The benefits of learning languages

Look what I´ve found looking for information about 

learning and teaching languages...

You can find the Best Infographics About Teaching & Learning English As A Second (or Third!) Language at http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org

Intercultural awareness

Hi again!

I continue working on Second language aquisition, and this time I´d like to remind you that, among other things,  languages are the key to understanding other cultures…  There is not a “target language” but a range of different cultures; so, as  our world is multilingual, we may say that a new language may create a new mindset…. Here is where INTERCULTURAL ideas enter; we may say that Intercultural competence is the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately with people of other cultures. In interactions with people from foreign cultures, a person who is interculturally competent understands the culture-specific concepts of perception, thinking, feeling, and acting. That is why the material used to teach should have an equal value on L1 and L2, and it should promote dialogue and interaction between cultures, arousing curiosity and tolerance for other cultures (and taking into account our own culture as well).

An important concept to cultural awareness is CODE MESHING, which allows students to integrate home languages along with standard languages in a way that respects the fluid nature of language and 

the students´identities.

Code meshing can be described as  the act of combining colloquial and local words with Standard written English in order to embrace pluralism and diversity. It refers to the concurrent use of different languages, dialects, and genres, sounds, and even more distinct linguistic features and conventions in a single rhetorical performance. This way, language may be mediating culture and presupossing  awareness of own culture.    

What is Interlanguage?

Hi! Long time no see!

This time I´d like to show you some interesting concepts we have been working with at English and its Teaching 3 at ISFD N°55.

If you go through this blog, you will notice some important ítems on language aquisition; and as teachers, we have to take into account different elements; one of them is INTERLANGUAGE; it can be recognized as a language created by learners of a second language which is between the target language and the learner's first language (L1).

A learner's interlanguage preserves some features of their L1, and can also overgeneralize some L2 writing and speaking rules; that´s why the learner creates an interlanguage using different learning strategies such as language transfer, overgeneralisation and simplification.

Here you have a clear video with its characteristics…

Web tools for EFL teachers - Second part

http://www.wordle.net/
Tool to generate word clouds with different fonts, layouts and colour settings.

www.abcya.com
Online games for kids in K-5 sorted by grade level. Games incorporate areas such as math and language arts while introducing basic computer skills.
It is a fun and exciting tool in which you can also create graphical representations of words. I really like it!

https://tagul.com/

Tagul is a web service that enables you to create gorgeous looking word cloud art and place it on your web page.
With this word cloud generator every word is linked to a google search; so clouds are interactive and can be embedded on blogs or websites... Highly recommended!!

www.reallusion.com/

Reallusion is a leader in the development of 3D cinematic animation and 2D cartoon softwares for consumers, students and professionals; it is used to create 3d talking characters from an image or photo and facial animation for video and websites.

www.voki.com/

Educate, Engage and enjoy with all voki products! VOKI. It's Free. Create fun and unique Voki characters that speak in many languages  You can generate personalised speaking avatars for your blogs and websites... You will find a voki at the right of my blog...

I will add more tools soon... You can also find some webpages recommended at some of the teachers´magazines...

Web tools for EFL teachers

Today I want to share some internet sites useful to                     teach / learn english…

https://www.timetoast.com/

Useful and easy-to-use tool to generate timelines to be added to your blog or website.

 http://vozme.com/index.php?lang=en

Free online tool to convert tex tinto speech. It creates an mp3 file which can be downloaded  and saved in your computer.

http://www.teachertube.com/

Site where you can post and share instructinal videos.

http://www.ning.com/es/?set-language=1

Free tool for creating an interactive community for your class.

http://www.pbworks.com/

Online platform to créate a shared workspace and improve teamwork.

https://polldaddy.com/

Powerful tool to créate online surveys which can be embedded on your blog or webpage.

There are many more tools, resources and applications you can 

explore and exploit as a language teacher… I´ll be sharing more of them soon… Do you recommend us any one which works for you?

The need for early second language exposure...

Another interesting video from TED, this time we will listen to Tharessa Kehl, a high school student, talking about second language aquisition...

A little girl and her interesting point of view...

Improving teaching strategies and the use of technology in class by a 6th grade student, Vivien Victoriano in a TED event.... Really interesting to hear....