As a follow-up to the Multilingual Children post a while back, this is a question we’ve been pondering lately… How do you develop and maintain literacy in the home language without formal instruction?
The obvious way as we are both teachers is to actively teach our son how to write and give him written tasks as he progresses… but that’s unrealistic. The last thing we want to do is have Leon resenting English when we’re in Korea (where English will be the home language). Sure, he’ll be exposed to English in the education system or should we choose, a private institute… but since his English level is likely to be higher than his peers, that’s also kind of unrealistic. Click here to read more.. »
Many that are involved in language – teachers and learners both - are hung up on the pronunciation aspects of things. Most of these people focus on the learner and how to improve their accent in their target language, and this is something that a lot of people are interested in. It’s the old ultimate attainment argument. Everyone dreams of sounding like a native!
You can umm and arr all you want about this, but at the end of the day, it is what it is. And if asked candidly, many a learner (I focus on Asian Englishes remember) will tell you that they want to disguise their origins and sound like a native. No amount of persuasive debate can change their mind, even if we are to consider that English speakers from different countries are likely to have markers that identify them as being from there and not only that, but these markers are accepted in the English-speaking world… And shock-horror… even native speakers have these same markers… Click here to read more.. »
First in the series of looking at study materials is going to be LingQ.
LingQ is the brainchild of Steve Kaufmann (who you can find on my Blogroll over there <—- …and down a bit). Steve speaks a number of languages very well and the site is very much a mirror of his own preferred learning style, by self-admission.
In short, if you can’t be bothered reading what I say about LingQ… visit, sign-up (it’s free), and try it out. It’s not going to be a waste of time… so enjoy the offerings in English, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, German, Swedish, Russian, Chinese and Japanese… and soon to come it looks like Korean. Click here to read more.. »
Something that is currently being debated in several circles is just how an additional language is added to one’s arsenal. There is of course the more traditional idea that we learn a language through dedication, study and hard work. And there is the fanciful idea that we simply acquire a language. Like many things in this world, I think it’s a little bit of both hidden away in that huge grey area. The idea that things are black or white is simply unrealistic in the real world.
The current trend among many learners that blog about their process is leaning toward the natural method and pure language acquisition that is on par with first language acquisition. Simply being exposed to the language and the fruits of the forest will follow. Fluency will leap into your lap like that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Click here to read more.. »
Culture in the classroom.. is this something that the students need or want? This argument can very much go both ways and much of it relies on what exactly your students want, but one model for the classroom isn’t likely to please everyone… as you’re not doubt aware.
On the one hand we have the ongoing debates of English as an International Language (EIL) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) being strictly language as a tool – devoid of culture… I’ll come back to this later. The other hand has the Native English Speaker (NES) as the teacher, and he relies greatly on emploring his students with his culture… Whether this is American, British, Australian, etc. depends on the NES’s origins of course. Click here to read more.. »
