New Key to Fluctuating Language Ability?
For years, the brain has been thought of as a biological computer that processes information through traditional circuits, whereby data zips straight from one cell to another. While that model is still accurate, a...
UNESCO Sees Role of EdTech in Multilingual Learning
The theme of last month’s International Mother Language Day, “Using technology for multilingual learning: Challenges and opportunities,” raised the potential of technology to advance multilingual education and support the development of quality teaching...
Encouraging Spanish/Portuguese Collaboration
During last month’s Second International Conference on Portuguese and Spanish Languages (CILPE) in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia, leading Ibero-American language experts came together to create an action plan to strengthen Spanish and Portuguese in...
The Metaverse and Language Education
In the 1990s, the animated television series The Magic School Bus became well-known for its louder-than-life main character Ms. Frizzle, who took her students on wild and zany field trips that defied all...
Dogs Can Differentiate Languages
Dog brains can detect speech and show different activity patterns to familiar and unfamiliar languages, according to a new brain-imaging study published in NeuroImage (“Speech Naturalness Detection and Language Representation in the Dog Brain”)...
Gestures Can Help Vocabulary Learning
Language educators may find that incorporating gestures or other types of movements in their vocabulary lessons improves learning outcomes, according to a study recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience. The study, conducted by...
Infants Capable of Complex Language Processing
A new study published in Cognition suggests that infants may have more advanced linguistic understanding than previously believed. Conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Edinburgh and the Hebrew University of...
Navajo Goes Extraterrestrial
The first scientific focus of NASA’s Perseverance rover is a rock named “Máaz” – the Navajo word for “Mars.” The rover’s team, in collaboration with the Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice...
Naked Mole Rats Communicate Complexly
Birds, dolphins, and bees are all well-known within the scientific community for their ability to communicate in ways that resemble human language in one manner or another. Now, scientists can add another species to...
‘Shark Tank’ for Language Apps
Next weekend, the Language Flagship Technology Innovation Center (Tech Center) in the College of Arts, Languages & Letters at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa will be hosting its own virtual version of the...