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CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS EMUNI Translation Studies Doctoral and Teacher Training Summer School 24 June – 5 July 2013, Piran, Slovenia Guest Lecturer 2013: Dr. Douglas Robinson, Hong Kong Baptist University The more than 300 MA programmes in translation across Europe indicate that there is both a great need to provide high-level doctoral study for prospective teachers and a pressing need to continuously provide teacher training to existing translation teachers in order to keep them up to date with the latest developments in the field. The EMUNI Translation Studies Doctoral Summer School and Teacher Training Summer School, a joint initiative by 6 different universities (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; Boğaziçi University, Turkey; University of Turku, Finland; University of East Finland, Finland; University of Granada, Spain; and EMUNI, Portorož, Slovenia), responds to this need by focusing, in particular, on contemporary research into literary and non-literary works from a historical perspective. Participation will be limited to a maximum of 15 individuals; particularly welcome are doctoral students in the early stages of their projects, teachers of translation at MA level or its equivalent and other academics, as well as professionals who are involved in research in translation and interpreting studies or in other doctoral fields where translation, interpreting or intercultural mediation is a focus of interest. Basic activities at the EMUNI Summer School:a) Critical discussion of the most current approaches to translation theory, paying particular attention to contemporary research into literary and non-literary works from a historical perspective.b) Presentation and critical discussion of different methodological approaches in TS, focusing in particular on researching the translation of literary and non-literary texts in historical TS from the perspective of historical and sociological studies, or through the use of ethnological and corpus approaches.c) A series of lectures by the guest lecturer.d) Teacher-training in the field of translator training, with a particular emphasis on curriculum and syllabus design, definition of objectives and learning outcomes, trainee and trainer profiles, ICT resources, classroom dynamics and assessment.e) Tutorials for doctoral students and young researchers.f) A graduate conference. Teaching Staff: Dr. Ebru Diriker, Boğaziçi University, Turkey Dr. Vojko Gorjanc, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Dr. Dorothy Kelly, University of Granada, Spain Dr. Nike K. Pokorn, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Dr. Kaisa Koskinen, University of Eastern Finland, Finland Dr. Outi Polaposki, Turku University, Finland Dr. Sehnaz Tahir-Gürçağlar, Boğaziçi University, Turkey Dr. Špela Vintar, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Publication: participants shall be invited to submit an article to be refereed and published in print and on the EMUNI summer school website. Expenses: Associates will be responsible for their own airfare and local transportation to and from Piran. The expected maximum costs for students for 12 days (registration + tuition + accommodation) is 970 €. Students from the non-EU countries of the Union for the Mediterranean, are eligible for grants. Application Deadline: March 15, 2013 Website: For the application procedure and more details of the school please visit the website at:http://www.prevajalstvo.net/emuni-doctoral-summer-school or write to emuni.info@ff.uni-lj.si
Until Congresswoman Gabri-elle Giffords was shot in the head on Jan. 8, 2011, most people had never heard the word "aphasia," which means difficulty talking, reading and writing as a result of brain damage.
ESSUP - When Paulette Maggiolo moved to America from France 65 years ago, she brought her languages with her. All five of them. After she married an American officer she had met during World War II, she built her life in the United States teaching the languages - French, English, Spanish, Italian and German - in public and private schools. Now 90, she is spending her retirement writing novels and nonfiction books in her native and adopted tongues. Most of her works reflect parts of her life: "The Guilty Teacher" is about an educator dealing with the prevalence of drugs in schools; "No Such Word" traces the relationships of a war bride brought to the U.S. She has written books about cooking, grammar, graduation parties and immigrants. Now she is working on a book of conversations "between two old women," inspired by her talks with her sister in France.
