Category: Language learning

Groupe de conversation Française

By Simon

Last night I joined a French conversation group which meets regularly in a local pub. I heard about it at a party in January and have been intending to join since then. Last night I finally tracked them down.

All members of the group are English and/or Welsh and can speak French well, or at least can understand it even if they don’t speak it fluently. The group has been going for about eight years and is run by a teacher of English as a foreign language from Bangor University. The rule is that only French is spoken for first two hours, and we stuck to this last night. After that English is allowed, though last night we continued to speak mainly in French.

It was fun, interesting, we discussed all sorts of topics, and I found that I can still speak and understand French reasonably well even though I’ve used it very little during the past 20 years. Welsh, which is currently my dominant foreign language, kept on trying to impose itself on my French, but I managed to keep it in check most of the time. If I’d spoken the mixture of French and Welsh that was brewing in my head the Welsh-speaking members of the group would have probably understood.

One thing we talked about was how it can be difficult to understand mispronounced words, especially in unfamiliar contexts. The leader of the group told us about a student of hers who was talking about a visit to the “islands”, or at least that’s what it sounded like. The leader kept on asking “Which islands?”, but the student kept on saying “the islands”. Eventually she worked out that the student was talking about the Highlands (of Scotland). The mispronunciation may be only slight, but it’s enough to disrupt comprehension, and this can happen not just with foreign languages, but also with different dialects and accents of your native language.

When I meet people with names I’ve never heard before, sometimes I find it hard to take in their names until I’ve seen them written down.

BSL

By Simon

Yesterday I finally finished the British Sign Language (BSL) course I’ve been working on for the past year – if other things didn’t keep distracting me I would have finished it sooner. The course consists of just seven unit but manages to fit quite a lot in them, including numbers, colours, time, money, describing people, tenses, hobbies and interests, and food and drink. It also shows you how to construct sentences, and provides background information about sign language and the deaf community. I’ve found it fascinating and would like to learn more. Unfortunately there aren’t any sign language courses available in this area, but I do have a few books on BSL and a CD-ROM.

BSL is a bit simliar to Chinese languages in terms of structure – eg it’s an isolating language which uses time expressions to indicate when things happen rather than conjugating verbs. So you sign things like “Yesterday I eat cake” or “This morning I go to work”. Unlike Chinese or other spoken languages, sign languages can modify signs (words) to add nuances to their meanings. The amount of movement in a sign might be increased and/or its direction changed: for example instead of signing the equivalent of “she’s jumping high” you could sign “she’s jumping” with the sign for jump going higher than usual. Or if you’re describing someone’s hair you can modify the sign for hair to indicate whether it’s straight, curly, long or short hair.

One thing I plan to do with BSL is to link signs to words in the languages I’m learning. This will give me something extra to help me remember the words, and will help me to link words in different languages without using English. I think the physical nature of signs helps me remember them better than spoken words – my auditory memory is good, but my physical memory seems even better.

Have you studied or are you studying a sign language?

Language 101

By Simon

Today we have a guest post by David, a developer of Language 101.

Language 101 is a mostly free language learning software website that takes the proven principle of spaced repetition and makes it easy to use.

For example, if you wanted to learn French you could be studying beginner’s French phrases in a few seconds by clicking on the big “Try It” button.

After you click on the “Try It” button you will see a screen that has both a good translation and a literal word by word translation. The literal translation won’t always make sense. There also is a blank line with one underscore for every letter of the foreign phrase.

If you know the phrase, try to say it. If the phrase is new to you, you can play the audio very slowly, or click on another button to play the audio at normal speed and display the foreign language text.

After you have tried to say the phrase out loud, and played the answer, it’s time to grade yourself based on how well you said the phrase before you played the answer.

The five grading buttons range from “Beginner or Totally Forgot” to “Right I Know This Well”.

Try to take 15 seconds or less to do a screen, because it’s easy to forget the first item while you are studying the second one.

We think that if language learning is boring, it means you are doing something wrong, so we made movie lessons, song lessons, and of course we have a lot of custom made lessons too.

We want to take the best of every culture and turn it into a language lesson.

Right now there are a lot of lessons in Spanish, French, Russian and German with a few lessons in Danish and Irish.

Come give it a try and see if it works for you.

Comunicamo

By Simon

Today we have a guest post by Anna, the author of Comunicamo

Practicing languages via chat rooms or with pen-pals may be very helpful but for many of us it is often hard to choose an appropriate discussion topic.

Comunicamo is a free website that allows you to practice foreign language by commenting on current news stories and events without pondering over conversation topics and without personal introductions.

Commenting on the news can be very interesting, especially when there’s a hot topic. Sometimes you can draw somebody who turns out to have totally different opinion. That is even better as it makes discussion more ardent and you finally forget that the language you are writing in is not your native tongue.

Here is how it works:

  • After clicking “compose new message” choose the language you want to practice.
  • A random recipient will be assigned.
  • Choose one of the proposed news items (don’t hesitate to choose something controversial or funny).
  • Write your opinion or comment about the news.
  • Your message will be sent to the previously selected recipient and the conversation starts.

