Posts Tagged ‘using the web’
May
May
Frequency lists help you learn what’s important
In general, I hate the idea of lists or any form of measure or statistic when it comes to fluency. I believe that being fluent means being able to communicate on common subjects without a translator or dictionary, not some numerical measure of how many words you know or how many lessons you’ve completed. Remember,…
Jun
Jun
Learn Russian as it is really spoken… from LOLCats?
One of the most difficult barriers in language study is the disconnect between the words and pronunciations you learn in a book and those you hear in daily speech.
In English, we write “I am going to…” but we say “I’m gonna”. We write “what do you think?”, but we say “Whaddya think?” This same…
Jul
Jul
Can you use Facebook to learn languages? Yes!
I got a kick out of this post yesterday questioning the value of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in language learning. (And no, it’s not funny because of the URL, though that did make me laugh.)
What’s funny to me is the irony of a post questioning the value of Facebook and Twitter,…
Jul
Jul
You can use Twitter to learn languages too!
Yesterday I wrote about some ways that Facebook can be used to learn languages. Today, I’d like to continue the discussion of social networking sites by exploring some ways you can use Twitter to learn a new language.
Reaching content
First, let’s think about how content-providers (such as bloggers, like me) are using Twitter. The…
Jul
Jul
Italian travel blogs
Perhaps the single topic that I read about the most is travel. I have always been fascinated with far away places and beautiful, exotic scenery… multicultured festivals and traditional styles of dress.
So naturally, when I am learning a new language, I go on the hunt for travel blogs in that language. When you’re learning…
Oct
Oct
Getting the most out of Lang-8
One of the most helpful tools I use for language learning is the free, social web site Lang-8. There, you write freely in your target language, as you might in a blog, and then your text is made available sentence by sentence for correction from native speakers.
Getting correction from a native speaker is invaluable,…
Nov
Nov
What happened to LiveMocha?
I haven’t visited LiveMocha since probably last March, when it’s usefulness faded behind my growing Italian vocabulary. But last week I went and played with it and found that it’s completely different… and not in a good way.
I don’t believe that any program, system, web site, book, CD, or software can ever be perfect,…
Apr
Apr
Yonja: the Turkish social network
As you know, social networks are a large parts of my learning strategy. They’re very useful to the learner because they involve realy people using the language in real ways, rather than the formulaic dialogs and robotic vocabulary memorization that you find in books, flashcard systems, etc.
Today, I’m only going to look at the…