If you’d like to study basic phrases for French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, or Swedish, I’ve created new pages with the list of phrases and mp3s for each phrase (instead of one mp3 for all the phrases together). Now you can listen to each phrase individually before trying out the audio flashcards to test yourself.

• Basic French Phrases
• Basic Spanish Phrases
• Basic Portuguese Phrases
• Basic Italian Phrases
• Basic German Phrases
• Basic Swedish Phrases

Dutch and Danish will be coming next, and eventually I’d like to have audio on the Romance Languages Phrases and Germanic Languages Phrases pages as well.

Right now the mp3 player is flash so it won’t work on iOS but I’m looking into a small html5 player. Changing all of the code will take a long time though. In the meantime, you should still see a link to the mp3 if you’re using an Apple device and you can click on it to play it, however the Quicktime logo will appear so you can’t actually read and listen at the same time. When the mp3 has finished playing, Safari will automatically go back to the page (or at least it does on my iPod!)

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Post categories: Learning French, Learning Other Languages, Website

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The University of Canberra and Curtin University both recently announced that they would be cutting their language programs. At Canberra, Japanese, Mandarin and Spanish will disappear while at Curtin, Japanese, Mandarin and a major in Asian Studies may be abandoned. These cuts are very unfortunate since it leaves these universities with no language classes or majors at all. It is also surprising considering the government’s push for a focus on Asian cultures and languages. Indonesian programs have also been closing in Australia, though luckily the programs at La Trobe and University of New South Wales have been saved (for now). The University of Western Sydney is keeping their Chinese and Japanese programs, but doing away with Arabic, Italian and Spanish.

Low enrollment is always the excuse for cutting programs, and universities claim that students can just take the classes at neighboring institutions and that it will actually strengthen those programs. Brisbane Universities Languages Alliance exists for this purpose and students enrolled at any of the three universities in Brisbane can take language classes at another and have the credits count toward their degree. The University of Canberra suggests that students simply take classes cross-institutionally at ANU, while students of Curtin can take language classes at the University of Western Australia. However, this rarely actually happens as David Hill points out and “it is a myth the closure of a language department at one university strengthens those of rivals.” It is much more likely that students will just stop taking language classes altogether. Trying to attend language classes at a different university (which most likely aren’t even required since no Australian university requires a foreign language for a BA) is too much of a hassle when factoring in the time for the commute and conflicting timetables among universities. Even students at my university who are based at the city campuses are less likely to travel 20-30 minutes to the humanities campus to take a foreign language.

Even though online class enrollments have been increasing, very few Australian universities offer language classes online. The University of New England is “the only [university] in Australia to offer a full programme of French by distance education.” My university offers first year Italian as an online course through Open Universities Australia, but you cannot obtain a Bachelor of Arts in Italian or any other language from OU. Perhaps if Australian universities invested in online education, enrollments would increase in certain subjects? With so many rural students and working students, I’m always surprised that distance education is not more of a priority in Australia.

Australian universities will be hit hard with a $2.8 billion cut next year in the most ridiculous decision ever made on education funding as the money will be used to pay for K-12 school reforms instead. Australian universities could save a lot of money by decreasing the astronomical pay of vice chancellors and putting their money towards academics instead of rugby. VCs should really be paid the same amount as casual staff so they know what it’s like to be overworked and underpaid rather than the opposite. Luckily most Australian universities do not have any involvement in sports teams so academics tends to be the focus, yet most of the money still goes to a few at the top rather than the teaching and research staff who do the most work for the university. Cutting language programs should be a last resort since universities are supposed to provide students with an “international and intercultural educational experience” but I suppose we can do that in English since all seven billion humans speak English natively and belong to the same Anglophone culture, right?

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Post categories: Australia, Learning French, Learning Other Languages

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I recently noticed that iTunes U now lets you browse the courses by language. Finally! Previously you had to go to the list of universities and look for a certain institution, which may or may not have had any real content. Now you can simply select Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Catalan, Portuguese, Korean or Turkish and universities that offer content in that language will appear.

The  MOOC provider Coursera also now offers 27 courses in other languages (Spanish, French, Chinese, German and Italian). You simply choose which language to browse when looking at the list of courses.

Miríada X and UNED are Spanish-language MOOC providers, though I can’t seem to find any French-language providers. Usually individual universities will offer open online courses, such as Universidad de Granada or EDUlib HEC Montréal, but the number and range of courses is very limited.

Does anyone know of other non-English-language MOOC providers?

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Post categories: Learning French, Learning Other Languages

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Want to see how beautiful South Australia is and learn some French at the same time? The French-language travel site MonNuage.fr has a few videos of South Australia, including Adelaide, Flinders Ranges and Kangaroo Island. Here’s the one on Adelaide:

South Australia is also called Australie Méridionale but that’s much harder to pronounce, so let’s just stick to Australie du Sud. You’ll notice that most Australian animals have very similar names in French. I’m sure you’ll have no problem figuring out what un kangouru, un koala, or un wallaby are. However, un ornithorynque might be a bit harder (it’s a platypus), but it is really fun to say!

