As its name suggests, Community Language Learning (CLL) is all about fostering a sense of community within the classroom and providing a low-stress environment in which language students can learn and grow. The learners have a great deal of autonomy and in fact decide what they want to learn in each class, with the teacher serving more as a [...]
Nearly every product that reaches our hands these days has already been on an impressive journey around the world. 97% of our clothes are produced abroad, typically in garment factories like those of H&M in Asia or Nike in Brazil. The automobiles made by American companies like Tesla or GM all have parts that originated in countries like China, [...]
The linguistic history of enslaved Africans in the United States is a testament to the oppressed people's rich cultural heritage and the resilience of African traditions in the face of the cruelest and most barbaric of conditions. Despite all odds, slaves were able to not only maintain the culture of a wide variety of countries and locales from Eastern, Central, [...]
Sometimes there is just the perfect word or phrase for a situation. The wittiest of us seem to effortlessly come up with these in real life. Authors and screenwriters are in constant pursuit of them. But when just the right thing is said at the right time, audiences simply know it, and ultimately remember and cherish those words. Such [...]
An old teaching adage says that no matter what the activity, a student can only pay attention for as many minutes as they are years old. For example, seven-year-olds can pay attention to a single classroom task or exercise for approximately seven minutes. When those seven minutes are up, boredom sets in, their attention drifts, and they start planning [...]
The Remarkable Reality of Awake Brain Surgery Imagine answering questions in one of the five languages you are fluent in or playing your guitar while undergoing brain surgery. As you provide the Armenian word for “puppy” or strum out the tune to a well known pop song, a team of surgeons is meticulously mapping out your brain functions. No, [...]
The debate over what is a language and what is a dialect may seem like a linguistic issue best suited for the halls of academia, but the distinction actually has far-reaching real-world implications that can affect the welfare of millions of people worldwide. Anything as fluid and nebulous as language is difficult to classify, and linguists, researchers, and politicians [...]
The audio-lingual method focuses on speaking with the elegance and fluidity of a native speaker, and aims to accomplish this through repetition and concentrated practice. It gained prominence in the '50s and '60s, and is known as the "Army method" because of its implementation by the US Army during WWII. Its strict focus on precise communication made it ideal [...]
International airports are multilingual and multicultural places by nature, but no matter where you are in the world, you're likely to hear English inside a plane. But this goes past the familiar airline phrases – "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking" and "The seatbelt sign is on," and goes more specifically into the plane's cockpit. All pilots [...]
The direct method of teaching was a rebellion against the somber and book-intensive grammar-translation method of the previous era. The pendulum swung hard away from verb conjugations and towards speaking/listening skills. Rather than having students pore over volumes of ancient Latin texts, this teaching method incorporated lots of visual aids, role-playing activities, and pictures. Another major change was in [...]
