Spelling competition has been around for a while. Winning it has become a sort of religion for many aspiring students (and their parents).  Remembering tons of obscured words helps, but probably isn’t critical to, mastering a language. 

Should we be laodicean to the zest of spelling bee then? The large picture is, as Kavya well put it, that you have to really want to do it and that it takes really hard work to do it well.

Sounds like a sound advice for those who want to learn a new language. 

This is the report from CNN:

This is the report from ABC:http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=7213642.

Amazon has recently released the 2nd generation of e-book reader Kindle. It received raving reviews from just about everyone who got his hands on the gadget.

Besides letting you read e-book, Kindle has a neat feature that reads out loud a book, too, using text-to-speech technology. Not actually a real person reading the text but a machine-generated sound; still, you can even choose either a male or a female sound.

It can be a great tool for language learning, too.

That’s news. No second lady in the past had held a job while her husband was in the Vice President office. Jill, or Dr. Biden, as she prefers to be called, chose to teach at Northern Virginia Community College.

She’s an English as Second Language (ESL) teacher.

The federal program is based on the premise that you can engage foreign governments and their citizens more effectively when you speak their language. The emphasis is on “critical needs” languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Hindi and Farsi.

The Education Department, one of four federal agencies involved in the program, has awarded 88 grants totaling about $26 million to communities around the country to expand instruction in these languages beginning in kindergarten. (complete article here)

One thing that kids perform much better than adults is  how much easier and fast they are able to pick up a new language. They just need the opportunity and exposure.

These books are the bibles for those who plan to take the TOEFL exam, but the teachers weren’t happy about the bibles. More specifically, they were disgusted by the CDs that accompany each textbook, where all the practicing tests are stored.

The sound quality isn’t the source of their complains. It’s how inconvenient for teacher and students to use the CDs, particularly the speaking and the writing sections, in teaching and practicing.  It’s like an automaker selling a car that let you start the engine and shift the gear all right, but make it awfully hard to turn a steering wheel or adjust your seat.

Why can’t those publishers manage to meet their customers’ basic needs? We and the teachers had no clue. Can anyone shed some light?

That’s an opportunity for someone who believes he can do a better job. Comes Pearson Education, according to this report from Inside Higher Ed:

The publishing giant Pearson is entering an important and lucrative part of the educational testing field — English proficiency for foreign students — by offering an exam that will be significantly different from current models. Most significantly, the Pearson Test of English will provide institutions not only with scores of applicants, but with a digital recording that will allow institutions to determine whether they are comfortable with the proficiency of the test taker. While existing tests include speaking, the results are scored and admissions offices don’t actually hear the applicant. (full article here)

So digital recording will be the Pearson’s secret weapon. We are eager to see how well it shoots.

After the Big Apple dropped to the ground in the Times Square, it’s time to set the goals for the new year.

According to 43Things.com, the popular social site that people share their goals, there are:

• 13,747 people want to learn Spanish
• 9,287 people want to learn French
• 8,891 people want to learn Japanese
• 5,176 people want to learn Italian
• 4,047 people want to learn German
• 3,298 people want to learn another language

Altogether, more people want to learn a second tongue than people who want to lose weight, which is the world’s most popular goal.

That’s a lot of people!

And that makes our top goal crystal clear: help language teachers and learners achieve their goals easier, sooner, and better.

What is it really like? Here is the excerpt from an article in Forbes magazine:

Another popular way to teach English in “Second Life,” says Boahn, involves role-playing and quests. “I once dressed up as a pirate, had a ship and everything. I was kind of rough on the students,” he admits. “I put some of them in cages, and had them confront language in a shock-and-awe kind of way. They seemed to like it, and they learned all sorts of new words, like ‘loot’ and ‘booty.’”

(Title: “How To Spark Remote Learning “; full article)

The last major technology adaptation in language teaching was  magnetic tape recorder. That was several decades before.  Now, the new technologies are transforming the language education again. Second Life is another great example. Eipon has jumped on the bandwagon, too.