Tag: culture

The Royal Academy of the Spanish Language which is one of the authorities regulating and preserving the changes that occur in the Spanish language, in the 22nd edition of its dictionary (2001), defines language as “System of verbal and, almost always, written communication that belongs to a specific...

  Chris Cartwright offers examples showing how improved intercultural competence can motivate language learning“You really cannot teach a language; it has to be learned. Fostering the student’s motivation is not only important, it’s essential,” states international business professor Tim Keeley of Kyushu Sangyo University, in Japan. Dr. Keeley identifies as a polyglot and is “functional” in over 20 and can...

Juliet Falce-Robinson insists on individual style in a skills-based approach to language teaching  The goal of a successful language program is to foment and foster the development of linguistic and cultural proficiency, and thus awareness, that will facilitate dialogue and contribution to a global society. Language teachers continually strive to provide educational opportunities that allow students to become multilingual, multicultural,...

Michael Ballagh questions the rankings race in study abroad participation U.S. institutions of higher education have long sought validation in the rankings system dominated by entities such as U.S. News and Forbes. Less commonly known is the academic “arms race” around the number of students who study abroad; college websites tout these high rates as an indicator of institutional success,...

Yue Meng and Nile Stanley see the educational value in social networking sitesIf you type “Facebook educational usage” into Google, it will show millions of relevant sites in just .278 seconds. With the popularity of Facebook and other social networking sites, such as Twitter and Renren (China), there is an assumption that such sites are useful in classrooms and...

Last month’s Zurong Dialect Film Festival, one of China’s campaigns to preserve language diversity, received 582 entries featuring various dialects in just its second year. The number of entries doubled from last year, coming from all over the country. Zhao Yuhe received the Best Actress Award at the festival hosted by Zhanjiang, in south China’s Guangdong Province, even though...

A $5 million grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation will enable UCLA to create a center for the study of Hellenic culture, which will be housed in the UCLA College and will build on the university’s strengths in Hellenic studies, supporting research across disciplines ranging from archaeology and classics to languages and digital humanities.In addition to its teaching and...

Changing the World, One Wall at a Time is a new documentary on Education Is Not a Crime—the world’s largest street art and human rights campaign, which raises awareness about education apartheid by Iran’s government against tens of thousands of Bahá’ís in the country through murals.The film, produced by...

M. Elhess, E. Elturki, and J. Egbert offer strategies to support creativity in the language classroom“Our students aren’t creative,” claimed one of the language teachers in the professional development workshop. The other participating teachers nodded in agreement.“How do you know?” asked the workshop facilitator.The teacher hesitated. “Well,” she said, “I guess I don’t. We don’t ask them to do anything creative, mostly...

The University of Toronto is continuing its courses on Ge’ez thanks in part to a $50,000 donation from the Grammy Award–winning musician The Weeknd. Ge’ez is an ancient South Semitic language that originated in the northern region of Ethiopia. It remains the main language used in certain church communities and is used in prayer and in scheduled public celebrations. The...