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Post categories: Australia, Learning French

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The latest French Listening Resources video has been uploaded! This short clip is for beginners talking about family members and their ages. If you need the transcript, check out the Watch & Read page.

There are seven more videos from Carole & Fabien on topics such as the house, typical meals, stores & fast food restaurants in France. I’ll try to get them edited, uploaded and transcribed as soon as possible.

Visit the French Listening Resources page for the rest of the mp3s and videos that are available. You can also subscribe to my Youtube Channel or the iTunes podcast.

Let me know if there any topics you’d like to learn about, or if you can help contribute more videos (especially videos that feature other accents of French!)

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Post categories: Learning French

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Readlang by Steve Ridout is a new site (still in beta) which helps you learn foreign languages by reading and translating words you don’t know. You simply import text from any website, click on words you don’t know in order to translate them into another language, and save these words so you can review them later. It  “uses a spaced repetition flashcard system to make sure you remember the words” that you’ve clicked on and has a feature to open a dictionary in a side panel if you want to look up more information on the word(s). You can read the blog to see the latest updates, such as export word lists to Anki and translations of phrases rather than just individual words.

Lately I’ve been using the transcripts from Podclub podcasts since I always prefer to have text plus audio. I imported the text of the latest episode of the Spanish podcast A mi aire, and I’m translating words into English. You can see below that I’ve clicked on discurso, it was translated into speech, and the dictionary panel on the left shows the entry in Wordreference. The word discurso has now been added to my list of words to review later.

Click on image to view actual size

Check it out and send your feedback to Steve so he knows what new features to add.

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Post categories: Learning French, Learning Other Languages

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First, I apologize if you had trouble accessing ielanguages.com the past week. My hosting company decided to throttle traffic and deny access from several IPs because of heavy usage while I was away last weekend. I have just upgraded to a Virtual Private Server so that hopefully won’t be a problem anymore. Everything should be transferred to the new server by now, but my pageviews are currently less than half what they used to be and the cached memory is still ridiculously high so I obviously still have a few problems to work out. Let me know if you’re still having trouble with the site (or if you’re a web developer who can help me figure out what is going on!)

In other news, I just created a Google+ page if you’d like to receive blog posts and site updates there instead of through Facebook, Twitter or RSS.

I will have more French Listening Resources soon. I’m just waiting for friends in France to send me the videos they have recorded and I’ll get them uploaded as soon as possible. I’m going to be creating videos of the original mp3s so you can read and watch at the same time (similar to videos of songs with lyrics.) Check out the Youtube channel to see which videos are available.

I plan to work on a French & Spanish comparative tutorial since I know there are a lot of people out there learning more than one language at a time, yet resources to learn them simultaneously are still practically non-existent. The French & Italian and French & German tutorials are already available, though not complete.

I would like to know what types of resources you’d like to see on the site so I know what to work on next. What is most useful for you? What do you want to see more of? (Keeping in mind that my PhD will still be my full-time job for at least the next 12 months so I won’t have a ton of free time to devote to the site…) Leave a comment here, send me an email, post on the Facebook or Google+ pages, send me a tweet, etc. I appreciate your feedback!

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Post categories: Website

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I flew up to Gold Coast last Wednesday to meet up with one of my oldest friends from Michigan. Jessica just finished her postdoc in Melbourne and is moving back to the US tomorrow, so this was our last trip together in Australia.

View from hotel in Broadbeach

Queensland needs more beaches

Most people head to the GC either for the beaches or the theme parks. We did spend some time on the beach, but we actually spent most of the time playing with cute Australian animals at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.

Jessica and me on the train at Currumbin

Momma kangaroo and joey

Of the various districts in the Gold Coast, Surfers Paradise is probably the most well-known and popular. I definitely heard a lot of foreign languages (mostly French!) spoken there. The tallest building in Australia, Q1, is also in Surfers Paradise. You can go up to the Skypoint observation deck (though it’s rather expensive) or even climb around outside.

The Q1 in Surfers Paradise

We also rented a car for the day and drove down to Byron Bay in New South Wales, where the most easterly point of the Australian mainland is.

As close to the US as I can get on foot

Gold Coast is a great tourist destination since the airport is quite small (and resembles a food court more than an airport) and public transportation to and from the airport is incredibly easy to figure out. Bus 702 serves the airport every half hour and heads up the Gold Coast Highway. If you buy a go card from the shuttle desk in the airport (for $5) and add money to it, you will save a lot.

The rest of my travel photos are in the Gold Coast album at the Gallery.

