Category: Language learning

Listening is the key

By Simon

A researcher in New Zealand has found evidence that extensive listening to a foreign language makes a big difference to your ability to learn and understand the language, according to this article.

It doesn’t matter that if you don’t understand anything at first – your brain will automatically make the necessary neural connections it needs to process the unfamiliar sounds and combinations of sounds, just as it does when you’re acquire your native language. Without such connections it is very hard to remember new words. The more you listen to the language, the easier it becomes to learn new words and to understand the language.

This is something I’ve long suspected, and I use this technique in my own language learning. For example, when my first attempt to learn Welsh about 10 years ago wasn’t very successful. I worked my way through Teach Yourself Welsh a couple of times listening to the lessons and reading the notes. At that time I didn’t have any opportunities to hear or speak Welsh, and soon forgot most of what I’d learned. A few years later I started listening to Radio Cymru regularly, and when I had another go at learning the language I made much more progress.

Learning languages – the Myngle experience

By Simon

Today we have a guest post by Hala Masreya from Egypt.

This post is for everyone who is interested in learning languages. My name is Hala and I am currently active as a teacher on a language e-learning platform called Myngle. I would like to share with you my experience as an online language teacher.

I first started teaching languages online 7 years ago. Some of my friends wanted to learn Arabic but had difficulties finding the time, the place and the qualified teacher to do so. I decided I could teach them over the internet but, due to the lack of innovative technology, this wasn’t all that easy.

A year ago I discovered Myngle. Using VOIP and online classrooms I really enjoy teaching online. With online one-to-one classrooms, you can give your full attention to a student and see on which points he/she need to focus. Students really seem to appreciate this new way to learn and the great thing is that I am now teaching students who I’ve met in real life and then returned to their own country.

Apart from being a teacher I am also a student. Since I started to take language classes online I have learned to speak Italian and Latin, both from very qualified and friendly teachers and now I see why the students like it so much!

Learning a language online generates a lot of advantages:

– you can take classes wherever and whenever
– you can choose the teacher/student that appeals to you the most
– you can take contact with native speakers and all the cultures of the world

And I especially enjoy Myngle: here students and teachers are really enthusiastic they are constantly engaged in improving users experience and making e-learning better and easier to use.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this and I hope to see you soon as my students on Myngle!

Animated Chinese character dictionary

By Simon

Arch Chinese is a very useful site I came across the other day. It includes a Chinese character dictionary which provides animations showing how to write six thousand traditional and six thousand simplified Chinese characters, and gives you pinyin pronunciation (with audio recordings), stroke counts, English translations and examples of words and phrases that use each character. You can search characters by pronunciation, radical, English words, etc.

It can also character worksheets in PDF format, converts pinyin with tone numbers to pinyin with diacritics, and keeps track of the characters you’ve studied. You can even add your own characters and phrases, and import and export word lists to/from the flashcard function.

Alphabet and language games

By Simon

I found some alphabet and language games today on PurposeGames, including one which involves matching writing systems to their names (which come from Omniglot), a multilingual one, an Arabic alphabet one, a Phoenician alphabet one, and many more. You can also create your own games on this site.

Do you know of any other sites with similar games?

Do you know of any other sites with similar games?

I’d like to add these kinds of games to Omniglot eventually.

Language barrier

By Simon

According to an article in The Guardian, a man who planned to walk 9,000 miles to Mahatma Gandhi’s birthplace in India without money found the language barrier insurmountable when he arrived in France.

His aim was to show that a world without money is possible, and he thought he could obtain food and shelter in return for helping people, a philosophy he promotes via his website, the freeconomy community. The walk went well until he arrived in France, when he realised that the little French he could remember wasn’t sufficient to explain his mission and his dietary requirements – he’s a vegan – and people thought he was a refugee or a beggar.

He now plans to travel around the UK offering his help to people and brushing up his language skills with members of the Freeconomy network, and would like to try the walk to India again eventually.

