Mark Pentleton

Jornades de Llengües in Girona

I'm in Girona, Spain delivering two session on using podcasts in language teaching - the first of these was this evening and was in a mixture of Catalan and Spanish. The second is tomorrow morning, so I'm trying to get a bit ahead of myself and putting up the notes and links from the presentation in advance.

We started by looking at the excellent "Podcasting in Plain English" video from CommonCraft.com (Catalan-subtitled version here) and discussing what podcasting involves.

 

Finding and subscribing to podcasts

We then looked at how to find podcasts and subscribe to them either via a web search (including podcast directories such as LearnOutLoud and PodcastDirectory) or through iTunes. The screengrabs below show the steps involved in subscribing to a podcast in iTunes:

Download iTunes here. Remember that it is possible to change the iTunes Store country from the homepage of the iTunes Store. Scroll to the bottom and select the appropriate country. Although you will not be able to purchase music, tv shows or films (unless you have a credit card registered to an address in that country) you will be able to access podcasts within the store.

 

Creating podcasts

Having learned how to access podcasts, we considered how to create a podcast. The example was given using Apple's Garageband software, but similar results can be achieved with Audacity which can be downloaded free. Two example podcasts were created and uploaded to libsyn. The examples can be downloaded here and here (I hope Joana and Josep don't mind their interviews being featured around the world!) A popular alternative to libsyn with options for free accounts is podomatic.

 

Why should we be using podcasts in languages education?

Useful links about education podcasting can be found below:

• Teacher José Picardo's wonderful walkthrough, Podcasting in Five Easy Steps
• Teacher Joe Dale's podcasting links 
• Catalan podcast directory 
• Fem un podcast from MediaWiki
• Links to the Radio Lingua site, Coffee Break Spanish and One Minute Catalan 

Ara, en català: com ja he dit, que perdoneu les fallades! Espero que les presentacions hagin estat interessants i útils. Aquest matí, després de la meva presentació he fet un volt per Girona i em va agradar molt. Espero tornar i passar més temps al descobrir la vostra ciutat! Moltes gràcies per haver-me convidat a parlar i fins la propera vegada! 

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What it's all about...

This past week I've had the privilege of spending six days in Strasbourg in the company of a fantastic group of young people from schools in East Dunbartonshire. The students were taking part in a Euroscola activity, a day of debate and discussion organised by the European Parliament. Throughout the day the students were mixing with their counterparts from across the EU, discussing the future of Europe in a mixture of French and English.

 

While the formal discussions during the day itself were of huge importance and value to the students, I feel that in many ways the most memorable discussions were in the more "social" parts of the week. The photo above shows two of our students getting to know two of the Belgian students who happened to be sharing our accommodation, and the excitement and genuine interest in respective cultures and languages shared during these moments was, in my opinion, what it's all about. It's just a shame that more young people can't benefit from these opportunities.

 

In addition to being one of the accompanying members of staff and helping out linguistically on the visit, my main responsibility was to maintain the official trip blog and podcast which was posted to EuroscolaOnline.com, receiving over 4,500 hits from parents, friends and teachers during our week away. There are lots more images on the site, and indeed on my Flickr set.

Great coverage for One Minute Catalan in El Punt

Following the launch of our new Catalan course, and my own Catalan language challenge which culminated in lots of Catalan speaking on my recent trip to Barcelona, this article appeared in Sunday's El Punt. It's very similar to what appeared on the Vilaweb article. If you want to test your understanding of Catalan, download the pdf here.

One Minute Catalan is going very well - we're seeing good metrics, helped along by the One Minute Languages series being featured on iTunes in the UK and US!

Aprendre idiomes podcast a podcast...

I'm sitting in Heathrow on my way back from Barcelona and was having a quick check of emails etc. (flight delayed...!) and noticed that VilaWeb has published an article about One Minute Catalan. Very pleased with the article (although slightly concerned about the "abandonament" referred to - not quite what I said! Anyway, si parles català, pots llegir l'article aquí. I si no, doncs hi ha un podcast que pots utilitzar per a aprendre'l! (If you speak Catalan you can read the article here, if not there's a very good podcast you can use to learn ;)

Tinc tantes coses que fer!

Quan vaig començar aquest repte no em vaig adonar que anava a tenir tantes coses que fer. Ha estat una setmana molt carregada i les dues que venen serán encara més carregades. Estem preparant molts materials nous que es llançaran el dia 26 de setembre, i, es clar, hi ha tot el normal també.

Espero que vagi a tenir un poc de temps per a aprendre més català abans de viatjar a Barcelona. Encara estic llegint el llibre de Carme Riera que es diu L'Estiu de l'Anglès i estic molt content perquè ho entenc gairebé perfectament. També estic notant frases interessants i útils que podré utilitzar després.

Per ara això és tot. Tornaré a escriure més aquesta setmana.

El Repte, day 6

Bon vespre. Aquesta nit estic molt cansat i no puc escriure molt. També no tinc diccionari ni llibre de verbs aixi que aquest és el meu primer missatge en catalá del meu cap! (head?) ja no treballo al meu ordenador i escric aquest bloc del meu iPhone.

