Cairo Forum 2010 Education Site

Archive for the ‘Language’ Category

Which would be easier for you to memorize?

1.) The entire New York telephone book
2.) A small nursery rhyme

If you picked #1, please go away!

Scientific studies have shown that we learn best by absorbing small morsels of information, applying them in a practical manner, then building on what we know. As we add more chunks of information our minds correlate, collate, and link everything, referring back to previously learned facts to form a comprehensive sphere of knowledge.

What does this mean to you?

Don’t tackle a huge book of foreign language grammar or prose as an early learning project. Begin with smaller projects.

For example, you could start with a few paragraphs of a novel – memorizing the vocabulary – and proceeding to the next few paragraphs.

Why not choose the most widely published book in the world?

Even if you’re not a Christian, the Bible can be an invaluable tool for learning the foreign language of your choice. It is published in more languages than any other book, and there is a plethora of internet resources with complete texts available for FREE download.

Many foreign language Bible sites have FREE audio clips as well.

‘But the Bible is full of ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ and outdated language that nobody uses any longer.’

You’re right! The King James version would NOT be a good learning tool for anyone trying to learn English. However, there are many translations in modern English – and that is also the case with foreign languages.

Use your favorite search engine to do searches like ‘modern Bible translation French’, ‘modern Bible translation German’, or ‘modern Bible translation Spanish’. Do your research and find out what is available for the language you are learning.

Start with some of the smaller chapters and work up to the larger ones.

Make up a vocabulary list and memorize a few words at a time. If you need help with some difficult phrases, find an online foreign language forum and post a question. Most forums are full of helpful native speakers who will do their utmost to help you understand subtle nuances and connotations.

Download the audio clips, save them to your hard drive, and listen to them repeatedly – either on your computer’s sound system or a portable audio player. Repeat the words softly as you listen, paying meticulous attention to pronunciation. Progress slowly to speaking in a normal voice along with the narrator.
Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever wondered how it is possible that you can speak your native language so easily? When you want to express something, correct phrases and sentences just come to you. Most of this process is unconscious.

Stephen Krashen, a professor at the University of Southern California and a linguistics expert, has developed a hypothesis to explain how this is possible. He used his Input Hypothesis to design what he calls a “natural approach” to learning a language.

Krashen uses “input” in this context to describe the words and sentences that you read and listen to. If you understand these sentences, they are stored in your brain. More specifically, they are stored in the part of your brain that is responsible for language.

Krashen uses his hypothesis to explain how a child learns his or her native language. The child listens to his or her parents and other people. As the child’s brain collects these words and sentences, he or she gets better and better at producing sentences on his or her own. By age 5, the child can already speak quite fluently.

According to Krashen’s theory, the way to learn and improve is to feed your brain with a lot of input – correct and understandable sentences, written or spoken. Read the rest of this entry »

Most teachers have found that getting their students interested in reading is no easy task. But one teacher in Queens Village, N.Y., has found an innovative way to keep students in her sixth-grade class focused and entertained while improving their reading skills.

Bertha Cuascut, a literacy coach at The Jean Nuzzi School, a public middle school, agreed to take part in a pilot program called Read-A-Movie. The program was created by SFK Media Specially for Kids Corp. and is part of the company’s suite of courses that aim to improve reading-readiness and skills.

The program revolves around SFK Media’s Reading Movies, which combine reading with entertaining movies in a technique the company says can help teach vocabulary and improve comprehension.

The movies use Action Captions, a patented technology that displays the dialogue on the screen as text, in real-time, without interrupting the flow of the movie. Researchers and educators indicate that these Action Captions activate the cognitive elements of the brain so that the development of both reading and spoken language skills takes place naturally.
Read the rest of this entry »

Using Mnemonics in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning

So how much vocabulary do you actually need to know before you can “get by” and actually converse in a foreign language? That depends on who you ask, as that tends to vary somewhat.

In his book, “Using Your Memory”, author Tony Buzan says that a mere 100 words comprise nearly 50% of the vocabulary used in every day conversational speech in most languages. Learning the equivalent of these words in a foreign language can help you to quickly develop essential vocabulary for everyday conversational use. But is this really enough?

Link Word Technique

Generally, you can function at the most basic level in a foreign language with a core vocabulary of around 1000 words according to Dr. Michael Gruneberg who formalized the “LinkWord” technique. He claims that, using this technique of linking a word in your own language to a word in the new language, you can acquire a core vocabulary in a foreign language in as little as 10 hours.
Read the rest of this entry »