Methodology for Language Learning: Learn about language learning methods: How to work with a new language? What is best in general? What is best for you?
Once in a while, we get requests to translate from English or French into North African dialects. For historical and political reasons, these languages are often referred to as dialects. But according to Ethnologue (www.ethnologue.com, see below) and other sources, these Arabic varieties are languages in their own right. Colloquial Arabic in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria,…
For years, document translations have been increasingly offered digitally and online. Hiring a non-resident translator who can only be contacted online has become standard practice, that is, unless a sworn translator is required. Only when a sworn translator’s stamp is absolutely necessary is the postal service used or a local service preferred. In the case…
Everyone knows that you need to pronounce difficult sounds when learning a language – at least most of the time. If I am learning English as a German speaker, there are sounds that I don’t know and need to learn. For example, in German there is no dental fricative sound (that is, pronounced between the…
We’ve seen that GPA has big advantages. Again and again I read about new insights of language learning experts for language school teaching that are fully or nearly identical with GPA thoughts (see here: https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/can-we-learn-second-language-we-learned-our-first). But, there are some things that make learning with the GPA method more complicated. Or better said, some assumptions and…
Out of the masses of language learning methods, we picked one that we see as the best to really learn a language, especially if you live in country and if you can put a lot of time and energy into language learning (see here for Chris’ his overview). Nevertheless, this method has two major disadvantages…
After the activities are over, it will be good for you to sit down with the learner and discuss with him or her how the current language learning process is going. What is he struggling with? What is she enjoying? What are they doing in their language lessons, if they’re doing lessons? Get a pretty…
In Europe, there are many businesses dealing with language learning. Of course, most famous are Cambridge and Oxford University Press and their publications, Pons and Langenscheidt, Berlitz and many others. Rosetta Stone is known mainly by people who do not want to learn one of the major languages in Europe (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish)…
In the last four posts, I’ve talked about why (and why not) to assess your language proficiencies, and what skills to assess. This time, we’ll look at the all-important question of how to actually do the assessment. To begin, start by using the three (or five, if you’re working in a commonly-written language) broad categories…
In Part 1 we talked about the benefits of Rosetta Stone; let’s go now to the drawbacks: First of all, Rosetta Stone does not provide you with the opportunity to speak in any meaningful way. While it correctly focuses on listening comprehension as the base for any learner’s progress, it wrongly ignores speaking production. Sure,…
He was a very nice guy, but the worst teacher I’ve ever had. He had a lot to say, but was totally incapable of teaching us. His major motivation was to teach us his religion and not his language. But that’s not why we were in his classroom. Even worse, he got angry with people…