Language Solution

I often wonder what is meant by not being “judgmental”? Is it not normal to be judgmental? We are constantly making judgments about situations and about people.  In particular in a debate or discussion, it is hard too avoid judging the opinion of someone you are debating with.

To me this aversion to being “judgmental” reminds of the politically correct people who propose “dialoguing” as an alternative to debating. Most of those people get quite aggressive when you disagree with their received truths. I prefer to judge things for myself and state my opinions.

Posted via email from Lingosteve’s place

I spoke to an immigrant to Canada today, a lady from South America. She spoke excellent English. She managed to combine Canadian intonation with a noticeable but charming Spanish lilt. Her choice of words was definitely that of an educated person. She is trying to get her certificate as a pharmaceutical assistant in order to work in a hospital here. She has been told that the rules are that she needs to achieve a “level 8″ in writing, according to that bureaucratic nightmare known as the Canadian Benchmark System. She has written several tests but has only reached level 7 because her use of prepositions, her spelling and her punctuation are not at  “level 8″, while the rest of her English is . She was about to take an expensive “English writing course” and I persuaded her to work on her writing at LingQ, for much less money.

It would seem to me that since she has all the technical competence to do the job, and has even acquired the Canadian equivalent credits, as long as her employer thinks that she can do the job, why should some arbitrary level in spelling, prepositions and punctuation on the Canadian Benchmarks System stand in the way of her job. Kafkaesque!!

Posted via email from Lingosteve’s place

The amazing proliferation of learning resources on the web is going to change our whole approach to learning, and especially language learning. Here is one web site that lists the many free language learning resources on the web. It even lists LingQ. Most of these free resources also offer services that enable them to cover their costs.

Posted via email from Lingosteve’s place

1) How well can one learn to speak a language in two months, starting from scratch? Let’s take the case of both a related language, and a non-related language. Examples from your own experience would be great. Of course it will depend on the time available. Let’s look at two scenarios; one hour a day, and full time study.

2) This leads to the second question. When you learn a language, how much time do you spend on it every day, on average?

3) Are you learning your language in the country where the language is spoken or not?

4) At what point can you say that you speak a language? How would you describe that state of language competence?

I will wait to hear from you out there, then I will give my own views.

We could even have a few skype conversations on this if you are interested. I would record them and post them as podcasts if the sound quality is good enough. We could do these interviews in the language of your choice, as long as I speak that language.

Posted via email from Lingosteve’s place

Here is what I would do if I were a language teacher. This is in response to Jacob who wanted some more constructive comments on how to handle language teaching in a classroom environment.

Posted via email from Lingosteve’s place

インターネット、iPod、および他の新しいガジェット、外国語学習を変更させています。あなたは、どのように言語の勉強に新技術を使っていますか？

a）熱心なひとびと
どのように学習し、言語学習のための近代的な情報技術や関連機器を使用していますか？
新しい言語関連のサイト、または言語コンテンツサイトとか、iPodのアプリ、グーグル翻訳その他を使っていますか？何でもいいですが、教えてください．

b）まだまだのひとびと
まだ多くの人がiPodやMP3プレーヤーが何であるかを知らない、コンピュータあまり使わない。この人たちをどう指導すればいいでしょうか？

ご意見をお願いします。

Posted via web from LingQCentral 日本

Are any of you familiar with Benny the Irish polyglot and his website and language learning approach? I hope to have a discussion with him about where we agree and where we disagree in our approaches to language learning. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who is familiar with his method. I will let you know when we have the discussion and will post it here as a podcast.

Posted via email from Lingosteve’s place

I posted the podcast here earlier. Here is the transcript. I will also be putting it into the library at LingQ.

Posted via email from Lingosteve’s place