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Post categories: Australia, Travelling

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There are a lot of free language apps available nowadays but many of them are not very good or extensive. They tend to include some basic words or tourist phrases in flashcard format, but very few offer connected text (such as stories) in addition to pronunciation. Lately I’ve been looking for apps that include both text and audio in foreign languages, and I’ve mostly found apps that provide one or the other, i.e. ebooks or audiobooks but not synced together so that you can read and listen at the same time. I have found a few apps designed for children, however, that mostly include fairy tales but some include original stories. Many have a “read to me” and autoplay option so you don’t have to keep swiping the screen.

Both Apple and Android

PlayTales Gold : download books for free, but ad-supported and internet connection needed. Stories available in 8 different languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese (Mandarin), and Japanese. [ Apple version is only a seven day trial so not quite as useful]

Luca Lashes : Original story available in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, and Italian.

Hao-Ming Yeh /QLL Inc. : Apple version seems to only include English and Chinese but Android also has Spanish. Two languages can be displayed on screen instead of just one.

Verlag Friedrich Oetinger : German and English stories (but in different apps)

Apple

Tri-Software : Lots of classic children’s books (in different apps) available in at least two languages. Most are available in English, German, French, Spanish and Italian and some even have Portuguese and Chinese. The free versions only include the beginning of the story.

Readalong Spanish : Only in Spanish but you have the option of including the English text on the same screen.

Android

Vienom Kids Books : Two stories available in French & German and two stories available in French, German, and Spanish. Four different apps though, and the free versions only include seven pages of the stories.

Any other useful (and free) apps to add to the list?

I didn’t include any “free” apps that make you pay for every book.

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Post categories: Learning French, Learning Other Languages

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If you’re interested in attending or presenting at conferences on applied linguistics, computer-assisted language learning, modern/foreign languages or French studies, here are some upcoming conferences. You still have time to submit abstracts for some of them. I plan on being in Wellington this November for the ALAA/ALANZ conference and Brisbane next August for the AILA World Congress. Any other organizations or conferences I should know about? My main areas are materials design, technology in language teaching/learning and vocabulary acquisition/teaching.

Applied Linguistics / CALL

Language Teaching & Learning / French

I’ll continue to update this post if I find more conferences.

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Post categories: PhD Research

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I often buy DVDs from the European Amazon stores to ensure that I will have a choice of at least one or two other subtitled/dubbed languages besides the original language. I’m not sure how, but I came across Dora the Explorer DVDs at the German Amazon and noticed that they offered FIVE languages, or at least that’s what the Product Details claimed. I bought Entdecke die Welt to see if it were true and I’m so glad I did! It is indeed dubbed in five other languages: German, French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch. Even without subtitles, all the repetition and visual clues in the episodes make it so easy to understand – and if I can’t quite understand something, I’ll just watch the scene in English or French, then again in one of the other languages and try to translate what was said. Five foreign languages for five euros! Amazing! I wish I had bought more DVDs, like this Geburtstagabenteur one which has German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch AND Portuguese.

Look at all those languages! I love you, Dora!

I decided to check the other Amazon stores to see if I could find any other languages, or any that also had subtitles (which is extremely rare for kids’ movies; sorry deaf kids!) Not only did I find a DVD at the Italian store with the same six languages, but three of those languages are also available as subtitles!  How cool is that?!?

Dubbed in Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Dutch with subtitles in Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch!

But that’s not the best part. I found a few DVDs at the Spanish and Italian stores that are dubbed in… wait for it… IRISH!!! Yes, Irish. Not English with an Irish accent. The actual Irish language! Whaaaaaat? SHUT. THE. FRONT. DOOR.

And it’s not a mistake or anything. This Italian one has an image of the back of the DVD where you can see that the language irlandese is really included. Wikipedia says that the Irish version actually teaches a few words of Spanish like the English version, unlike most of the other languages which teach some English.

I even underlined irlandese with a red crayon [brush in Paint].

P.S. Yes, I loved this and am totally geeked out for this.

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Post categories: Learning French, Learning Other Languages

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A recent post on The Thesis Whisperer, a blog designed to help research students in Australia, has been quite popular this past month. The title? Academic assholes and the circle of niceness

Luckily, I have not personally experienced any aggressive or arrogant behavior at the universities I have attended in the US or Australia. My professors and colleagues have always been supportive and helpful. But I have seen this behavior at conferences, and I felt extremely bad for the students who had to deal with it. How are you supposed to respond when a jerk in the audience says your research is pointless? Belittling students and colleagues in front of others in order to feel better about your own research is just awful. Unfortunately, these assholes tend to be perceived as more intelligent than nice people, though it seems to me that people are deliberately arrogant in order to feel superior to everyone else in more than just intelligence. Insecure much? A lot of it is simply bragging – look at me! look at what I can do! look at what I know! – which is incredibly sad considering that academics are supposed to be mature adults and not five year olds.

