As of September 1, 2009, Hot Potatoes (and Quandary) became freeware software. Anyone can download and use the flashcard and exercise authoring programs, whether or not you’re affiliated with a university or upload your work to the web. I use HP for work and for my website. I’ve made several flash cards and quizzes for French, [...]
Full Story »Is your French better than a reality show contestant’s?
Meet Vanessa. She’s on a reality show in France called Secret Story. If the fact that she’s on a reality show doesn’t already tell you she’s a moron, her 53 grammar mistakes in 27 seconds will. (Ok, she didn’t make quite that many mistakes, but come on! I speak French better than her!!)
Full Story »Language Learning Quotes
To get back into full language learning mode, here are some quotes from scholarly journals and books to keep in mind. Citations are on the bibliography page. 1) why textbooks will not teach you to speak a language…. “Textbooks often present forms that are not commonly used, and most non-natives acquiring a language in a [...]
Full Story »Videos & Subtitles are Best
In my nerdy, just-for-fun independent research on language acquisition, I’ve come across several articles about using video with subtitles in the classroom and how it vastly increases the rate of vocabulary acquisition. Hearing and reading the words in context is very important – now I just wish someone would tell producers of DVDs that… Subtitles [...]
Full Story »Learning the Départements of France
After a 6 month break, I finally got David to do some more recordings for the French tutorials. We finished up French VII and sections on education, politics, television, geography of France, etc. There are a lot of games online you can play to test your knowledge of the geography of France, but I hadn’t [...]
Full Story »Miss Harriet, Maupassant, and le break
“Nous étions sept dans le break, quatre femmes et trois hommes…” The short story, Miss Harriet, was written in 1883 by Guy de Maupassant. In the very first sentence is the word le break – meaning horse-drawn carriage. Nowadays it means a station wagon and when I learned this, I just assumed it was an [...]
Full Story »Master’s in Teaching French at University of Arizona
Maybe it’s the never-ending cold inside and outside, but I keep looking for Master’s programs in French in warm climates… et voilà, I found the perfect program at the University of Arizona in Tucson. They offer a Master’s in Teaching French as a Foreign Language, which is exactly what I’m looking for before I decide [...]
Full Story »Téléfrançais – Episode 1
Hey, I have an idea! Let’s put a talking pineapple, a creepy pilot doll, skeletons playing music, and two kids together in a video to teach useful French phrases like Je suis un ananas and Ce n’est pas possible ! Brilliant, right? Thanks to Dedene for this gem.
Full Story »Links Roundup for Learning Languages Online (Audio Version)
I’ve been slowly going through my Language Links page to delete dead links and add new ones. Some new language sites that I’ve come across since my last links post include audio prominently: SWAC Audio Collections provide pronunciations for a wide range of words in 11 languages: Bielorussian, Czech, Chinese, German, English, French, Dutch, Russian, [...]
Full Story »French Phonetics: Listening & Repetition Exercises
Have trouble hearing the difference between les and lait ? How about jeune and jeûne ? Um, yeah, me too. Still can’t say bûche correctly? How many silent letters are there in prompt ? Do you want to cry when you’re forced to pronounce serrurerie ? Since I’m still on vacation, I’ve been working hard [...]
Full Story »
