Date Archives: Articles
We found this article from teacher Ben Johnson, writing for Edutopia, on the use of figurative languages in adages to be an engaging and exciting approach in all classes for building deeper thinking and cultural awareness. This is a great warm up activity! From Spanish teacher Ben Johnson and Edutop …
A new report from American Academy of Arts and Sciences makes a data-based case for building U.S. capacity for foreign languages. Language education is dwindling at every level, from K-12 to postsecondary, and a diminishing share of U.S. residents speak languages other than English, according to a n …
There are two versions of the writer Lauren Collins. There is the English-speaking Lauren, who, presumably, is the Lauren primarily responsible for writing her (wonderful) new memoir, When in French. And then there is the French-speaking Lauren, the one tasked with navigating a marriage and a life i …
Native speakers of any language will judge the “difficulty” of another language by how much it differs from their own. For example, the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the U.S. Department of State lists five categories of increasing time taken for native English speakers to acquire “General Profe …
Thousands of primary school pupils in the United Kingdom have been learning about the region’s pearling industry, the oil boom and the culture of coffee in the Arabian Gulf thanks to the efforts of a British couple. Clive Holes, a dialectologist, and his wife, Deidre, have translated examples of the …
I have been asked several times at my university in Oman to do a brief “cultural introduction” to native speakers of English from North America and Europe who have come to improve their Arabic. I start by mentioning that there is a large difference between learning how to speak a language and learni …
Marhaba and hello. In March, I visited the Mohammed bin Rashid School of Communications at the American University in Dubai, where I sit on the advisory board with prominent regional business leaders. After some students presented reports to us in fluent English, I was surprised to hear my fellow bo …
Study of Arabic is the single most important driver of study abroad in the Arab world, and the rapid increase in the number of students in Arabic language courses over the past decade has driven a significant increase in study abroad numbers as well. Historically, from World War II until the 1990s, …
eLearning advantages and disadvantages are important to consider when making instructional and learning decisions. Many organizations and institutions provide different forms of training and instruction to their employees or learners. Typically they provide needed training by sending people to schoo …