We all know the disadvantages of teaching a subject as a content novice, but what are the advantages? Brian Taylor By James M. Lang When I was a teenager, I wanted to become a professional golfer. I spent endless hours hitting balls on the range, putting on my basement carpet, and practicing my chipping at a field down the street from my house. I played on the golf team in high school, read magazines about the latest techniques and equipment, and studied the professionals in televised tournaments. Twenty years after those aspirations (mercifully) died, I am now a tenured faculty member and administrator with a working spouse and five children. Although I still love to play golf, and sneak out whenever possible, it has been knocked down a substantial number of pegs on my priority list. Two years ago, though, my wife decided that she would join a group of her friends who were taking up golf, and she got herself a set of lessons and some clubs. She quickly fell in love with the game. I was thrilled: What better than a happily married couple sharing a love of golf? Her golf lessons had mostly involved learning how to swing, which meant she had not received much instruction in what golfers call "the short game": chipping shots onto the green and putting them into the hole. Don't worry about that, I assured her: The short game was always my specialty. I can teach you how to chip and putt in a snap. So out on the course we went. I was confident that my many years as a student of the game, and my extensive knowledge of chipping and putting techniques, would enable me to help her develop those skills quickly. The first time I saw her chip, I began instructing her. "Keep your wrists stiff," I said. She hit a line drive over the green. "Not that stiff, obviously. Break them a little bit." She popped it up into the air about four inches. "Mostly stiff," I said, "but break them a little bit just over the ball." She glared at me and kicked the ball onto the green. This went on for several holes, with her chips scattering everywhere—or going nowhere—and marital tension mounting. I grew increasingly frustrated, both with her and myself. Why wasn't she doing this right? And why couldn't I fix what she was doing wrong? Here was one of the few skills in the world in which I could claim some level of expertise. Over and over again, as I hit my own chips, I tried to analyze what I was doing and explain it to her, but nothing seemed to help her improve. Eventually I gave up. "Playing golf is like dying," I pronounced philosophically, as we neared the end of that unhappy round. "There may be other people around, but ultimately you have to do it alone." Somehow it always surprises me how little she appreciates my philosophical pronouncements. This marital low point was the first real-world example that popped into my head while I was reading Therese Huston's Teaching What You Don't Know (Harvard University Press), which analyzes the gap between teaching as an expert of the course content and teaching as a novice of it. In the introduction to the book, which was just released in paperback, Huston points out that graduate students and new faculty members traditionally expect to be able to teach courses in their areas of expertise. That seems like a benign enough assumption. However, she writes, "college and university faculty members often find themselves having to teach what they don't know. They have to get up in front of their classes and explain something that they learned just last week, or two days ago, or, in the worst-case scenario, that same morning over a very hurried breakfast." I can confirm that easily enough from my own dozen years of teaching at a liberal-arts college. Although my background is in 20th-century British literature, I regularly have to dip back into the 19th century for my survey course on British literature. With almost no formal training in rhetoric, I count "Argument and Persuasion" among my standard course offerings. Every member of my department could make similar claims.
