On learning languages and the gaining of wisdom - Language on the Move The National Institute of the English Language in Tehran has used the slogan “A new language is a new life” for more than 50 years I’m preparing my lecture on “Internationalization and Multilingualism” for a language teaching conference in Bangkok later this week and I’ve been looking for a pithy proverb or quote about the joys of language learning. I’ve discovered more than I can possibly use and so am sharing some below. The idea that learning a new language extends your horizons, makes you wiser and allows you to live your life more fully can be found in a number of intellectual traditions. This idea is based on the fact that each language is related to a particular cultural and intellectual tradition and a particular world view. Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt. Obviously, one way to extend the limits of one language is to learn another one. Notitia linguarum est prima porta sapientiae. A Chinese proverb makes the same point: 学一门语言，就是多一个观察世界的窗户。
Ruth's story: One child refugee's journey from Eritrea to England - CBBC Newsround Ruth was 14 when she left her home country of Eritrea in east Africa. She didn't like the way she was being treated, so she embarked on a dangerous journey to the UK. Ruth has been telling Newsround's Hayley her story... Three-thousand children Three-thousand children arrived in the UK alone last year. Many of them are migrants or refugees escaping war or devastation in their home countries. When they get to the UK they are often tired and afraid. They are taken by immigration officers or police to a safe place where they are asked lots of questions. This is so that the people in charge can understand how old the child is, where they have come from and what they will need to keep them healthy and safe. Leave to remain If the child is under 17, they are given leave to remain, which means they can stay in the UK and will be looked after until they are old enough to look after themselves. I have spoken to 12 children. One of them was Ruth. Living in Eritrea But this was no easy task. Leaving Eritrea
EnglishClub theconversation A new study on second language learning has recently taken the media by storm. A range of headlines – from the BBC to the Daily Mail and The Guardian – all trumpeted the depressing message that it’s impossible to become fluent in a foreign language after around age ten. All of these reports dramatically misrepresented the findings from the study, and the message they sent is flat-out wrong. For one thing, the words “fluency” or “fluent” never even appear in the original study, published in the journal Cognition. There’s a good reason for this: fluency is not what the study’s authors, or any other scientists studying the effect of age in foreign language learning, are interested in. To be fluent in another language means that you can communicate with relative ease, that is, without it being a real strain on either the speaker or the listener. Pretty much anyone can become fluent in pretty much any language at pretty much any age. The ‘critical window’ No cut off at age ten
Does Speaking A Foreign Language Change Your Personality? My high school English teacher used to tell us stuff like, “Learning a foreign language changes you forever.” Despite being an obvious attempt to make us passionate about her subject, her words made sense to me — the kid who quoted obscure Buffy the Vampire Slayer lines and treated Alanis Morissette’s lyrics like the word of God. After all, without a basic understanding of the English language I couldn’t have done any of that, and all those beautiful imaginary friendships would have never blossomed. Then I made it to adulthood (I think) and experienced first-hand the perks of speaking a foreign language: hitting on exotic men (whilst still using Buffy references as pick up lines #ForeverAlone) and weaseling my way into more office gossip than ever before. Split of the online self Learning English strongly affected my habits, but was I really profoundly changed by it? Blogging is where the signs of this metamorphosis first showed. The persistent vegetative state of the party
Free eBooks | Project Gutenberg A Map of Lexical Distances Between Europe's Languages A Finn and a Spaniard walk into a bar. How do they strike up a conversation? It would be exceptional for either to speak each other's language. No, that Finn and that Spaniard will talk to each other and order drinks in English, the true second language of the continent. Europe's defining trait is its diversity. Or would they? Finnish people probably won't make a lot out of Spanish, and if you're from Spain, Finnish might as well be Chinese. But the Estonian will have a slightly harder time of it than the Frenchman, and this map shows why. This linguistic map paints an alternative map of Europe, displaying the language families that populate the continent, and the lexical distance between the languages. The map shows the language families that cover the continent: large, familiar ones like Germanic, Italic-Romance and Slavic; smaller ones like Celtic, Baltic and Uralic; outliers like Semitic and Turkic; and isolates – orphan languages, without a family: Albanian and Greek.
Revising Simple Past,Used to and Would with some Engaging Activities This lesson has been designed as a next-day revision activity for B2 (Intermediate +) students. Aim: to consolidate the use of Past Simple, Used to and Would for past habits and routines. Level: B2 (Intermediate+) In this lesson you will find. Grammar and exercisesSpeaking: Picture discussion in pairsSpeaking: an advert from a popular drink comparing past and presentWriting: a fun writing gameSpeaking: bits of your childhood STEP 1. The use of these three verb forms to express past habits and routines can be a bit confusing for students, so in this class I am aiming at some revision to clarify concepts. PDF with exercises here. STEP 2.Picture description. Display the picture of a family in the past and ask students, in pairs, to discuss the differences they can see and the differences they can guess exist between the family shown in the picture and their own family. Get feedback STEP3. Tell students they are going to watch a video. STEP 4. Preparation: none Procedure: Example 4 points. STEP 5.