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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

"On November 13 the Digital October Center hosted a web meeting with Eli Bildner, one of the Coursera team members. Bildner is responsible for looking for educational partners and translating selected videos into the native languages of the projects's multicultural audience, and shared the results of the first few months of work he has put into localizing the content of the most popular platform for free online education. He discussed: which translation approaches have been tried and how well they have worked from country to country why Coursera settled on working with local partners the statistics on what has already brought about growth in the number of users who do now know English well enough or even at all. Lecture guests also were the first to see how the crowdsourcing platform ABBYY Language Services and the Knowledge Stream team built to translate Coursera content works. This solution at some point in the future may become a universal tool for localizing courses around the entire world. At this point, however, the development is in beta testing."

some of our friends working to make a video conference practice, so they can get the voice speed and volume appropriate for a variety of listeners; excellent lesson on setting up and videoconferencing;D

a practice meeting of several of my twitter colleagues in Latin America; some have webcams, but not all; working to make all aspects work well;

The systems works a lot like close captioning does for television. The company will piggy-back a data stream on the standard audio signal. The text can then be read on radio fitted with a display. The system will only work with digital broadcasts, but the company says an Internet-based solution is possible. Currently more than 1,500 radio stations are currently broadcasting in HD Radio in the United States.

The lingro browser tools (bookmarklets) allow you to open any site you're viewing using lingro with one click. Once you have copied the bookmarklet to your browser, click it when you're on a page you want to view with lingro. (The bookmarklet doesn't work for sites that require you to log in, such as webmail. We're working on a way around this - stay tuned!)

Bookmarklet

This section aims to support teachers in using assessment to enhance learning in Years 7-8. It builds on the principles of assessment for learning in the Board's Years 7-10 syllabuses and the advice in subsequent support materials on implementing these principles. For each course listed below there are samples of student work aligned to the common grade scale, illustrating standards at the end of Stage 4. Samples of student work are also provided in English and Mathematics to illustrate standards mid-stage (end of Year 7). The common grade scale can be used to report student achievement in both primary and junior secondary years in all NSW schools.

A useful site that allows users to dictate and generate text. A great resource for children with writing difficulties to get their ideas written quickly. It works with a range of languages including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and more. For mistakes, the site offers alternative words with similar pronunciation. Only works with Chrome. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

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.

# In Preschool, children are just beginning to learn about language and how it works. Exposure to multiple languages is advantageous for all children and can be supported by developmentally appropriate teaching practices that make use of songs, rhymes, and stories. # In programs for beginning learners that offer appropriate time and frequency of instruction, students communicate at the Novice-Mid level using memorized language to talk about familiar topics related to school, home, and the community. # After three-six years of study in programs offering the appropriate time and frequency of standards-based instruction, Novice-High through Intermediate-Mid level students communicate at the sentence level creating with language to ask and answer questions and to handle simple transactions related to everyday life and subject matter studied in other classes. # After nine-twelve years of well articulated standards-based instruction, Intermediate-High through Advanced-Low level students communicate at the paragraph level and are able to handle complicated situations on a wide-range of topics.

A set of bookmarks for some of the best websites I've found when looking for resources to use in next terms China-themed unit of work. They include online and downloadable resources for learning to speak Chinese and read and write Mandarin, studying social issues in China and current events like the Sìchuān earthquake and the Olympic Games.

Hi%20everyone.%0AFor%20the%20teachers%20wanting%20their%20students%20to%20study%20China%20next%20term%2C%20this%20is%20just%20a%20list%20of%20resources%20I've%20come%20across%20when%20programming%20a%20unit%20of%20work%20for%20my%20internship.%20I%20hope%20some%20of%20them%20help.%20I've%20not%20yet%20finished%20annotating%20them%20or%20adding%20to%20the%20list%20so%20if%20they're%20helpful%20you%20might%20want%20to%20come%20back%20again%20in%20a%20few%20weeks.

Ideas to display students' work online

"This site contains *almost all* of Mark Twain's works.articles, FAQ, Study Guides, Essays, etc "

This is a great site for creating all sorts of online cloze text of missing words and sentence ordering activities. It's great for sentence and grammar work, as well as using text about topics from across the curriculum. Register for free to create text activities to share and embed. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Cross+Curricular

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

"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."