Language content makes up about 95 percent of the downloads from the Emory iTunes U site.

the most popular content is audio and video files that were originally developed not for a general audience, but by professors as supplements to college-level coursework,

Because language demonstrations often require audio and sometimes video components (e.g., tutorials on how to write in a character-based alphabet), and students often like to practice while on the move, iTunes is in many ways an ideal vehicle for language-based instructional content.

what we do offer is an online supplement that enhances what happens both in the classroom and in foreign study in the culture — and it is always there as a resource for our students, because it’s online.”

“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.