You can also log in and wait until somebody draws you.

After exchanging some messages you can start another discussion with the same person or draw another one.

Remember: the website is dedicated for those who study foreign language for some time and want to practice it in real conversations.

If you are a beginner, don’t worry. Users can choose the level of randomly selected conversation partners. After some messages you will be able to see if people understand you.

If you study Spanish then imagine yourself on a street of Madrid. There will be no teacher helping you.

I would be grateful for your comments about the idea.

Polishing off your Polish

By Simon

There’s apparently been a significant increase in the numbers of people learning Polish in recent years, especially since 2004, according to this article, and many of them come from the UK or Ireland.

Many language schools that used to teach mainly English and German to Poles are now offering courses in Polish as a foreign language. Such courses are popular with people from the UK and Germany who have been going to teach in Poland since the 1990s, and also with people with Polish partners, and people of Polish origin wanting to get in touch with their roots. Translators and interpreters are studying Polish as there is a great demand for Polish speakers in EU institutions.

Polish is described as a notoriously difficult language that starts out fiendishly difficult and then gets harder, and it’s apparently quite common for students to quit after a few lessons. Some do continue studying later after getting their courage back though. Not surprisingly speakers of other Slavic language find Polish least difficult to learn, Germans find the grammar relatively easy as it has much in common with German grammar, and speakers of Romance languages don’t find the grammar too hard. It’s English speakers who usually find Polish hardest, and Australians are apparently dreaded by Polish teachers.

Are any of you learning Polish?

Cree language challenge

By Simon

The inhabitants of the Norway House Cree Nation (Kinosao Sipi), a small community in northern Manitoba in Canada, have been challenged by their chief, Marcel Balfour, to become proficient in Cree (kinose’wi si’pi’hk) by the year 2020, according to an article I found the other day.

The band’s council have decided to make Cree the official language of the community, and will encourage residents to speak it as often as possible. At the moment about three quarters of the people there can understand Cree, some 50% or 60% can speak it, at least to some extent, and its mainly the elder generation who are most comfortable with the language. Balfour himself is not fluent but is determined to become so.

The article doesn’t mention how much community support the initiative has – without such support, it is unlikely to succeed.

buusuu.com

By Simon

buusuu.com, a website that describes itself as an “online community for learning languages”, provides online lessons in English, Spanish, French and German, as well as opportunities for language learners to learn from one another.

They are currently celebrating their first anniversary and are offering a 10% discount on premium memberships.

They have also added video language lessons recently, and they have an interesting feature about Silbo Gomero, the whistled language of La Gomera in the Canary Islands.

English villages in Taiwan

By Simon

The Taiwan government is planning to spend millions of dollars “improving Taiwan’s English-language environment”, which will include the setting up of two English-language villages, according to this report.

They will improve English language signage and aim to host more international concerts and exhibitions.

The idea of the English villages is to make it easier for the local residents to practise their English. The first village will probably be set up in Hsinchu Science and Technology Park, which has a large number of foreign staff. The villages will have English language signs, local businesses will be encouraged to provide English-language services, and will be given star ratings for the quality of those services.

Taiwan already has at least one English ‘village’ where children can be immersed in the language, according to this report.

Are there similar ‘villages’ in other countries?

Language learning and accents

By Simon

Today we have a guest post by Jeff Foster.

Without a doubt, I am a language enthusiast. My goal is to become fluent in 3 languages by the time I graduate from high school. Those languages are Spanish, Italian, and Russian, in addition to English obviously. Using my Spanish class in school as a base of vocabulary and grammar structure, with Skype and other texts to enhance my overall knowledge. Combining all of these things has allowed me to gather a pretty good knowledge of the language. For Italian, I selected Rosetta Stone and I am thoroughly disappointed with it. While it does give you a good feel for accent, pronunciation, and very basic sentence structure, it lacks grammar, vocabulary, etc. For Russian, I am currently using Teach Yourself Russian, a book for learning Cyrillic and a few words.

Anyway, looking ahead to the future I would love to learn as many languages as possible, namely German, Scottish Gaelic, and possibly Arabic. I’ve had particular trouble with the accents. According to this article, accents can be acquired in a variety of ways. For example, my school advisor, after living in England for one year, many years ago, still carries a strong British accent. Many people make fun of him, saying that he fakes the accent.

What is your opinion? Is it possible for someone to somehow retain an accent, even long after leaving the country?

Benefits of learning Latin

By Simon

Studying Latin can improve you SAT scores and can help you get into a good college, according to an article I found today.

Increasing numbers of students in the USA are studying Latin for a variety of reasons – to increase their chances of being accepted by a good college, to help with their English, and due to an interest in Roman culture and history. Learning Latin also helps you stand out from others who study more mainstream subjects.

Students of Latin apparently become more dedicated to their schoolwork, especially when preparing for the National Latin Exam, anbd they study and help each other more. They also show increased emotional consideration for their teachers and fellow students, as well as greater cultural awareness and sensitivity.