Russian Language Mentor

Posted on November 12, 2012 by

The Russian Language Mentor has a great collection of resources spanning 14 categories:

  • Developing Language Proficiency Reading
  • Developing Language Proficiency Listening
  • Developing Russian Cultural Literacy (in English)
  • Cultural Literacy Interactive Research Index
  • Grammar Review and Mailbadg
  • Crossword Challenge: Building Vocabulary
  • Fundamentals of Case Grammar
  • Internet Resources (Link to SEELRC Webliographies)
  • Developing Scientific and Technical Literacy
  • Intermediate Russian Grammar Exercises
  • Country Study eProtfolio
  • The Irregardless Gallery at the Boris and Gleb Tea Room
  • Virtual Slavic Club
  • Reading Listening Library

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Multitasking

Posted on November 7, 2012 by

When I worked at a different institution, I sometimes heard people say that we should not keep students from multitasking, because that’s how students today learn. The current generation of students grew up in a world surrounded by technology, and using technology has become part of their lives as much as eating and sleeping. In class, students may simultaneously be using social media and text messaging, and yet they could be on task and spell the most difficult foreign words at the same time. This is a case where it may be difficult to tell students “you could have done better if you hadn’t done these things.” It seems to be difficult to evaluate the disadvantages and the effects of multitasking, yet it’s not too difficult at the same time. Continue reading →

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Knowmia

Posted on November 1, 2012 by

Knowmia has a collection of over 8,000 videos. It is designed mostly for high school teaching and learning, but I do find the Chinese language collection to be beneficial to our students. The reason I recommend the Chinese class collection to our students but not necessarily the French and Spanish collections, is that the lessons in French and Spanish collections tend to cover grammar and vocabulary that professors usually cover in classes. It might be helpful for students who are learning the language on their own, but probably less so if they are already taking the language classes. In the collection of the Chinese lessons, although there are also lessons on the basic vocabulary and grammar, there are also many lessons focused on stories and culture, focusing on food, transportation, family lives and festivals.

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Webcast in Russian: NOVOSTI NEDELI

Posted on October 15, 2012 by

Webcast in Russian: VOVOSTI NEDELI is a project of the National Capital Language Recourse Center. The NCLRC offers webcasts in three languages: Arabic, Chinese and Russian, among which the Russian webcasts appear to be the most developed ones with exercises associatedwith each webcast.

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杨澜：The Generation that's remaking China

Posted on October 8, 2012 by

Microblogs came into China in 2009 and this social platform has grown tremendously in the past several years. With most Microblog users being young people (defined as under 30), and of this generation (born in the 80’s and 90’s), microblogs have shown great influence in China in both social and political aspects.

Yang Lan (Wikipedia), a famous journalist, TV show host, and entrepreneur gave a TED Talk on this phenomenon. (For more on social media and how it can affect change, see this TED Talk from Clay Shirky.)

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Duolingo

Posted on October 2, 2012 by

I learned about Duolingo at the CALICO conference in May 2012. James Paul Gee mentioned Duolingo briefly in his keynote speech. In the summer, one of our French students mentioned that he had enjoyed studying with Duolingo. Duolingo provides excellent exercises for language learners although students might find learning a little challenging if they start to learn a foreign language only through Duolingo. Duolingo may be an excellent choice for students who are taking language classes and who are looking for supplemental materials to study.

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Spanish Proficiency Exercises

Posted on July 13, 2012 by

“Spanish Proficiency Exercises is a compilation of brief video clips in which native speakers of Spanish from various locations throughout Latin America and Spain demonstrate various language tasks.” This project is developed by University of Texas at Austin. (link to project) You can access this great resource for free without registering for an account.

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Ai Chinese

Posted on July 10, 2012 by

Aichinese.com is a resource that Chinese instructors and students should not miss.  This is a great resource for listening and speaking exercises, and it also provides excellent content learning information. With a free account, you will be surprised how many materials are provided. Even as a native speaker, it will take me quite some time to go through all the materials. The registration process is very quick and easy.

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Software Report: Antidote

Posted on June 28, 2012 by

Jack Burston, a senior lecturer in French at Monash University in Australia, and also as of this writing the Software Review Editor of the CALICO (The Computer Assisted Language Insruction Consortium) Journal, has written a detailed, in-depth review of the French grammar/spell checker software Antidote. Since Antidote is also what we use in our language lab at Reed, I would like to share this article with you.

Resource: CALICO Journal, Volume 16 Number 2, pp. 197-212

(Link to full article)

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Jing and Screencast

Posted on June 22, 2012 by

Before I discovered Jing, for over 10 years I had been using a different program to capture images on PCs. As stubborn as I could be, I had no doubt that I needed to say goodbye to my old friend and to adopt Jing to do the capturing work, especially for video capturing. The image capturing function in Jing is also great, but some of the Mac users may find it just as easy to use command+shift+4 to capture the piece of the screen you want. In this post, I will briefly introduce image capturing in Jing, but mostly focusing on the educational uses of Jing’s video capturing function.

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