Language Learning: tips & tricks

Teaching our students how to learn is of course as important, if not more important, than what they learn. Learning a language is a new experience for many of our Year 7 students, and for those who have not learnt a language before, they may never have been shown how to do it.

Next time you set "learn the ... vocab on p... of the text" as part of your students' homework, give them a few tips on how they can do that, assuming you haven't already. Let them know that we all learn in different ways and the way one student learns their vocab will not necessarily be the way that everyone else does. We need to help each student find the most effective way for them to learn. At school I learnt my vocabulary by writing it down again and again (and again), now I learn through flashcards and by trying to use the vocabulary as often as possible. Both methods work in their own way but I now prefer flashcards and flash games.

Here's my attempt at putting some tips for language learning into one place. If you have any tips for me to improve the presentation, please let me know via a comment.

Music and Japanese Lyrics

A while back I wrote here about using music to inspire your Japanese language learning. In class this week my students pointed me towards 'jpopasia', a place to watch music videos and communicate with like minded fans of Japanese and Korean Pop music. The added benefit of this site, from my angle, is that many of the videos have the lyrics (including kanji lyrics) alongside them. This means we can listen to as well as read the Japanese. As mentioned in the post linked above, I learnt a lot of kanji and vocabulary from too much karaoke and now I see many of my students doing the same; as well as learning Japanese through manga and anime. The difference now is accessibility - Japan and Japanese music is so much closer. As the site's authors put it:

All we want is to promote Japanese music outside Japan. It's really hard to find and discover new Japanese music because of the language barrier and availability. We think we can fill this missing link in providing romaji titles and promotional videos.

So, find a song your students like, look at the grammar and kanji in the lyrics and use these to help reinforce the structures and script being learnt in class. In class yesterday, Angela Aki's song Tegami and lyrics helped us to revise a whole heap of kanji and to look at the grammar structures 〜ないで、〜そう（な）and 〜（え）ば. I even learnt a couple of new kanji myself.

Posted via web from Js Nihongo

Blogs for learning about all things Japanese

Part of my presentation to Japanese teachers this week was aimed at providing teachers with some authentic, real-time Japanese resources - for the language and the culture. For me, these are the blogs and sites that I turn to when looking for images or short, reflective pieces on Japanese festivals, food, music, language and so on. These are my favourite J-Bloggers. People who live in Japan or have lived in Japan and blog about Japan and their experiences there.

The best thing about these posts is not only the quality of the images but also the real-time nature of the blog posts. Posts and images on Children’s Day or Hinamatsuri can be found around those days. 

Previously, I have posted on finding images for teaching culture. This new list contains some of those same sites and some added extras that I have found since. It also contains some sites that focus a little more on the language, as well as the culture.

If these don’t satisfy, the best thing to do is to look at the “Blogroll” (usually found in the side pane of the blog) on these blogs.

Muza-chan's Gate to Japan  - Great images and explanations of what's happening in Japan

Kimonobox - From Hinamatsuri to decorations to quirky Japanese products (and great images)

Shibuya246 - Awesome images and easy to read explanations

Japan: Life and Religion - Reflections on Japanese life, culture and Buddhism

A Rinkya Blog - A place to find Japanese gadgets and quirky collectibles.

Caught Red-handed  - A variety of articles on Japan and the language that contains the occasional gem

Rainbowhill Language Lab - Language and culture, including lots of tips for learning Japanese

 Tofugu - Lots of tips and resources for learning Japanese

Hungry for Words: Mostly Japanese - Reflections on the Japanese language and customs

...and keep an eye out for the Japan Blog Matsuri. The recent matsuri on Famous Japanese People was pretty useful.

What are your favourites? Please add any I've missed in the comments section.

 

 

Posted via web from Js Nihongo

Japanese Adjectives - The Movie

Something designed to help think about the difference between i-adjectives and na-adjectives. Designed for my Year 9 class.

Posted via email from Js Nihongo

Yr8 Profiles and MapSkip

A while ago now I wrote about the potential that MapSkip seemed to have as a place for students to create profiles with images and sound. Well, finally we have tried it out in the classroom and were really happy with how the students were engaged in the activity and working together, reading other student's profiles and commenting on them.

This activity came after a couple of weeks of lessons that taught students how to indicate name, age, place they live, nationality and phone number. The idea was for the students to use this knowledge to create a character in the target language (Japanese), create an image for their avatar and then upload these to a map that was accessible by all. Students could then read each others character profiles and hopefully learn from each other. There was also the option for students to record themselves reading the profile and then uploading that to the map. It took about 3 lessons and went something like this...

1. Students created their character, giving information about name, age ,where in Japan they live and their nationality. All of this was fictional and the language was checked before moving to the next step.
2. Students created an avatar using one of the sites in this post from Danny Nicholson. We are a 1:1 laptop school so students saved the image to their computer, either using the Print Screen function or the Windows+S buttons (which saves a clipping straight into OneNote). They then edited in Paint.
   
3. Students were given a password and username to login to MapSkip; the site allows teachers to easily create and monitor student accounts.
   
4. Once in MapSkip, students located the town their character came from in Japan and added a marker to the map. The then added their "story" and avatar image to the map.
   
5. Students recorded themselves reading the profile and then uploaded that to their MapSkip "story". Note: You will need to save your recording as an mp3 file before you can upload. Not all students reached this stage.
6. Students were set homework to read other students' profiles and make a comment. Some wrote comments in Japanese, some in English. I gave feedback via the comment option.
   

All in all the lessons went really well and the level of student engagement was fantastic. The only problem we did encounter was that some students had trouble adding a marker to the map. It either didn't allow it or it placed the marker a long way from its intended spot. One student's character now resides in the Pacific Ocean several hundred kilometres to the east of Japan.

MapSkip, despite the minor setbacks mentioned above, was simple to use for the students and the ability to create and monitor student accounts is really useful. It also allows you to filter out all stories on the map so that only your students' stories are visible.

Technology in Modern Foreign Languages – A practitioner’s perspective

If you are looking for some tips on how technology can be integrated into the Foreign Languages classroom, you need to read the collection of articles embedded below.

Written by classroom teachers for classroom teachers and edited by José Picardo, it covers a whole array of ways that have worked in the language classroom to integrate ICT into all the skill areas. Highly recommended professional reading; and, if you want to go further, create a twitter account and follow those who have contributed to the document. They are all inspirational.

Technology in Modern Foreign Languages - A Practitioner's Perspective

The Basics of learning a language

I have been working on the presentation embedded below for quite a while now and had in fact forgotten about it for a while. I began working on it as a means to try and help make our Year 7 language students more aware of how best to learn a language. For many students it is their first experience in learning a language and once the year starts it is pretty full on; they learn French for the entire Year as well as a Semester each of German and Japanese. Personally, I would like them to complete an Introductory Unit on 'Learning Languages', that shows them the importance of language learning itself and introduces tips and techniques on how best to do it. But ... time is an issue; those assessments are always getting in our way. So, rather than an entire Unit, I began working on this short presentation to use as a quick introduction. I am not convinced that it is complete, so if you have any tips of your own that would be suitable for younger language learners, please add them in the comments section.

Launch your own SlideRocket presentation!