Earth for a project that allows people to view the gallery's main works of art from their computers--and even zoom in on details not immediately discernible to the human eye.
Barbara Lindsey

NEA: World Languages - 0 views

  • "The fact that our students study a language from grade one not only teaches them how to learn languages, it gives them the mindset that languages are just as important as any other subject," says Janet Eklund, now in her 20th year at Glastonbury, where she's one of two Russian teachers.
  • "All along, we're working to make them not just language proficient, but culturally aware," says Oleksak. "We always remind them that they have to learn more than just the words to relate to people from other cultures."
  • "There's a Chinese saying, that if three people pass by, one of them is your teacher. We learn from just about every experience we have," says Wang. "Then we make sense of it through our language."   
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  • Asia Society's Shuhan Wang cautions against a "language of the month" approach for districts working to build their language programs. It's more important, she says, to build on community resources and to do what you can to make language learning real-world and relevant to them.
  • Presidential candidate Barack Obama hit on some deep-seated anxiety when he remarked in July that we should emphasize foreign language learning from an early age.
  • "The U.S. will become less competitive in the global economy because of a shortage of strong foreign language and international studies programs at the elementary, high school, and college levels," the Committee for Economic Development stated plainly in a 2006 report. "Our diplomatic efforts often have been hampered by a lack of cultural awareness," the report went on to say. The world is becoming so interrelated, if we don't teach our young other languages and cultural values, says Wang, "We are denying them access to the new world. It is just plain and simple. If we continue to view language learning as for the elite, for the "smart ones," or for the family who can afford to pay for it, we are really widening the gap."
  • What does it say about America that we are the only industrialized nation that routinely graduates high school students who speak only one language? Frankly, it says that if you want to talk to us—to do business with us, negotiate peace with us, learn from or teach us, or even just pal around with us—you'd better speak English.
  • "The norm is still either no foreign language or two years in high school," says Marty Abbott, director of Education at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.
  • Foreign language programs are often among the first things cut by urban school administrators desperately adding math and reading classes to raise test scores.
  • "It's time to reassess what 'basic skills' really means for the 21st century," says Asia Society's Wang.
  • Not only will students learn new vocabulary in the target language, but they get to work on the concepts they need to master for other classes, and yes, for high-stakes tests. That's how they do it in Glastonbury, says Oleksak: "We pre-teach, co-teach, and post-teach what's going on in the elementary classroom."
  • The kids reason out what you get when you add three butterflies plus four butterflies: Seven, yes, but really it's practice in Chinese and math, as well as a reminder that caterpillars turn into butterflies.
  • Right now, districts like Glastonbury—with an articulated, sequential program spanning grades 1–12, state-of-the-art language labs, and all the support an administration could give—are the exception.
Isabelle Jones

delicious4teachers / FrontPage - 0 views

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    Could help identifying people who were on delicious and have moved to Diigo under a different name, or just make new contacts...
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