Language Learning Advisor News
What's New?
In spending a lot of time with other students of Spanish, I notice how much trouble they have with the sounds of it, or rather, how little effort they put into improving their accent. It is not difficult to get a good accent in Spanish, but people (ie my fellow Americans!) don't seem to try very hard. They're spending too much time worrying about verb conjugations and word gender. So, I wrote this article to try to give people some easy tips on improving their Spanish accent.
I have finally updated my review of Tell Me More for the new Version 10. I've been using it regularly (but only a few minutes a day) for the last 5 months, in conjunction with my classes. I thought it was already a great program that didn't need to be improved, but they did!
Also, I'm still making a conscious effort to include more non-European languages on the site. West African lingua franca Hausa is my latest addition.
I'm back into a working mood now that I am in my summer semester and my work load is lightening up a bit. I've picked up where I left off in Dutch (and hope to be done with Assimil, Pimsleur, Michel Thomas and Teach Yourself before the end of the summer) and in honor of that, and due to a long-term interest in Germanic languages, I'm adding a page on Afrikaans.
The spring semester is an extremely busy time for me. I won't be adding many new pages to the site for a little while, but I will be doing constant updates and fixes behind the scenes. My Spanish and French are moving along nicely, but some of my other target languages have to be put on hold due to time constraints.
I've made my New Year's Resolution and it's all about my language learning goals for 2010. I think it's a great way to define your goals and to really challenge yourself. Read about my goals and make your own New Year's Resolution Language Learning Goals and post it here!
I spent a few days working alongside someone native bilingual Czech and English. Of course, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to learn a few words of Czech. I broke out some audio courses from my language library to help get my ears around it. It was all just an introduction of course, but it is a very interesting language. Unfortunately, there aren't that many resources to learn it. Find out more about learning Czech on my latest addition to the site. Did you miss the latest issue of the Language Learning Advisor Newsletter?
I occasionaly have to prune some of the resource links I have on the site. Some links go sour and need to be changed, some go to sites that go defunkt. I always try to replace resources with something new. I've recently updated some of the resources for Arabic, Irish,, and Portuguese.
You may have noticed that I no longer promote Rosetta Stone software. I have a brief explanation on the Rosetta Stone Review page. In it's place, and I think it's an improvement, I have been working with . Check out their product line and take a look at their demo. The new Performance level products are amazing!
Interested in learning Romanian? Check out the new
Romanian page.
I have been neglecting to post in this section, so there are a bunch of changes and additions to the site. I won't mention most of the smaller ones.
The
Hardest Language to Learn Survey
has been updated with some newer statistics and a little bit of a layout overhaul. The survey continues to gather lots of opinions. It seems to be quite popular, along with the Easiest Language Survey.
The latest language page added to the site is
Breton.
I think I have all the Celtic languages except for Manx, I'll put that one in the queue!
Are you interested in French! I've added a
Review of French
page for anyone who wants to know about some personal opinions of French or personal experiences with it. If you have learned some, or just want to share your opinion of it, please post a review of your own!
The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it,
follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow
is under no obligation to stay in the narrow path she helped make, following the contour of the land, but she often
profits by staying with it and she would be handicapped if she didn’t know where it was
or where it led to.
- E.B. (Elwyn Brooks) White
|
