Colleges strive to make foreign languages relevant
USA Today and Higher Ed report in the article, Colleges strive to make foreign languages relevant, that one college is finally getting it right and making foreign language education be more than just grammar and...
Language gaps: Lived vs. learned languages
There's a big difference between a learned and a lived language. It took a carrot to make that difference abundantly clear to me.
In California, I sometimes speak Portuguese in the weekly pagode group I...
Learn Portuguese with Brazilian songs
I am not the only one singing the praises of Brazilian music as a way to learn Portuguese!
On September 29, 2011, I attended an event of the San Francisco Brazilian Portuguese MeetUp and asked...
Foreign Language Courses, Brushing Up or Immersion
The New York Times reports in the article, Foreign Language Courses, Brushing Up or Immersion, that foreign language classes are in demand. People are looking for inexpensive ways to learn or brush up on languages while...
The Language of Race and Gender
By Umar Alim Al-Junaid
One of the hardest things to be is an American citizen who speaks other languages, but being an African- American who speaks several languages has its own unique set of issues....
Listening to (and Saving) the World’s Languages (New York Times)
Mostly through simple bilingual songs that he accompanies with gusto on his guitar, he is teaching his two younger daughters, Jamie, 11, and Jazelle, 7, and their friends.
Polyglot dreaming: In which language do you dream?
I have heard on several occasions that the sign of fluency in a language is when one dreams in the language. That can't be true. Or else I'm fluent in Arabic without being aware...
Portuguese via Brazilian music
In this lesson, Luciana Lage (of Street Smart Brazil) and I use the song Toda Sexta Feira to teach the days of the week in Portuguese, how to use the words todo/toda, and pronounce...
New year, new books on language learning
January not only brought in a new year, it brought in three new books!
First, I updated Language is Music with about 30 new tips on language learning using music, TV, radio, movies and other...
Suzuki method: similar to language learning
I read The Suzuki Method He Imported Keyed a Music Revolution article from the Wall Street Journal about how music learning changed in the US once John Kendall brought the Japanese Suzuki method to...