Polly Lankester is passionate about teaching history and loves her job. But at the beginning of her career she worked too hard and almost burnt out I had a gap year before I went to university where I spent a year in China, just to travel and learn Chinese but I ended up teaching English to university students. I really enjoyed it – and that was the first time I'd thought about teaching. I'd gone just to experience being abroad, but the teaching was the best part for me. So by the time I'd was at university, teaching had really started to take root as an idea. I loved studying for my history degree at Cambridge. I found (and still find) history intensely fascinating. I did a very diverse degree, not particularly specialising in any particular period or area. I couldn't imagine just taking one aspect of it further to the exclusion of all others so I didn't feel that doing a Phd was right for me, especially as it felt that would be quite solitary. So, as I imagined back before I started my degree, I went on to do a PGCE. The advice I was given was that to carry on at Cambridge doing a teaching degree would indicate that I wasn't really serious about teaching but just wanted to extend my student days particularly as I was involved in college-level sport. So I did my PGCE at Hull and it was a fabulous course with great combination of theory and advice. I discovered that teaching is never dull and you have to constantly think on your feet. It has to be one of the most difficult jobs, for example to differentiate effectively in a class full of children working at very different levels. And it's hard work doing that PGCE. I'm really glad I did it before I had children myself. Getting there is very tough! I don't think you get very far down the line before you realise that. I got my first job here at Saffron Walden County High in 1995. It was pure luck that I applied, I knew nothing about the school and just wanted an interview for practice. The head of department Denise Thompson (who has recently retired) was just wonderful. Within an hour of being here I thought: I so want this job. Denise was so excited about history and making it enquiry based, rigorous history – it was amazing what she was getting the kids doing. She was a real inspiration and I was so lucky to get the job. This is a fantastic school. Students know they are expected to show resilience and be on task and there's a very supportive senior management team. I learnt to be a teacher by imitation really. I would observe and started by copying what I liked. It became more natural and my colleagues have always been so supportive. The history department always encouraged intellectual risk taking so it was an exciting place to teach. But I didn't manage my work life balance well enough. I was so into the school, the subject and the students but I worked too hard and pretty much burnt myself out. I was exhausted and after three years I realised I needed a break from teaching so I went to Vietnam with VSO for two years. I worked on a teacher training programme out there, and really enjoyed it. I was living in a small town and provided endless entertainment for everyone who enjoyed giving me special challenges such as drinking cobra blood.
How 21st Century Thinking Is Just Different... In an era dominated by constant information and the desire to be social, should the tone of thinking for students be different? In a world full of information abundance, our minds are constantly challenged to react to data, and often in a way that doesn’t just observe, but interprets. Subsequently, we unknowingly “spin” everything to avoid cognitive dissonance. As a result, the tone of thinking can end up uncertain or whimsical, timid or arrogant, sycophant or idolizing–and so, devoid of connections and interdependence. The internet and social media are designed to connect, and with brilliant efficiency they do indeed connect—words and phrases, images and video, color and light, but not always to the net effect they might. The nature of social media rests on identity as much as anything else—forcing subjectivity on everything through likes, retweets, shares, and pins. Instead, we might consider constant reflection guided by important questions as a new way to learn in the presence of information abundance. But this takes new habits. Information Abundance There is more information available to any student with a smartphone than an entire empire would have had access to three thousand years ago. In one form or another, that idea has been repeated quite a bit since the “Shift Happens” videos were making their rounds on YouTube a few years ago, but it’s easy to miss how incredible this is. Truth may not change, but information does. And in the age of social media, it divides and duplicates in a frenzied kind of digital mitosis. New contexts—digital environments that function as humanity-in-your-pocket—demand new approaches and new habits. Specifically, new habits of mind.
How to teach writing, reading and thinking
OCTOBER 11, 2012 BY JOANNE LEAVE A COMMENT
“Explicit teaching of writing makes kids better writers” and readers. Does writing improve thinking? Dan Willingham looks at the evidence in The Atlantic.
Not all writing instruction is helpful, Willingham writes. Students learn to write well if they’re taught “the nuts and bolts,” such as “text structure, how to use specific strategies for planning, revising, or editing text, and so on. . . . if a teacher does not show students how to construct a paragraph or a well-written argument, some will figure out it anyway, but many will not.”
Writing instruction improves reading comprehension, but again the details matter. When students write about what they’ve read — analyzing, interpreting, summarizing and answering questions — they build comprehension, Willingham writes. Explicit teaching of writing conventions helps students understand how authors use conventions.
It’s worth noting that these two advantages — better writing and better reading — will probably not accrue if most writing assignments consist of answering short questions, writing in journals, and completing worksheets — exactly the writing tasks on which elementary school kids spend most of their time (Gilbert & Graham, 2010). Students need assignments that include writing in longer formats with some formal structural requirements.
The research is not as clear on the question of whether teaching writing improves thinking, he writes.