Very helpful blog for research students

However, I wanted to write about this post because of one of the earliest comments on it, which brings up the issue of academics seemingly acting like jerks to non-academics. Fiona says ”In my experience many if not most academics, seem to look down on the lowly general public… Anyone mentioning personal experience or views is usually shouted down by someone demanding an official study is vital to back up the opinion. It’s not possible or acceptable to have a view on anything, it would appear, unless there’s an official study to ‘prove’ it.”

I can  understand why she feels that some academics look down on non-academics. There are definitely some Sheldon Coopers in the real world. Academics can seem arrogant when drawing attention to their intelligence, but here’s the thing: academics are more intelligent than non-academics in their chosen fields. I recently posted about my frustration with people who continue spreading myths about linguistics and language learning. It is quite offensive when people who have no professional training in an area that you have been researching for over a decade act as if they know more than you. It is also frustrating when people believe things that have been proven wrong by research for no reason other than they “just do.” When I ask teachers who use the Direct Method why they choose to do so when data show that banning the first language is not beneficial to learning a second language, many are unaware of the research which proves its inefficacy or choose not to abandon it because using the target language 100% of the time “seems” like a better idea, regardless of what the research says. Maybe it is our fault for not popularizing our research more, but what can we do when people refuse to believe our data or change their behavior to incorporate the facts?

Asking what people’s opinions are based on should not be interpreted as academics asserting their superiority, or just plain being assholes. We hope that your opinions will be informed by empirical data, because if not, what exactly are they based on? You can have personal views and tell anecdotes about your experiences, but when you believe things that are not supported by research, of course we want to know why. One person’s opinion is in a separate domain from scientific research, where the conclusions are peer-reviewed, many experiments have been done, and the results can be replicated. So yes, we get quite upset when someone says “I smoked for 20 years and never got sick so smoking doesn’t cause cancer” because years upon years of research involving thousands of people proves that it does cause cancer for some people. Just because something didn’t happen to you, or something didn’t work for you, doesn’t mean you can make a broad generalization for all other people.

Fiona continues her comment: “Most of the public are these days cynical of studies proving this or that, given that so many are contradictory. It seems to me that there’s far more we don’t know that what we do; and that sometimes overly dramatic scare-monger type media releases are simply a way of drumming up more research funding (whilst eroding credibility in the eyes of the public).”

It is true that there is far more that we don’t know than what we do, and that is exactly why we need science. Yet the first sentence epitomizes how misunderstood science really is (especially in the US!). People don’t trust scientists because their results and conclusions are constantly changing, and yes, contradictory. But that is science: the facts must change with the evidence. I don’t know why people are so uncomfortable with this. Granted, there are other reasons why people disregard research in addition to its changing nature. In the case of using the Direct Method, it is easier to teach languages and more profitable to write textbooks in this way, so even with all the evidence against it, teachers and publishers are less likely to do anything differently. I hope everyone can see what an enormous insult to researchers this line of thinking is. To me, disregarding research because it is the easy or profitable thing to do is far more arrogant than what researchers have been accused of.

I am often defensive about the importance of research and academia, mostly because of how much higher education is attacked by right-wingers in the US. I am not trying to brag about how smart I am or make others feel like they are inferior because they are not researchers. I’m just trying to share linguistic research since it’s a shame that so much of it can only be found in journals that are ridiculously expensive (embrace open access, academia!), and since some of the research that makes its way into the popular press only tells one side of the story. If I come across as arrogant online, I apologize for that – but I will not apologize for trying to teach people the beauty of science.

Have any students experienced aggressive and arrogant behavior by colleagues (or even other students)? For those not in academia, how do you feel about academics and researchers?

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Post categories: PhD Research

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If you’re interested in teaching English in Europe later this year, here are a few jobs:

FRANCE

Added June 12:

English lecteur/lectrice positions at Université Paris Dauphine to begin September 1, 2013.

Requirements:

• English must be your mother tongue or a language that you speak with the same proficiency as your mother tongue
• You must have successfully completed one year of university studies after receiving your Bachelor’s degree.

Candidates should include the following in their application file:

• Résumé
• Photocopy of your university diploma and a French translation of the document
• Letter of Motivation
• Photocopy of a photo I.D.

All applications must be submitted via email to the following address: recrutement.lecteurs@dauphine.fr

Application deadline: June 27th 2013

Now closed or no deadline was given (but you can always send your CV anyway):

Added May 11:

Maître de langues in English at Université de Lorraine in Nancy, France, to begin in September 2013. Native speaker of English and Master’s degree required. Send lettre de motivation and CV to andre dot pannier at univ-lorraine dot fr before May 31.