Bé ja és molt tarde aixi que us dic bona nit i fins demà

我在学普通话 wǒ zài xué pǔ tōng huà！

Taking a break from el català, I've spent the day working with 玲玲, Líng Líng, our Mandarin developer. We're currently working on a number of projects, and the first of these - a short course in Mandarin (no prizes for guessing the name of that particular course!) - will be launched along with our Catalan course, and hopefully a few other projects on D-Day, 26 September 2008, the European Day of Languages. We're very keen to promote the fact that this is not the Day of European Languages, rather the European Day of Languages and it's only right that we should finally launch our first Mandarin product.

It has been really interesting working with 玲玲, especially because of my own interest in Mandarin. Simplifying Mandarin into ten short lessons (surely you don't need any more clues by now!) has been quite a challenge and it's been fun balancing the two criteria for the phrases in our course: keeping it as simply as possible and trying to ensure that the chosen phrases are the most natural way of saying things.

We talked at great length about the whole issue of tones, and I often feel that too much concentration on tones puts learners off. Given the type of learner we'll be aiming ... ok I'll say it ... One Minute Mandarin at, putting learners off is the last thing we want to do. The whole point of the One Minute Languages courses is that they're a structured approach the absolute basics of a language, hopefully helping learners catch the bug to learn a bit more. They are absolutely not intended to create fluent speakers, and this comes back to my own feelings about fluency.

I firmly believe that the vast majority of learners of a foreign language do not need to be fluent, or indeed anywhere near fluent. They need to be able to communicate at whichever level is most appropriate, and at the level which will serve the purpose they require at a given moment. In my experience being able to say a few phrases in a language has literally opened doors which would have otherwise remained closed. Through learning the basics of a language with our One Minute Languages courses, learners can say things like "I'm sorry, I don't understand. I'm learning (Mandarin/Catalan/Russian, etc). It's quite difficult. Can you help me?" and I believe that these are the phrases which native speakers will appreciate.

I don't intend this blog to be somewhere where I advertise our products - absolutely not. But it's quite nice being able to share the ideas behind what we do.

Ultimately we decided to take a low-maintenance approach to tones and have introduced them once the learner is well into the course. Even then it's linked to the fact that listeners have already learned 是 (shì) and then need to learn 十 (shí). I hope our treatment of tones goes down well with learners when we release the show. For info, when we release our larger-scale Mandarin projects there will be more help with getting used to tones!

So, instead of saying bona nit tonight, I'll be saying wǎn ān - 晚安！

Una reposta per a na Lisa

Una resposta per a na Lisa

Bon vespre, jo sóc en Mark, i com na Lisa jo també estic intentant de millorar el meu català. Sóc també professor, o sigui sóc antic professor de castellà i francès i ara tinc la meva pròpia companyia que produeix materials per a l'ensenyament de les llengües. Visc a Escocia amb la meva dona que s'en diu Catriona i els nostres dos fills. I cal dir que prefereixo escriure en el meu bloc que parlar davant una càmera de video!

Catalan spell checker for Mac OS X

As I've been writing these Catalan blog posts I've been missing the functionality of a spell checker. Often I think I know a word but I'm not quite sure and when the spell-checker is set to check words as I type, some (not all) of the time I can get immediate feedback on whether a word exists or not. Obviously I'm not expecting to be told if what I've written makes any sense, but it's nice nonetheless to get a bit of instant feedback, if only to say that the word I've just typed doesn't even exist. Unfortunately Catalan is not one of the languages included in the built-in spell checker. However, I have come across an open-source dictionary project called Excalibur which basically runs as an application in the background. I can copy the text I'm working on, "Open Clipboard" in Excalibur and, using the Catalan spelling dictionary which I've already downloaded, I can check my spelling.

It's not qutie as handy as the "check spelling as you type" command, but it helps the whole learning process... Other languages are available from the Dictionary Directory on the website.

One Minute Catalan

It's now official: one of the main reasons I'm involved with Catalan at the moment is because we're going to be launching what I think will be the very first "teach yourself Catalan" podcast. It will be part of our popular One Minute Languages series which aims to equip learners with the absolute basics of a language, primarily to make travel more enjoyable and to impress native speakers. I feel really strongly about the value of the One Minute Languages series: from my personal experience I've found that even knowing a couple of well-chosen phrases in a language can go a long way and can immediately give a good impression to a native speaker.

The first time I spoke in broken Norwegian to a Norwegian the reaction was one of surprised delight. Since then I've learned much more Norwegian and the ongoing reaction helps to encourage me further. The One Minute Language courses teach learners to say the standard basics like "hello", "goodbye", "my name is...", etc., but they also teach learners how to say "I don't speak much (Norwegian) - I'm learning it. Please help me with it!" and it's this kind of interaction with a native speaker which will demonstrate a learner's willingness to learn the other language.

I'm looking forward to working with Ana on One Minute Catalan, and we're delighted that we'll be launching it live in Barcelona on 26 September.