There is a certain logic to the idea that students can become better critical thinkers by completing writing assignments. Writing forces you to organize your thoughts. Writing encourages you to try different ideas and combinations of ideas. Writing encourages you to select your words carefully. Writing holds the promise (and the threat) of a permanent record of your thoughts, and thus offers the motivation to order them carefully. And indeed some forms of writing–persuasive or expository essays for example — explicitly call for carefully ordering thinking.
Maltese students are second best at learning foreign languages
Article published on 09 October 2012 Maltese students have been classified second in Europe for their skills in foreign languages according to a survey by the European Commission. The DOI said Sweden and Malta were mentioned for their students’ skills in learning foreign languages. Malta was second in students skills in the first foreign language, and fourth in the second foreign language, with Sweden ending last in the latter category. The survey showed that 82% of Maltese students studying English as their first foreign language were in Level B1 or B2 on a European scale, and 16% in level A1 or A2, placing second overall after Swedish students. Some 53,000 students from 16 countries took part in the European Survey of Language Competencies. There were 1,075 boys and 1,200 girls from Malta who took part in the survey, tested in English and Italian in listening, reading and writing. In English, the Maltese students came second in reading and listening, and first in writing.
Atelier sur l'enseignement bilingue : Elan pour l’adoption des langues nationales dans le formel
MONDAY, 08 OCTOBER 2012 09:55 WRITTEN BY AMA
Valider le plan d’action du projet sur l’utilisation des langues nationales dans les premières classes, tel est l’objectif de l’atelier initié par Ecoles et langues nationales en Afrique (Elan-Sénégal) qui s’est tenu au Centre national des ressources éducationnelles (Cnre).
L’objectif de cet atelier est la validation du plan d’action du projet sur l’utilisation des langues nationales dans les premières classes. L’utilisation des langues nationales étant considérée comme un facteur d’amélioration de qualité des apprenants, le processus est entré en vigueur depuis 2010. A l’occasion, le secrétaire général du ministère de l’Education nationale, Mafakha Touré, a déclaré que l’idée de fond véhiculée par ce projet repose sur « la volonté d’opérer une rupture par rapport à une longue tradition qui fait des systèmes éducatifs un lieu exclusivement réservé à l’enseignement du français, seule langue de scolarisation ». Selon lui, l’introduction des langues nationales dans les premières classes, avec l’enseignement du français, demeure « une nécessité et une urgence dans les pays francophones ». Car « la langue première de l’enfant constitue un puissant allié et un véritable accélérateur d’apprentissage de la langue seconde ». Il s’agit, à cet effet, de faire de la langue de l’élève le « premier instrument de découverte de son environnement afin de poser les bases d’une véritable interculturalité », a dit M. Touré. Poursuivant, il a ajouté que « cette rencontre marque un nouveau départ dans cette aventure vers un bilinguisme effectif à l’école formelle, alors qu’il est établi, depuis nombre d’années, que l’introduction des langues nationales à l’école s’offre comme l’une des meilleures stratégies pour renforcer l’enseignement du français et, au-delà, améliorer la qualité de l’éducation ».
Il a recommandé la validation du plan d’action national. Ceci permettra de partager les documents de base, en vue de démarrer de larges et profondes recommandations qui vont systématiser les leçons apprises du passé et dégager enfin les meilleures stratégies pour sensibiliser les acteurs.
Discover how SMART boards for English Language Acquisition can help students become more engaged and motivated to learn the English language.
Ghana: Politicians and Their Stance On Quality Teaching
Tagged: Business, Education, Ghana, Labour, West Africa
BY PHYLLIS D. OSABUTEY AND JANINA BROKER, 5 OCTOBER 2012
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TODAY IS World Teachers' day and the theme for the celebration is: 'Take a Stand for Teachers'. Everyone who is able to read and write, and has any other skill that enables him/her to earn a living owes it largely to a teacher. Teachers impart knowledge to generations after generations, and so it is right to salute the teacher on a day like this. The day was first instituted in 1994 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),and is held annually on October 5th. The day celebrates teachers worldwide and aims to mobilize support for teachers and to ensure that the needs of future generations will continue to be met by teachers. According to UNESCO, World Teachers' Day represents a significant token of the awareness, understanding and appreciation displayed for the vital contribution that teachers make to education and development. As part of activities to mark the day, the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) earlier last week engaged leaders of the various political parties at a forum in Accra. This was to provide a platform for the parties to state what policies they would implement to meet the needs of teachers and the general educational system. To enable them state their specific objectives, the theme for their delivery was "Positioning the Teacher to Deliver Quality Public Education".
