By Brian Mathews. The theme of language keeps popping up in my conversations. I’ve become very conscious with how we communicate with users – not just the content, but the tone as well. A recent interaction with Google stimulated by thinking. They offered me a Glass upgrade and this was their confirmation message. More...
By Anastasia Salter. I recently returned from an intense week at the Modern Language Association Conference. I’ve been attending MLA for a few years now and every trip feels like a very different conference, thanks to MLA’s scale and the endless supply of options. For someone early-career like me, that means that I try to find a thread in the giant tent of MLA that is most immediately useful to my work. This year, I found myself compensating for several months spent on very traditional writing by attending a number of sessions that were about making things. More...
By Ilan Stavans. Spanish has two verbs for “to be”: ser and estar. The difference between them is dramatic, not to say existential. Ser refers to the condition of being as a whole, whereas estar places that condition in a temporal context. We say soy feliz to describe a person’s character: I’m a happy person. Instead, we say estoy feliz to refer to a passing mood: I’m happy now, but who knows about tomorrow? Of course, there are multiple, at times unexplainable, nuances to this dichotomy. For instance, it’s hard to explain exactly how, but the discrepancy between estoy feliz que soy feliz and soy feliz que estoy feliz sums up the complications Spanish speakers face when explaining what life is about. More...
By Geoffrey Pullum. “Concern trolls thrive on passive constructions the way vultures thrive on carcasses,” says Alexandra Petri in a Washington Post blog. My attention was captured not so much by the weird vulture comparison (she really hasn’t thought that through), but by the question of whether she had correctly diagnosed the “passive constructions” to which she refers. I’ll answer that question shortly. (In the meantime you might like to guess.)
But first, some context. Petri is commenting on a New York Times article by Bill Keller about Lisa Bonchek Adams, who blogs and tweets about her cancer. Petri charges Keller with adopting a “concern troll” tone in his discussion of her. More...
Every unemployed citizen of Brussels can now learn French, Dutch, English and German online
The Brussels employment office Actiris launched a language learning platform which is accessible free of charge to anyone officially registered as unemployed in Brussels with a computer connection within the Brussels Region.
The platform is managed by Altissia International, which also developed Wallangues, a free online platform that has been accessible for several years to anyone with a computer located in Wallonia.
It is hoped that in Brussels, too, the restriction to the unemployed will be lifted, and that all citizens of Brussels will soon be able to access this important new tool.
Excellence and innovation in language learning and language teaching
French national agency 2e2f has been organizing the European Language Label for more than a decade. This initiative encourages excellent projects in the field of language teaching and learning. The Label is opened to any language including regional and minority languages, the sign language, and addresses everyone and all sectors.
In 2013 the European Language Label rewarded:
, for its students from the higher education branch. the Traveller Flea-Evolution, coordinated by vocational school pupils from Lycée Louis Bleriot in Trappes, for pupils from primary to secondary schools., coordinated by the CIEP for teachers/trainers/developers in the field of languages., coordinated by the local authority Conseil Général du Morbihan, for lower secondary school pupils., a European competition aiming at lower secondary school pupilsThe official ceremony will take place on the 7th of February 2014 during Expolangues - a national exhibition gathering all the major players in the linguistic field. Click here to register!
Depuis plus de 10 ans maintenant l'agence 2e2f organise le label européen des langues, pédagogiques d'excellence en matière d'apprentissage et d'enseignement innovants des langues étrangères. Le label langues concerne toutes les langues y compris les langues régionales, minoritaires, la langue des signes, et s'adresse à tous les publics et à tous types de structures.
Les critères de labélisation sont: l'innovation, la pertinence la transférabilité et l'excellence.
La cérémonie de remise des prix est l'occasion de faire connaitre et reconnaitre les projets recevant le label européen des langues 2013 aux décideurs politiques, enseignants, formateurs, apprenants et à tous les passionnés de langues.
Un cocktail déjeunatoire, offert par l'agence 2e2f, viendra clôturer la cérémonie dans la convivialité.
Date limite d'inscription : 06/02/2014. Voir l'article...
Blog Educpros de Matthieu Cisel. Les langues représentent sans doute le principal marché de l’apprentissage en ligne. Des dizaines de millions de personnes se forment déjà via des sites comme Busuu ou Livemocha. Nous avons vu il y a quelques mois que les MOOC de langues étaient relativement inexistants, bien que le format soit tout à fait adapté à cette discipline. Pour expliquer ce phénomène, il faut analyser le marché actuel, dans une large mesure très largement saturé par des acteurs établis de longue date. Je vous propose un rapide tour d’horizon des entreprises qui dominent l’apprentissage des langues en ligne. Suite de l'article...
By Geoffrey Pullum. At the end of the English-syntax course I co-taught last semester, my colleague and I set a number of examination questions designed to test students ability to argue points about syntactic structure. This one will serve as an example: 
By Cary Nelson. The Modern Language Association’s Delegate Assembly, which met in Chicago on January 11, was a circus with a surfeit of clowns, incompetently run by people who had mastered neither Robert’s Rules of Order nor the association’s own procedures. After hours of debate and by a slim margin, the assembly voted to endorse a resolution urging the U.S. State Department to protest Israeli travel restrictions to Palestinian universities on the West Bank. More...
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