via voxy.com
Take it with TWO grains of salt, coming from a company that does flashcards, but it is certainly a reasonable look at the benefits.
Are Flashcards an Effective Learning Tool? [INFOGRAPHIC]
Open CALL Resources for the 4 Skill Areas – Prezi
I’m giving a talk today at Hanyang Cyber Univerity in Seoul to TESL students. I decided to give a broad overview of Web services/sites that could be useful for learning/instruction for listening, reading, writing, and speaking. It’s a 90 minute talk and I’m sure we will use all of it as you can see from the scope of the presentation.
Of course, after I finished with this first iteration, I realized that I completely ignored Opensource software and Open Educational Resources (OER). I figured that I’d hold off on that for now considering this group might not be ready for that discussion. There are so many fun applications in those categories. I guess that will be a part 2 that will have to wait until later.
The handout is here: http://tinyurl.com/opencall4skill
And the Prezi presentation is embedded below.
<a href="http://prezi.com/lwllwrdjvm-o/open-call-resources-for-the-4-skill-areas/" title="This presentation accompanies a handout at http://tinyurl.com/opencall4skill on free Web resources for language learning”>Open CALL Resources for the 4 Skill Areas on Prezi
Let me know what you think.
English: Who speaks English? | The Economist (via @ddeubel)
Who speaks English?
EVERYONE knows the stereotypes about foreigners speaking English: Scandinavians are shockingly fluent, while the Japanese lag despite years and billions of yen spent trying. Now a big new study confirms some of those stereotypes. But it holds some surprises as well.
EF Education First, an English-teaching company, compiled the biggest ever internationally comparable sample of English learners: some 2m people took identical tests online in 44 countries. The top five performers were Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. The bottom five were Panama, Colombia, Thailand, Turkey and Kazakhstan. Among regions, Latin America fared worst. (No African country had enough takers to make the lists’s threshold for the minimum number of participants.)
via economist.com
Realistically, this study doesn’t mean much. The method is Swiss cheese (lots of holes). It is, none-the-less, interesting.
Amazing presentations (w/audio) on language teaching by Sue Swift
Selected Presentations, with audio, by Sue Swift (on AuthorStream). I found this collection really amazing. Not merely for the number of presentations, but for the great quality. I’m using the listening presentations with my teaching listening class this semester as an introduction to the topics of the course.
I’m going to guess that Ms. Swift is a fan of Field’s view of listening instruction (or vice-versa) given that they dove-tail so wonderfully. I no longer use the Field text with my students (too difficult), but I’m going to use many of the concepts.
Below are just some of the over 100 presentations that I found interesting.
Teaching Listening
Academic Discourses
Teaching Writing
Teaching Writing
More PowerPoint presentations from SueSwift
Evaluating Written Work
Discourse Analysis
Analysing Genre
More PowerPoint presentations from SueSwift
Error Analysis
Analysing Error
More PowerPoint presentations from SueSwift
History of Language Teaching
Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies
via ted.com
Great video and new data on morpheme recognition (distinction) in infants. This is not a new idea. This has been rather well known for years, but the new technology allows for better measurement of this phenomenon. In short, babies are excellent at recognizing and distinguishing sounds from any language, given exposure, up until around 6-8 months. This ability falls off later.
Given the brevity of the presentation, I can’t criticize her too much, but her description of the critical period and what it means to learn a language is certainly not complete. In fact, from what we see here, it is downright misinformed. Her comment that no scientist doubts that a critical period exists (as presented on the chart) is absolutely wrong. In reality, many do.
She is talking almost entirely about sound recognition and distinction, but she uses an SLA theory on language that involves so much more. It’s always difficult to mix-in theories from different fields without operationalizing your terms. I’m going to guess that’s where the 10-minute time limit is restricting.
Myths about language learning – Nice slideshow summary from EFL Classroom 2.0
via eflclassroom.com
These are all great issues for teachers, administrators, and policymakers to consider. “Common sense” isn’t always the best approach in education.
Many of the questions are phrased in a way that could easily be either true or false, but you’ll get the idea. The great justifications will help.
“The appeal and poverty of CLT” – I always love a good attack on CLT
Communicative Language Teaching
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has enormous intuitive appeal. Despite this, I have come to believe that at the heart of CLT – especially in fundamentalist versions of it – we find a naive, even impoverished view of language. To demonstrate what I mean, let me examine six propositions upon which I think CLT is based. I am going to argue that if these propositions are true at all, they are only superficially and trivially true – and true only in essentially uninteresting ways. In other words, they are just as true as statements like “When people speak, they use words”. Such a statement tells us nothing about what kinds of relationships there may be between words, how people learn to assemble them into larger units, or what else they do to construct or interpret meaning. I will try to show this through six counter-propositions. Then – finally -I will briefly suggest an alternative – and also suggest reasons why pluralist methodologies are more likely to be successful than any single orthodoxy.
via btinternet.comI really do like a good attack on CLT. All those smug teachers I had in the 90s pushing this method with little critical discussion really put me off of prescribed methods altogether. For this, I should probably thank them.
This piece has some great points. I’m not entirely thrilled with the way that fundamentalist CLT is positioned as the strawman in this arguments though. This view of CLT is so rarely pushed that I find the arguments quite weak in that regard. However, discussion of the basic tenets are still valid.
We are in a post-method era. Reasonable (yes, that is loaded speech for people like me 🙂 teachers and teacher-trainers don’t teach methods, but rather a whole tool chest of methodologies that can be used situated a particular context.
Deficiency in Foreign Language Competency: What Is Wrong with the U.S. Educational System? – WorldWise – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Deficiency in Foreign Language Competency: What Is Wrong with the U.S. Educational System?
November 9, 2010, 2:45 pm
It doesn’t take much to realize that the U.S. trails far behind other countries on the second language issue. Moreover, we constantly receive clear signals of the need to more seriously discuss the appropriateness and feasibility of implementing a second-language education policy. At the same time, we hear voices telling us that such an idea is just another unnecessary notion. The rationale used by many who justify this widespread second-language deficiency is that English is today’s lingua franca.
via chronicle.com
I really liked this post. It captures the immediate sense that learning languages is important in the global marketplace, but a lack of actions being taken my institutions and individuals to pursue this goal.
It seems a lot like the obesity crisis in the US (and elsewhere). We know what should be done to solve the problem, but our institutions and, more so, individuals will not do what it takes to live a healthier lifestyle.
I wish I knew what to do. Learning language in America is always compared to the rest of the world, but there are huge differences. The countries we are usually compared to largely have the ability to focus language learning on one or two obviously necessary languages. Just imagine if we, in the US, were able to focus all of our energy on teaching/learning Spanish. The outcomes would likely be much different.
The reality is that this is no focus in our education system across the country in languages for much of the same reason nothing is standardized in American education, local control. I’m not taking a position on good or bad here, just stating the obvious. There’s no agreement on whether or which languages should be learned. Also, there is no immediately clear reason why learning a language will be beneficial. My parent’s generation learned French for the most part. Asking them how they used French they likely answer either that they don’t remember any of it or that it was useful at a French restaurant once 🙂
The problem is, language isn’t something that you can learn in a short time frame when you need it. You can take 6 months of Korean before being transferred to Seoul and think that you’ll be able to function in society. How old are you and where are you from only take you so far. Try dealing with the local government office or diagnosing office problems with your 6 months of Korean study. Language learning takes time and lots of it. Learning a language early can result both in better performance in that language as well as improved ability to learn others.