By Denise Ho, guest columnist Last spring semester, a friend of mine teaching a business course for executives at the University of Louisville told his class that there were to be two kinds of grades for writing in the course: A and F. The logic, he explained, was simple. In the real world, a well-written business proposal would be read and its author would have a chance to be funded. A poorly written proposal, jostling for attention among thousands of other letters, would never even make it to his desk. Of course, this kind of seminar and its grading policy was for professionals. For undergraduates, though, there is still a lesson in this story. Writing matters, and when you graduate — no matter what field you pursue — being able to articulate yourself may mean the difference between getting a job and being passed over. So given that you are here to learn, how can you make the most of college to become a better writer? The following are some ways to think about the skill of writing. The first idea is that writing is a way to think. Ideas come out when you write, which is why putting pen to paper is sometimes the hardest part of starting an essay or a research paper. If you formulate your arguments as you write them, it makes sense also to re-write. When you get to the end of your paper, start over and make the argument clear from the beginning. Writing is a process, and writing is something that is learned. Even your professors get feedback on writing, so you should take advantage of the Writing Center, your classmates, and your teachers to bring out your arguments and polish your style. The second point is that writing is a way to know. You cannot truly master something until you can explain it, whether to yourself or to your intended audience. So even as you read, you should take notes and summarize them. If one of your reading assignments seems particularly opaque, write yourself a note that begins, “I think that the author is trying to say …” By explaining content to yourself, a difficult passage may become clearer. If not, take your summary to your professor’s office hours and see if your first attempt was correct. If it turns out to be wrong, at least you’ve given yourself a chance to understand the material on your own.
Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching is a refereed journal published four times a year by the Department of English Studies, Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts, Adam Mickiewicz University, Kalisz, Poland. The language of publication is English. The journal is devoted to reporting previously unpublished highest quality theoretical and empirical research on learning and teaching second and foreign languages. It deals with the learning and teaching of any language, not only English, and focuses on a variety of topics ranging from the processes underlying second language acquisition, various aspects of language learning in instructed and non-instructed settings, as well as different facets of the teaching process, including syllabus choice, materials design, classroom practices and evaluation. Articles published in this issue Jelena Mihaljević Djigunović – Dynamics of learner affective development in early FLL Larissa Aronin – Material culture of multilingualism and affectivity Peter MacIntyre, Tammy Gregersen – Emotions that facilitate language learning : The positive-broadening power of the imagination
Five-day workshop in IIUI Islamabad—A five days workshop on the topic of “Teaching Translation and Interpretation, Theory, Practice and Challenges” under the auspicious of Faculty of Arabic of the International Islamic University, Islamabad (IIUI) with the collaboration of Higher Education Commission (HEC) is continued here since last Monday in the new campus of the university. On the third day of the workshop Mr. Abdul Karim Shah spoke on “Scope of translation and interpretation in international market”, Dr. Fadeela Daud spoke on “Interpretation and role of Interpreter in international conference”, Shareef Sheikh spoke on “Media, Legal and Conference Translation”.—NNI
Google launched an open source course building web application for the growing list of K-12 and big-name universities developing online classes. The barebones website is a lightweight way to bring course material online, track student engagement (with web traffic and surveys), and evaluate performance. “We want to use this launch to show that Google believes it can contribute to technology in education,” says Google’s Director of Research, Peter Norvig. Course-builder came off the back of an experimental Google class, “Power Searching with Google,” which went out to schools across the country to educate students on the more advanced features of Google for online research. The power-searching course “was a strong success and also generated some technology that we thought would be useful to share with the world,” says Norvig. “We feel that by sharing the code that we’ve generated, we can impact more people in the education space. There is a lot of experimentation going on in the industry at this point, and we felt that contributing an open source project would be a beneficial starting point that could help everyone.” Google is hoping that big-name universities, such as Stanford and MIT, who have started to put their courses online for free, will adopt the technology.
