How to Remember a Language Longer Posted by meaghan on Oct 7, 2015 in Archived Posts
No, this isn’t a top Transparent Language secret. It’s just plain science. Psychologists have long studied the ways people learn. Part of that study includes how people forget, too. It is well known that we start to forget what we’ve learned very soon after we’ve learned it. The trick to fighting forgetfulness: reviewing often. Just how quickly do…
Those Three Little Words Posted by janet on Oct 5, 2015 in Archived Posts
In my job, I proofread a lot of documents. Long ones, short ones, formal, casual, you name it… and to add a twist, a fair number of them are written by non-native English speakers. Even when I haven’t been told the author’s identity, I’ve gotten quite adept at spotting those pieces, and it’s given me…
I Bet You a Kangaroo… Posted by janet on Sep 30, 2015 in Archived Posts
A while ago at work, someone described a particularly obscure piece of trivia as “That’s about as useful as knowing the Norwegian word for ‘kangaroo’!” (I love working with language people.) We all laughed, but after I thought for a minute, I said, “I bet I can guess the Norwegian word for ‘kangaroo’… maybe not…
How to Teach Languages to Digital Natives Posted by Transparent Language on Sep 28, 2015 in Archived Posts
Nearly three-quarters of students (74%) claim they would do better in school if their instructors used more technology. 61% agreed that learning would improve if homework were more interactive. Whether these claims, gathered in a survey of 519 students, would produce the expected results is unclear. But one thing is crystal clear: younger generations of students…
The Case for Heritage Language Teaching Posted by Transparent Language on Sep 23, 2015 in Archived Posts
In the United States, any language other than English that is spoken at home by a family or community is considered a “heritage language”. It makes sense, then, that someone learning a minority language in their home or community is considered a “heritage language learner”. We’ve made our commitment to language learning very clear, so…
How to Deal Graciously with Embarrassment Posted by Malachi Rempen on Sep 21, 2015 in Archived Posts
Now, we all make mistakes. Sometimes, we make embarrassing mistakes. I’m no stranger to this myself. To paraphrase the Red Queen, why, sometimes I make as many as six embarrassing mistakes before breakfast! And when you’re learning something, you simply can’t help but screw it up. That, as we all know, is how we learn. Learning…
Language Learning in the Real World Posted by Malachi Rempen on Sep 14, 2015 in Archived Posts
These days, learning a language from the comfort of your armchair is as easy as 1, 2, internet! We’ve got software, we’ve got websites, we’ve got resources of every imaginable sort. We’ve got endless pages of grammar tables and translation searches and color-coded graphs and entertaining blogs and ways to Skype and communicate with real…