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Barbara Lindsey

Education Week: Science Grows on Acquiring New Language - 6 views

www.edweek.org/...09window_ep.h30.html

language learning brain research advocacy

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 26 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • For example, when babies born to native-English-speaking parents played three times a week during that window with a native-Mandarin-speaking tutor, at 12 months, they had progressed in their ability to recognize both English and Mandarin sounds, rather than starting to retrench in the non-native language. By contrast, children exposed only to audio or video recordings of native speakers showed no change in their language trajectory. Brain-imaging of the same children backed up the results of test-based measures of language specialization.
  • The research may not immediately translate into a new language arts curriculum, but it has already deepened the evidence for something most educators believe instinctively: Social engagement, particularly with speakers of multiple languages, is critical to language learning.
  • “The key to that series of studies is exposure and live interactions with native speakers,” Ms. Lebedeva said. “The interactions need to be naturalistic: eye contact, gestures, exaggerated phonemes.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • “Human brains are wired to learn best in social interactions, whether that learning is about language or problem-solving or emotion,” Ms. Lebedeva said, “but language is such a ubiquitous human behavior that studying it gives us an example of how more general learning takes place.”
  • at the science-oriented Ultimate Block Party held in New York City this month, children of different backgrounds played games in which they were required to sort toys either by shape or color, based on a rule indicated by changing flashcards. A child sorting blue and yellow ducks and trucks by shape, say, might suddenly have to switch to sorting them by color. The field games exemplified research findings that bilingual children have greater cognitive flexibility than monolingual children. That is, they can adapt better than monolingual children to changes in rules—What criteria do I use to sort?—and close out mental distractions—It doesn’t matter that some blue items are ducks and some are trucks.
  • Barbara Lindsey on 26 Oct 10
     
    researchers long thought the window for learning a new language shrinks rapidly after age 7 and closes almost entirely after puberty. Yet interdisciplinary research conducted over the past five years at the University of Washington, Pennsylvania State University, and other colleges suggest that the time frame may be more flexible than first thought and that students who learn additional languages become more adaptable in other types of learning, too.
James OReilly

Google Translation Center: The World's Largest Translation Memory - GigaOM - 0 views

gigaom.com/...lds-largest-translation-memory

shared by James OReilly on 05 Aug 08 - Cached
  • Google is preparing to launch Google Translation Center
  • This is an interesting move, and it has broad implications for the translation industry, which up until now has been fragmented and somewhat behind the times, from a technology standpoint
  • Google has been investing significant resources in a multi-year effort to develop its statistical machine translation technology.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Google Translation Center is a straightforward and very clever way to gather a large corpus of parallel texts to train its machine translation systems.
  • If Google releases an API for the translation management system, it could establish a de facto standard for integrated machine translation and translation memory, creating a language platform around which projects like Der Mundo can build specialized applications and collect more training data.
  • On the other hand, GTC could be bad news for translation service bureaus — especially those that use proprietary translation management systems as a way to hold customers and translators hostage.
  • For freelancers, GTC could be very good news; they could work directly with clients and have access to high quality productivity tools. Overall this is a welcome move that will force service providers to focus on quality, while Google, which is competent at software, can focus on building tools.
  • That strategy would also eliminate a potential conflict of interest
  • translation professionals are understandably wary of contributing to something that could put them out of work
  • as well as avoid channel conflicts with partners who will be their best advocates in selling to various clients
  • my guess is Google will make this a free tool for the translation industry to use, and it will figure the money part out later. It can afford to be patient
  • I remain convinced that a multilingual web will be a reality in a short time, and that a menagerie of tools and services will emerge over the next few years — some geared toward helping translators, some toward building translation communities, and others that make publishing multilingual sites and blogs easy and intuitive.
  • the web will begin translating itself, and within a short time
Isabelle Jones

Masters programmes - Department of Professional Development - Canterbury Christ Church ... - 0 views

www.canterbury.ac.uk/...-special-educational-needs.asp

research languages icpj education learning

shared by Isabelle Jones on 30 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Isabelle Jones on 30 Oct 08
     
    Teaching Your own Language-Issues for the Native Teacher
Carilyn Bergamini

UNESCO World Heritage List - 0 views

thesalmons.org/...world.heritage.html

unesco worldlanguages history culture images

shared by Carilyn Bergamini on 15 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Carilyn Bergamini on 15 Aug 09
     
    this link, and the World Heritage Sites in Mexico link I just shared, were compiled by Lynn Garry Salmon, a world traveler and scientist at Cal Tech specializing in the effects of pollution on cultural properties.
  • Carilyn Bergamini on 15 Aug 09
     
    links to views of 890 properties on the UNESCO World Heritage List, sorted by country.
Isabelle Jones

The Newspaper Clipping Image Generator - Create your own fun newspaper - 2 views

www.fodey.com/...snippet.asp

writing creativity ideas software resources

shared by Isabelle Jones on 26 Sep 09 - Cached
  • International School of Central Switzerland on 26 Sep 09
     
    Make a newspaper clipping with your own headline and story. In example to surprise friends and coworkers, send a birthday greeting or to give your next blog entry a special look.
Isabelle Jones

Crossword Builder - 0 views

www.schoolforge.net/...crossword-builder

puzzle software languages

shared by Isabelle Jones on 06 Sep 09 - Cached
  • International School of Central Switzerland on 06 Sep 09
     
    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.
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