Added April 30:

Lecteur/lectrice in English at Université d’Evry, south of Paris, France, to begin in September 2013.  Teaching experience of English important, especially at secondary school/university level;  a Master’s (or at least a first year of Master’s) is required;  nationality of a European Union country is required, or if anglophone from outside Europe, residence/work papers must already be established; contract = 200 hours per year – extra hours possible. Please contact Frederick Goodman, by 21st May at the latest, at goodman at univ-evry dot fr

Added April 7:

Lecteur d’anglais at Université de technologie de Belfort-Montbéliard in Belfort, France, to begin in September 2013. Applicant should be a native speaker or have near-native fluency as well as  an MA or equivalent degree. For more information about this position, contact Laurent dot Tourrette at utbm dot fr To apply, send CV and lettre de motivation to bettina dot steffen at utbm dot fr by April 26.

• UTBM Website

Added April 4:

English Lecturer position in Hypermedia Language Centre of the Faculté de langues appliqués, commerce et communication at Université Blaise Pascal, in Clermont-Ferrand, France, to begin in September 2013. Applicant should be a university graduate and native speaker of English with training/experience in TEFL. Certification such as CELTA is a plus. CV, references and covering letter should be sent by email to Dacia Dressen-Hammouda at Dacia dot Hammouda at univ-bpclermont dot fr (no application deadline was given)

• Hypermedia Language Centre Website

Added March 27:

Lecteur d’anglais in the Centre de Langues Vivantes at Université Pierre Mendès-France in Grenoble, France, to begin September 2013. Applicant should have minimum Bac+4. Send lettre de motivation, CV, copy of ID card/passport and diplomas by April 19.

• Official Website

Added March 23:

Lecteur d’anglais at Chimie ParisTech in Paris, France, to begin in September 2013. Applicant should be a native speaker with an MA or a BA. Send CV and lettre de motivation in French to jean-le-bousse at chimie-paristech dot fr by April 30. (2 positions available.)

Added March 20:

Maître de langue in the UFR de Sciences et Technologie at U-PEC in Paris, France, to begin in September 2013. Applicant should be in or have completed at least one year of a doctoral program. Send lettre de motivation in French and CV in English to Monsieur Bernard Frouin [frouin at u-pec dot fr] and Madame Andrée Martin [a.martin at u-pec dot fr] (no application deadline was given)

Maître de langue at IEP in Lille, France, to begin in September 2013. Applicant should be in or have completed at least one year of a doctoral program. Apply between March 4 and 29.

• Official Website

Lecteur/Lectrice at ENS in Lyon, France, to begin in September 2013. Applicant should have completed four full years of university study, or equivalent to completion of one year of Master’s degree in France. Applications due by March 25.

• Official Website (scroll to the bottom)

For more info about these types of positions at French universities, read my post on How to Become a Lecteur or Maître de Langue.

GERMANY

English teacher for 4 week summer programs (July/August) at Sommerschule in Wust, Germany. MA not required, but some German is. Program usually pays for airfare, housing and offers a small stipend. Apply through their website starting in May of each year.

• Official Website

NO LONGER OPEN FOR APPLICATIONS:

For those who do not yet have graduate degrees and are under 30, the teaching assistant program is still open for some nationalities (for October 2013 to April 2014). You can read about my experience in France at my Guide for English Language Assistants in France. Applications for the US, UK and Indian programs are no longer open for 2013 but the applications for 2014 will be available in October. If you have citizenship in other countries, you still have time to apply:

• Canada: March 1
• Ireland: March 11
• Australia: March 15
• New Zealand: March 15

SPAIN

If you’re American or Canadian (under 35) and speak some Spanish instead of French, you can apply for the Spanish teaching assistantship. The deadline for applications is April 2.

• North American Language and Culture Assistants in Spain

I’ll continue to update this page if I find any other job listings for 2013.

© Jennifer Wagner for Jennie n'est plus en France, 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Who is linking?
Post categories: Teaching Assistantship, Teaching English & Other Languages

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UPDATE: The site is back online!!! All of the files are also available at fsi.antibozo.net, fsi-languages.yojik.eu, or www.livelingua.com/fsi-language-courses.php, or you can use this torrent if you’d like to download everything.

If anyone knows what happened to fsi-language-courses.org, please let me know! It was the site that included all of the Foreign Service Institute courses in the public domain, and where I downloaded the courses in order to turn them into HTML pages for my FSI Project. For about a month the site has been unavailable with a 403 Forbidden message. There haven’t been any new files added since January 2011, but the site was still online as of this January. (Thanks Internet Archive!)

fsi-language-courses.org, where have you gone?

For those who have been downloading the FSI files for a while, you may remember that fsi-language-courses.org was actually created when the webmaster of fsi-language-courses.com stopped updating the site. The files are no longer available through that original site either. I downloaded many of the courses, but not all of them, and although some are available as torrents, I don’t know of another way of downloading the materials. Were any mirror sites ever created?

If anyone has any information about fsi-language-courses.org – I believe the webmaster went by VagabondPilgrim on the forums – or if the files are available to download in another location, please leave a comment or email me. A lot of people spent MANY hours digitizing the books and cassettes in order to share them with other language learners, so we need to get them back online!

