Learn a New Language

Learning a new language is one of the best things you can do for yourself -- and your English-learning students. Here are eight FREE sources to help you! [Original article found here.]
1. BBC Languages

Who wants to buy and carry around a pile of language books? Fortunately there are many free language sites.

The BBC offers comprehensive online courses in French, Spanish, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, and Greek, with slightly briefer introductions to several other languages.
This incredible, totally free, service is the best option for starting a new language from the beginning as the curricula are well designed, very complete, and easy to follow; all important features of a self-study program.
2. MIP OpenCourseWare
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has made a great effort to supply all of its course materials online for the free use of MIT students and the global internet community.
The Languages and Literatures department features courses in languages such as Chinese, Japanese, French, German and Spanish in addition to many interesting literature and culture topics.
While the usefulness of the materials provided varies depending on the course, they all include a detailed study plan to aid the self-learner in structuring a home course.

3. Internet Polyglot

The Internet Polyglot provides study materials for twenty-one languages. The unit-based materials available are ideal for a student already familiar with the basics of the language and interested in practicing specific areas and applications.
4. The Open University LearningSpace
Similar to the Internet Polyglot, the LearningSpace provides unit-based study materials with a primary emphasis in French and Spanish.
5. Language Learning Podcasts
In the last few years, there has been an explosion of podcasts devoted to learning a language. These resources provide important sound cues and practical pronunciation guides, and are an invaluable tool for a self-study program.
To find podcasts, iTunes users can navigate to the “education” category of the iTunes Music Store. Other listeners can browse popular podcast databases like Odeo or the Podcast Directory.
A highlight of some of the more popular language podcasts includes Learn Greek, the French Podcast, ChinesePod, A Taste of Russian, and the Cherokee Language Podcast.

6. Madinah Arabic Language Course

For those interested in learning Arabic, the Madinah Course is the best online course available for free. Focusing on both spoken and written Arabic, this course takes the student from the first introductions through the advanced beginner level.
7. Livemocha
Livemocha is a social networking community focused on learning foreign languages. It provides free online courses in German, Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish, and Hindi with plans to expand to other languages in the future.
In addition to the online courses, available from introductory to intermediate levels, Livemocha provides an active community of language learners and native speakers willing to work with you and give help when needed.
This community based approach makes Livemocha one of the most useful tools for the self-study of language.
8. Something Completely Different
Travelers interested in learning a more obscure, or even endangered language, should begin their research at the Ethnologue, an online database of all of the world’s 6,912 known living languages.
For more specific study, check out the Sanskrit Self Study program, an introductory course for learning Tibetan, Yucatec Maya language study materials, the great book Introduction to Zulu, or the Comparative Bantu Languages Dictionary.
Learning a new language requires time and dedication and can be a challenge no matter how good the tools available.
Still, these online resources are accessible anywhere you can find an internet connection and will make all the difference when trying to tame that new tongue, at home or abroad.

Soda/Pop/Coke?

Students might not immediately see how geography is relevant to them.  Tying geography to language, however, can be a great way to grab students' attention.  Our use of language is, obviously, very immediately personal and relevant.  So introduce your students to the classic "What do you call soda/pop/Coke, etc.?" game.

Serious research has been done about the geographic/regional differences in generic names for sodas.  Check out this link for a full analysis, and have your students see if they fit into the geographical trend.

Parlez vous...?

Up for a challenge? Consider learning a new language!  Our classrooms are increasingly linguistically diverse, so learning a new language can certainly help make you a more effective (and more compassionate) teacher.  Brave New Traveler blog offers eight great suggestions for free online language learning programs. So put your free time to good use, and expand your horizons!

Why Judy can't add: gender inequality and the math gap

The following article was written by John Timmer for Ars Technica. The original can be found here. It is a really fascinating look at the social construction of gender.

When people claim there are innate differences between the sexes, they will often point to things like the disparity between male's and female's math performance. This article looks at the issue on a global scale and finds that society is the primary shaper of mathematics performance for girls worldwide.

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By John Timmer | Published: June 02, 2008 - 09:32AM CT

It's widely recognized that, in the US at least, there's a gender gap in performance on tests of basic skills: boys tend to perform better at math, while girls get superior reading scores. It has been suggested that these gaps are the result of biological differences, as males tend to have better spatial reasoning skills and females better word recall. But a new study suggests that, when it comes to math, we can forget biology, as social equality seems to play a dominant role in test scores.

The study, which appeared in last week's edition of Science, relied on a test from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), run by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). A total of over 275,000 students in 40 countries took the PISA exam as 15-year-olds. On average, girls scored about 2 percent lower than boys on math, but nearly 7 percent higher on reading, consistent with previous test results.

The researchers, noted, however, that the math gap wasn't consistent between countries. For example, it was nearly twice as large as the average in Turkey, while Icelandic girls outscored males by roughly 2 percent. The general pattern of these differences suggested to the authors that the performance differences correlated with the status of women. The authors of the study built a composite score that reflected the gender equality of the countries based on the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index, data extracted from the World Values Surveys, measures of female political participation, and measures of the economic significance of females.

Scandinavian countries such as Norway and Sweden score very high on gender equality measures; in these nations, the gender gap on math performance is extremely small. In contrast, nations at the other end of the spectrum, such as Turkey and Korea, had the largest gender gap. The correlations between gender equality and math scores held up under a statistical test designed to catch spurious associations. The authors even checked out the possibility of genetic effects not linked to the Y chromosome by examining whether genetic similarity between various European populations could account for these differences, but they found that it could not.

The frightening thing, from a male perspective, is that a lack of gender equality also seems to be holding down girls' reading scores. Female superiority in reading tests is slightly lower than average in Turkey, but the gap is actually wider in countries with greater equality between the sexes. In Iceland, for example, girls outscore boys by well over 10 percent.

The math gender gap thus joins a long list of differences in test scores that were once ascribed to biology, but now appear to be caused by social influences. The study, however, leaves us with yet another question of this sort: why do boys appear to read so poorly? We clearly can't ascribe it to social inequality, but that doesn't mean it isn't due to some other social factor.

Science, 2008. DOI: 10.1126/science.1154094