Over at Lexiophiles there was an article about the decline of German as a second language in French schools. I made the following comment.L’appetit vient en mangeant. If people can just get started in a language it soon becomes attractive. I suspe…
TOEIC publishes regular reports on the performance of their test-takers by country, age, professional occupation etc. It is interesting to note that Japan, Korea and France are by far the largest users of this test. In 2005, Japan accounted for 65…
When I attended the ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages ) Convention in San Diego, I heard the following wise words from Mary Ann Lyman-Hager, Director of the San Diego State University Language Acquisition Research Center…
This thread from our LingQ forum raises some interesting issues about the difficulties of pronouncing foreign languages.
The British Columbia provincial government decides how immigrant ESL funds are spent in this province. Thanks to my local member of the Provincial Legislative Assembly, I was put into contact with the Minister of Advanced Education, to whom I wrot…
Guido Westerwelle, Foreign Minister of Germany is promoting the use of his country’s language. Good for him. People should stand up for their own language.
Here is a brief interview at Lexiophiles.com about my language learning.
Check out these Vancouver street scenes from my blog at Echo Moskvihttp://www.echo.msk.ru/blog/lingosteve/658326-echo/
The Canadian Federal Government spends a fortune training public employees in French. It was once estimated that the cost for each anglophone public servant ,trained at public expense, who actually reaches a sufficient level to actually use French…
From the Times of London a somewhat unenthusiastic point of view on the Mandarin boom. I do not agree with much of what he says, but a degree of skepticism, in the face of the Mandarin hype, is probably a good thing. I think kids can lean Mandarin…
