virtualreview

china: news and opinion

The Tyranny of the Textbook

Lately I’ve been working with Nick Kruse of Reign Design on a new project at work called OpenLanguage. Much of our discussion has centered on teachers and students, and the language-learning experience in general. Nick related to me a story about... ...full story at Sinosplice

from Sinosplice on Tue, Aug 25 2009

see also:

28 May 08 visit chinese chicken!  »  YouTube videolol this was what i said to someone when i was prank calling him, so my fran copied what i said. here it is my friend:what? who is this? nick: nick. my friend:nick who? nick:cramer. my friend:guess what! nick:what? my friend!:CHINESE CHICKEN!
29 Dec 08 visit Recasting in Language Learning  »  Sinosplice If you’re a language teacher, you’re probably quite familiar with the concept of recasting, even if you don’t know the name. And if you’re a language learner, being aware of recasting can help you learn faster. So what is...
13 May 09 visit Many Eyes on Language  »  Sinosplice The “Language Speakers” bubble chart image below was created as part of IBM’s Many Eyes project: It’s a really cool project which enables the creation of various types of visualizations given certain data sets. Language lovers...
24 Jun 08 visit Why Web 2.0 works for learning Mandarin  »  Danwei Ken Carroll, co-founder of the Shanghai-based Chinesepod language teaching service, explains to Thomas Crampton why Web 2.0 tools work particularly well for learning Chinese in particular and languages in general.This article is from Danwei.org
12 Nov 07 visit How to Evaluate a Random Language for Acquisition in an Hour  »  Sinosplice Ever since reading Tim Ferris’s book, The 4-Hour Workweek, I’ve been reading his blog occasionally. He has some interesting ideas on language learning, and I value his opinion because he’s a smart guy and he’s apparently gained...
01 Mar 07 visit Secret Language Motivations  »  Sinosplice Love can be a motivation. I’m not talking about learning how to say enough for “one night love,” I’m talking about this: I am learning [language] so I can tell you how much I love you and have it mean more than if I told you in...

« Today's Stories