UPDATE:

Try these sites (first three are mirror sites that should contain everything that is on the original site):

If you want to download all of the FSI files that were available, Joni has created a torrent (20.8 GB) from a site rip done in January 2011. Please help seed it for others to download too!

http://www.legittorrents.info/index.php?page=torrent-details&id=6c15cdfbc76fb8ef1ffc60cf05884d68764888e1

Thanks everyone!

© Jennifer Wagner for Jennie n'est plus en France, 2013. | Permalink | 56 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Who is linking?
Post categories: Learning French, Learning Other Languages

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Ben Zimmer has a wonderful article on “When physicists do linguistics” over at the Boston Globe, which can perhaps be best summarized by this comic from xkcd:

Joking aside, I am happy that other disciplines have an interest in language – however, I hate when other disciplines try to do linguistic research and fail because they do not involve any actual linguists in the research. I agree completely when Zimmer says that there is a ”need for better communication between disciplines that previously had little to do with each other.” Communication among related fields could use a little boost too, because it isn’t just physicists who publish papers that contradict linguistic research. Psychologists, speech pathologists, and cognitive scientists have been doing it wrong for a while too, especially when it comes to multilingual and cultural aspects of language acquisition.

Linguistics seems to the be the field that everyone thinks they can do without any special training. Most people wouldn’t think of talking about chemistry or mathematics without actually having studied those subjects. Yet everyone seems to think they are experts on language simply because they speak a language (their native language) or because they have learned another language. Sorry, but those abilities do not make you a qualified linguist nor do they give you the right to talk about language without checking facts or to teach language as if you were an experienced teacher. I know how to drive a car, but I don’t go around pretending to be a certified mechanic or give advice to others on how to fix their own cars.

Robert Lane Greene’s book, You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity, is about this phenomenon. People believe, and repeat, such ridiculous things as “this language has eleventy billion words for X” or “this language is primitive but that language is logical” all the time. Even worse, respected authors repeat these myths in their articles and books, such as Bill Bryson in The Mother Tongue, and so they are repeated again and again without anyone questioning whether they are true or not. These myths are dangerous because a lot of them are based on ethnocentrism and the perceived superiority of the way we speak compared to everyone else. (I will dedicate another post to Greene’s book next week because everyone seriously needs to read it.)

Please, do yourself a favor and study language seriously instead of repeating myths. Talk to actual linguists, read books written by actual linguists or those whose authors talked to actual linguists. In addition to You Are What You Speak, you can start with Language Myths (for a general overview), Vocabulary Myths (for language learners/teachers, which I previously posted about), and the “truth-squad” blog Language Log. But most importantly, always question what is written about language even if it is published by best-selling authors or academic researchers.

Update 26/02/13: And another one! Ugh. “Why speaking English can make you poor when you retire” about research done by a behavioural economist. Hey, that’s not linguistics! ::sigh:: At least the article quotes my hero, John McWhorter.

© Jennifer Wagner for Jennie n'est plus en France, 2013. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Who is linking?
Post categories: PhD Research

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Listening while reading a transcript of what is said is the best way to improve overall comprehension as well as pronunciation. Extensive listening and reading also contribute to vocabulary acquisition. I have previously talked about TV series and movies that may include subtitles, but what about online videos? Youtube does have an automatic closed captioning feature (that is notoriously bad) but you cannot add subtitles to videos that you did not upload. Luckily, Amara and crowdsourcing exist to fill that gap.

Amara, formerly called Universal Subtitles, is a tool for subtitling videos found on Youtube, Vimeo or coded with HTML5. You simply paste the video URL to add it to Amara, and then you and/or anyone else can add subtitles in any language. You can also link your Youtube account to Amara so that the subtitles appear on Youtube itself without having to use the embed code provided by Amara. (If the owner of the Youtube channel hasn’t synced to Amara, then the subtitles are only available through Amara.) You can also download the subtitles in many formats – SRT is the most common – through Amara, which is useful if you download the video and watch it through VLC Player.

For example, here is a video on my Youtube channel with subtitles that I added in Amara. You can watch it through either Amara or Youtube, and either way the subtitles appear.

Now here’s a video that I helped add subtitles to – but since the owner of the Youtube channel to which this video was uploaded has not synced to Amara, the subtitles are only available if you watch the video through Amara rather than Youtube. Usually this doesn’t pose a problem as long as embedding is allowed through Youtube.