Several developers in our network make apps that focus on learning new languages. Our guest post this week highlights strategies from two families that cover storytelling as an important component of bilingual education in the home.
A five-day workshop on ‘Teaching Translation and Interpretation, Theory, Practice and Challenges’ has started at the International Islamic University (IIU). Organised by Faculty of Arabic of IIU in collaboration with the Higher Education Commission (HEC), the aim of the workshop is to highlight the importance of translation in transformation of knowledge from one language to another. Speaking on the occasion, Professor Dr. Sahibzada Sajidur Rehman said that there was a time when the western world was looking towards the Muslims for knowledge in different disciplines but it is sorry to say that now-a-days the Muslim scholars are going to the western universities to seek knowledge.
Translation sections in varsities urged Staff Report ISLAMABAD: A five-day workshop, organised under the auspices of International Islamic University, Islamabad’s (IIUI) Faculty of Arabic on Monday, learned about the importance of translation in transformation of knowledge from one language to another. Held with collaboration of Higher Education Commission (HEC) at the university’s new campus, the workshop’s topic was ‘Teaching Translation and Interpretation, Theory, Practice and Challenges’. Presiding over the inaugural session of the workshop, IIUI President Prof Dr Sahibzada Sajidur Rehman said, “It is impossible to transform knowledge from one language to another without proper translation.” He said that due to these translations the scholars and clerics of sub-continent became familiar with the knowledge of the holy Quran, the hadith and fiqh. He said there was a time when the Western world used to look towards the Muslim world for seeking knowledge. “Nowadays Muslim scholars head for the Western universities to seek knowledge of the holy Quran, the hadith and other Islamic disciplines.” He said that it was the need of the hour to establish translation departments in Pakistani universities to transform the Quranic as well as the knowledge of modern disciplines in native languages. He assured all possible cooperation to the Faculty of Arabic in this regards. Earlier, programme coordinator Dr Inamul Haq Ghazi briefed the participants about the workshop and said that the IIU was the first university in Pakistan to introduce the four-year BS in Translation and Interpretation. He added that MS in Translation and Interpretation would also be introduced next year, which will be converted in PhD programme later on. He thanked the HEC for its cooperation to hold the workshop.
EAST LANSING, Mich. — A new addition to Michigan State University’s Wells Hall is open for business – 88,000 gross square feet of space that is now serving as the university’s language education hub. A grand opening ceremony for the building will be held at 4 p.m. Friday on the East Plaza of Wells Hall. Among MSU officials participating in the event are Board of Trustees’ member Faylene Owen, President Lou Anna K. Simon, Provost Kim Wilcox, and Dean of the College of Arts and Letters Karin Wurst. Wells Hall is now home to a number of academic departments, most from the College of Arts and Letters, including English; linguistics and Germanic, Asian and African languages; Spanish and Portuguese; French, classics and Italian; and the English Language Center. Religious Studies and African American Studies also will be relocated to Wells, while the history department will be moved into renovated space in the Old Horticulture Building. “The new Wells Hall addition is another piece of MSU’s commitment to a cutting-edge global focus,” Simon said. “Understanding of world languages and cultures is a prerequisite to the ability to be successfully engaged in business, government, diplomacy, research and the arts in the 21st century.” The new facility provides office, instructional and research space. It includes a three-story atrium, three new classrooms and language laboratories, as well as private and open office environments that will help promote faculty and student interactions. One of the key components of the new facility is the Center for Language Teaching Advancement. "As all sectors internationalize, language proficiency and cultural competency will be integral parts of nearly every job and career," Wurst said. "The new Wells Hall addition, and all that it allows us to do, will play a critical role in making sure our students are prepared to meet the ever-changing challenges of the world around them." The new addition also is energy efficient with features ranging from a green roof to daylight-controlled window shades.