Have you ever had trouble explaining your mission and/or dietary requirements in a foreign language?

I don’t drink alcohol and sometimes find it hard to explain this in other languages, especially when asked why. I discovered recently that you can apparently avoid drinking in Japan if you cover your glass and say kyōkai (church) – no one will mind as long as you keep their glasses topped up. Does anyone know if this works?

Happy New Year!

Language of the month

By Simon

On a recent edition of Word of Mouth, the BBC Radio 4 programme about language, they talked about an interesting scheme at a primary school in London where over 40 different languages are spoken by the pupils. Each month one language is chosen as the language of the month, and a pupil who speaks that language teaches the other children and the teachers some words and phrases in their mother tongue both in person and via video and audio recordings. The pupils also tell people about their culture. The recordings are also made available to other schools via the web.

The school sees the multitude of languages spoken by the children as an opportunity and asset rather than a problem. The children can share their own languages and cultures, and learn about the languages and cultures of others, and they become familiar with the sounds of the different languages.

Maybe we could do something similar here. Would any of you like to share some of your native language(s) with the rest of us? This could involve audio and/or video recordings of useful words and phrases, information about your language and culture, and anything else you think would be interesting.

Lang-8

By Simon

A useful-looking website I heard about today is Lang-8, which describes itself as a a social networking service site for language exchange and international communication. Users can write journal entries in a language they’re learning, and get them corrected by native speakers of that language. There are also groups for particular language combinations, e.g. Japanese / English or Chinese / English, and discussion forums.

Learning Hebrew

By Simon

A visitor to Omniglot has contacted me on behalf of a relative who recently moved to Israel. The relative is finding Hebrew a very challenging language to learn and is looking for an alternative to Ulpan, the total immersion courses for immigrants to Israel. Any suggestions?

An article I found in The Jerusalem Post reports that 60% of immigrants to Israel who are over 30 finish their initial Ulpan courses consisting of 500 hours of instruction without fully mastering Hebrew. Many such immigrants are unable to find work, or have difficulties doing so. The article dates from 2006, and I haven’t been able to find any more recent ones on this problem.

Have any of you been through the Ulpan system, or something similar in other countries?

Adjusting to a new language environment

By Simon

Research undetaken at Michigan State University has found that girls can find it more difficult than boys to adjust to a new social and linguistic environment, according to an article on Science Daily.

The study was of 3-6 year olds at an international school in Beijing where the children, from 16 different countries, are in immersed in Mandarin and English. Most of them are learning at least one new language, and the researchers found that the girls generally had more trouble adjusting to the new environment than boys.

Previous studies have found that girls usually have better social and linguistic abilities than boys, however the girls in the Beijing study who could not understand their teachers or the other children tended to have more behavioural problems than the boys.

The study also showed that children find it harder to learn a new language than is generally thought. The popular idea is that children soak up new languages like sponges without too much effort, however this isn’t necessarily true.

Anybody can learn a language

By Simon

I came across an interesting article on Michel Thomas and his methods for teaching languages in the Guardian today.

Thomas believed that “there was no such thing as a bad student, only a bad teacher” and that with the right teaching method, anybody can learn a language quickly and easily. However was very reluctant to explain his teaching methods with others. He believed that people would only take parts of his ideas if he shared them, which would dilute them and make them much less effective. It was only in the 1990s that Thomas was persuaded to record language lessons by Hodder Education.

In a new book, The Language Revolution, by Jonathan Solity, an educational psychologist, discusses how Thomas taught languages and the psychological prinples that underpin his methods. Solity believes that if such methods were adopted in schools, they could made a huge difference.

The article mentions some of Thomas’ methods, which include breaking down languages and explaining how they work in easy-to-understand ways; teaching relatively small amounts of material at any one time; and going over things until the students really understand them and can use them. There is also a link to a BBC documentary about Michel Thomas on YouTube.

Have you tried any Michel Thomas language courses? How effective have they been?

I haven’t tried any yet, but am thinking of having a go at the Russian course.