Amara is a great tool though it does have a few minor problems. I can’t seem to delete any videos that were added automatically from my Youtube channel (such as travel videos that are silent) or videos that I added only to find out embedding was not allowed. The subtitle sync tool is a bit buggy and hard to use. The search feature is not very good, and it is not possible to simply browse videos in a certain language. You can choose to sort by spoken language and subtitle language, but you must also type in a search term. Sometimes people have identified the video incorrectly. I came across some English and German videos even though I sorted by Dutch for both spoken and subtitled language. One video had numerous misspellings and typos though, as if the subtitler didn’t speak the language well. (This is one of the major problems with crowdsourcing: quality control.) Finding videos that include subtitles of the spoken language can be a pain, but I do believe that Amara will get better over time as more native or advanced speakers help to add subtitles.

Amara emphasizes the need to make videos accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing, as well as reaching as many viewers as possible by translating and subtitling into other languages. Yet they don’t seem to emphasize how extremely important subtitles are to language learning. And it isn’t simply watching/listening and reading at the same time that helps language acquisition. Adding subtitles to videos can also be a language learning exercise.

First, request a transcript of a video on Rhinospike. Once someone has provided the transcript, you can then add the subtitles to the video on Amara by copying and pasting. You must listen a few times to make sure the subtitles are synced correctly to the video, so it’s a way of making sure you repeat the material over and over. As a bonus, you are making more resources available to other language learners AND helping out the deaf population who truly need subtitles.

I’ll continue to try out Amara for subtitling the French Listening Resources videos. I am also requesting transcripts of videos in other languages on Rhinospike so that I can add subtitles in Amara and create listening resources for Spanish, Italian, German and Dutch.

© Jennifer Wagner for Jennie n'est plus en France, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us | Who is linking?
Post categories: Learning French, Learning Other Languages, Website

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Kangaroo Island is Australia’s third-largest island and definitely worth a visit for the beautiful beaches and adorable wildlife. Although I’ve been to many beaches in Australia already, every new one I see is just as gorgeous as the last one. KI did not disappoint.

Pennington Bay

The first view upon getting off the ferry in Penneshaw:

Clear water

Sadly, I did not see any (live) kangaroos on the island, but I did see plenty of sea lions, wallabies, echidnas, goannas and koalas.

Sleepy sea lion at Seal Bay

My friend and I drove down for the weekend (it’s only a 1.5 hour drive from Adelaide, plus a 45 minute ferry) so we weren’t able to visit all of the towns and attractions. We mostly did the southern coast along the highway (the only paved road) since riding in my little car probably wouldn’t have been too comfortable in the north, where almost all of the roads are gravel. The major tourist attractions are mostly along the southern coast too.

Remarkable Rocks

Weirs Cove

You can also fly to Kingscote from Adelaide and rent a car (there are no taxis or public transportation on the island) instead of driving. There are some bus tours that depart from Adelaide but the one day tour sounds extremely exhausting, so I would highly recommend driving and staying for a few nights. Just try not to drive after dark when the animals come out!

Watch out for wildlife on the roads

Check out the Kangaroo Island album in the Gallery for more photos.

© Jennifer Wagner for Jennie n'est plus en France, 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Who is linking?
Post categories: Australia, Travelling

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I am currently updating the mp3 players on the many, many pages across ielanguages.com so that they will work on Apple products or any other tablets that do not support flash. Hopefully most browsers will be able to play the audio files from now on as I am using the HTML5 audio tag with both mp3 and ogg files in addition to the original flash player.

If you use an iPad or other tablet to view ielanguages.com and to listen to the mp3s, please let me know which pages you need updated first. I have already updated the French Listening Resources pages (listen & read plus cloze exercises) as well as the French Phonetics pages, including the Hot Potatoes interactive exercises, thanks to user requests. As there are hundreds of pages across the site that use the flash player, it will take some time for me to replace the coding and ensure that everything is working correctly.

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Post categories: Website

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If you’re looking for DVDs of movies or TV shows in European languages with the subtitles in that language, you’ll most likely have to look to European stores. Even though you  can often buy foreign movies from Amazon.com or Fishpond.com.au, the subtitles will usually be in English only or there will be a weird combination of dubbing and subtitles in mismatched languages (e.g. a French movie dubbed in Spanish with subtitles in English and German, why???) Not all foreign DVDs include subtitles unfortunately, but a lot of countries are starting to be kinder to the deaf population and are making an effort to include them. Just make sure to check the DVD specs before you buy.

Amazon currently has French, German, Italian and Spanish stores based in Europe that offer international shipping; however, the DVDs are region 2 so you’ll need a region-free DVD player. Luckily most DVD players in Australia are region-free (even my cheap $29 one I got at Kmart), but it’s still not a standard feature on American DVD players. There is also a Dutch store called bol.com that sells books and DVDs though there is a rumor that Amazon might open a store based in the Netherlands soon.  If you’re in America and do not have a region-free player, you can still take advantage of the large Spanish-language DVD selection on Amazon.com and get French Canadian DVDs from Amazon.ca. For those in Australia who would like Mexican Spanish-language DVDs, Amazon.com ships to Australia for $5 per shipment + $5 per book or $1 per DVD with delivery taking anywhere between 18 and 32 business days.

