Hello everyone!
This is gonna be my last post I guess, and I'm kind of sad because my 'formal learning' is nearly over! Even though I'm tired now, I'm sure I'm gonna miss my university years! However, I won't stop learning languages, I'll just do it in a different way, and I really hope to keep making progress!! This week I want to spend some time talking about language learning and my experience of building a mindmap of my Personal Learning Environment. I knew something about this topic already because we've been talking about it a lot with our ESL teachers at university. I think it's really useful every now and then to stop and think about our language-learning methods. I reckon that exploring the different ways in which we approach languages helps us find our strong and weak points and set new learning targets for the future. Personally speaking, it was really nice to see the great number of tools we have at our disposal to improve a language, be it our mother tongue or a foreign language.
This is gonna be my last post I guess, and I'm kind of sad because my 'formal learning' is nearly over! Even though I'm tired now, I'm sure I'm gonna miss my university years! However, I won't stop learning languages, I'll just do it in a different way, and I really hope to keep making progress!! This week I want to spend some time talking about language learning and my experience of building a mindmap of my Personal Learning Environment. I knew something about this topic already because we've been talking about it a lot with our ESL teachers at university. I think it's really useful every now and then to stop and think about our language-learning methods. I reckon that exploring the different ways in which we approach languages helps us find our strong and weak points and set new learning targets for the future. Personally speaking, it was really nice to see the great number of tools we have at our disposal to improve a language, be it our mother tongue or a foreign language.
I divided my map into 5 main sections: paper material, on-line material, listening, writing and speaking. Under paper material I grouped the most common tools I've used for formal, traditional learning (grammar books, textbooks, dictionaries), plus other written sources I normally use to improve my reading skills and vocabulary (i.e. newspapers and magazines). I dedicated a whole section to on-line material in order to highlight the importance the Web has for language learning nowadays. So, I included blogs, wikis, social networks and e-journals just to give a few instances. The listening section is about radio and TV as the main tools I usually resort to in order to better my listening comprehension. In the same way, I listed a few things that have generally helped me make progress in writing. Finally, in the speaking section I grouped some alternatives that have proved to be very helpful for bettering my speaking and fluency with specific reference to foreign languages. For instance, I included tandem learning, occasional contact with native speakers and experiences abroad.
To conclude my post I want to say that it was quite easy to think about what I usually do to learn languages because it was all about focusing on my personal experience. However, it took me some time to organize all the material in a logic and coherent way because many of the tools I had included in the map can be exploited in different ways; so, it wasn't very easy to class them. Anyway, I enjoyed doing this activity a lot and I' m gonna keep my map in mind and see if I make any changes in the future!
Serena
I am an American of ARab roots and needed to learn Arabic, but was unable to travel. I tried to look for classes near my residence area but was not successful; luckily technology is a wonderful tool. The great thing is that there are also online programs for ARABIC Language learning as well.
ReplyDeleteI have tried some of them and they are extremely effective. It saves time, comes to you wherever you are, and you learn quite well. But there is one particular website that provides a real life experience that I really could not believe existed, I am learning and gaining great cultural experience through it, is called – arabicollege, just thought to share my experience.