One of the most important things I learned as a young assistant basketball coach, from the grizzled veteran who became my first mentor, was the acronym “KISS.” That stands for “Keep It Simple, Stupid”—and not, apparently, for “Knights in Satan’s Service,” as a local youth pastor asserted back in 1975, when I was still trying to figure out how the heck to play a vinyl LP backward so I could hear the hidden messages. But I digress. The point my mentor was making is that even though basketball is basically a simple game, coaches have a way of making it more complicated than it has to be. That proved to be a valuable lesson throughout my coaching career, and it’s been just as valuable to me as a writing instructor. Writing, too, is basically a pretty simple process—simple, not easy—but we have a way sometimes of overcomplicating it. Nowhere is that more true, apparently, than in today’s middle and high schools, where regular “writing assessments” are to harried teachers what annual colonoscopies might be to the rest of us. No doubt that’s partly because all those teachers genuinely want to do a good job, but I imagine it’s also because schools, and school systems, are essentially large bureaucracies, where everything is done by committee. That means you have a lot of smart, dedicated people sitting around a table, all eager to contribute something to the lesson plan or the rubric or whatever. And all of them do contribute something, thus making the document about five times longer and more complex (let’s be honest) than it really needs to be.
These exercises and more can be found in Conference Interpreting - A Students'Companion, A Gillies, 2001, (p80-83) and are reproduced with the kind permission of Tertium Krakow). More exercises can be found in the 2004 revised eidtion of this book, Conference Interpreting - A New Students' companion.
I have often heard that Spain’s addiction to film dubbing is responsible for the lack of proficiency in foreign languages. Is it possible to learn a language watching films? Are movie subtitles necessary? How many language-learning methods are there? Truly countless. Cada maestrillo con su librillo, is an old Spanish saying that proves that each teacher, from time immemorial, has her own, best and proven teaching and learning method. I have often heard that Spain’s addiction to film dubbing is responsible for the lack of proficiency in foreign languages, which also proves that excuses abound as much as teaching methods. Read more: http://www.voxxi.com/original-version-films-language-learning/#ixzz25g2cLnmd
Aprender idiomas de graça e ajudar a traduzir textos na internet é a principal proposta de Luis von Ahn, matemático e empreendedor guatemalteco, criador do sistema Captcha e que acaba de lançar o site Duolingo. A versão beta da plataforma foi divulgada no ano passado, mas, segundo informou Von Ahn à Agência Efe, o portal já está em funcionamento. Segundo ele, meio milhão de pessoas no mundo todo já se somou a esta iniciativa. O sistema avalia os estudantes por níveis a partir do zero e, assim, eles vão aprendendo de forma intuitiva com atividades e exercícios para escutar e falar, utilizando a plataforma digital. Os usuários primeiro começam aprendendo palavras muito simples e pouco a pouco vão sendo dadas a eles frases de textos da internet que não foram traduzidos, tais como o título de um artigo que contenha as palavras que foram aprendendo nas atividades precedentes. Se o usuário não conhece alguma palavra, o programa revela seu significado e dá pistas para que o estudante se lembre da próxima vez. Diferentes alunos traduzem essa frase e, em seguida, veem como fizeram outros usuários. No final, escolhem qual é a tradução mais apropriada. Uma das páginas com a qual trabalham é a Wikipédia, onde vão fazendo as traduções dos artigos quando estão completos. Futuramente, a plataforma deve se conectar a instituições educativas ou a alguns sites de notícias para traduzir seus conteúdos e aproximar ainda mais a internet do público que não fala inglês.
[image]Learning English was never about winning a personal challenge - it was about survival for Japanese writer, translator and freelance film co-ordinator Izumi Uchida.
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