Canadian French: Amazon.ca

to US: $8 per shipment + $2 per book or $8 per shipment + $2 per DVD (8 to 16 business days)

to Australia: $11 per shipment + $7 per book or $5 per shipment + $3 per DVD ( a whopping 10 to 12 WEEKS)

European French: Amazon.fr

to US: 7€ per shipment + 1,50€ per item (10 to 12 days)

to Australia: 10€ per shipment + 1,50€ per item (12 to 15 days)

German: Amazon.de

to US: 3€ per shipment + 3€ per kilo (8 to 12 business days)

to Australia: 9€ per shipment + 4€ per kilo (7 to 19 business days)

Dutch: Bol.com

to US: 17,35€ per shipment

to Australia: 19,80€ per shipment

Italian: Amazon.it

to US: 10€ per shipment + 5€ per kilo (10 to 15 days)

to Australia: 14€ per shipment + 5€ per kilo (12 to 15 days)

European Spanish: Amazon.es

to US: 10€ + 7€ per kilo (10 to 12 days)

to Australia: 20€ + 10€ per kilo (12 to 15 days)

There is also a Brazilian Kindle store if you want to read Portuguese. No word yet if this store will eventually sell actual books and DVDs.

Anyone know of other stores to add to the list?

All prices are for standard shipping. Expedited and priority are often available if you want to pay more.

© Jennifer Wagner for Jennie n'est plus en France, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us | Who is linking?
Post categories: Learning French, Learning Other Languages

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The Telenovela Method, as explained by Andrew, is a great way to learn languages quickly, which a recent study suggests actually helps your brain grow. The main reason I like this method is the authenticity of language and culture which is usually lacking from language learning resources. Finding subtitles to go along with the movies or TV series can be a problem though, especially with telenovelas.

Ugly Betty Adaptations in Spanish

The most famous telenovela and the original Ugly Betty, Yo soy Betty, la fea, was made in Colombia and you can watch all of the episodes (many with subtitles in Spanish and English) at viki.com. The European Spanish version, Yo soy Bea, also has a quite a few episodes on viki.com though not all have Spanish subtitles yet.

The Mexican version, La Fea Más Bella, is available on DVD through Amazon.com as a shortened/edited version with English subtitles only. However, Univision has uploaded all 300 episodes to their YouTube channel if you want to watch online (no Spanish subtitles though.)

Mexican version of Ugly Betty

Mexican Telenovelas

If you are interested in using Mexican telenovelas to learn Spanish, I highly recommend Las Tontas No Van al Cielo. It is actually better than La Fea Más Bella, even funnier and much more addictive. The DVD available on Amazon.com is, of course, a shortened version of just over 15 hours but the editing was actually done quite well. There was only one storyline that I don’t remember seeing the end to, but everything else made sense. If you have time to watch all of the episodes, this site seems to have all of them available.

Best telenovela ever.

 The male lead is Jaime Camil, who was also the male lead in La Fea Más Bella. The female lead is Jacqueline Bracamontes… who also had a small role in La Fea Más Bella. I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that the theme song, Esto es lo que soy, is sung by Jesse y Joy, my favorite Mexican band.

This dude is hilarious.

If you prefer to have actual DVDs so you’re not stuck in front of a computer all the time, there are a lot of Mexican televenovelas sold on Amazon.com for less than $10 each. They will be the edited versions because the full versions that aired on TV are more than 100 hours long and that is a LOT of DVDs. They tend to only have English subtitles but their price is rather cheap for how many hours of Spanish you’ll get to hear. If you don’t mind using the computer, Andrew also has lists of sites for watching Spanish-language TV online as well as Spanish videos with Spanish subtitles.

Ugly Betty Adaptations in Languages Other than Spanish

For Portuguese, Brazil has Bela, a Feia and many clips can also be found on Youtube. There are no French or Italian versions, but Germany has Verliebt in Berlin and you can get the (many) DVDs which include every single episode on Amazon.de from third-party sellers (region 2 only though!).

There are two versions in Dutch, Sara from Flemish-speaking Belgium and Lotte from the Netherlands. A few clips from Sara can be found on VTM’s site and LotteTVChannel is still uploading all of the episodes of Lotte to Youtube. Plus Lars Oostveen is the male lead. You should recognize him as Sam Scott, a.k.a the American, from the Extr@ series. Now you get to hear him speak his native language.

And he’s instantly ten times cuter when he speaks Dutch.

A few other adaptations of Ugly Betty exist in languages such as Greek, Croatian, Polish, Russian, Tagalog, Mandarin, etc. but I don’t think they’re available on DVD. Some clips may be available online though.

© Jennifer Wagner for Jennie n'est plus en France, 2013. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Who is linking?
Post categories: Learning French, Learning Other Languages

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