Friday, November 9, 2012

My war of independence with American English

By 

My voice is my identity. In a foreign land it defines me. I open my mouth and people know where I am from. I’ve been in America for over a year now and it looks like I will be here for the foreseeable but I have one major fear: Americanisms.
I’m not knocking the way our American friends speak. Good luck to them. But I’m from Reading in England. And I want to sound as if I’m from Reading in England. More

Friday, November 2, 2012

Australia Asia Research and Education Foundation (AAREF)

http://aaref.com.au/  Please check out a new venture pioneered by my inspirational former teacher and supervisor, Dr Thao Le. He writes: "We are so privileged to have Professor Noam Chomsky (MIT, USA) and Professor Teun Van Dijk to join our list of Honorary Professors."

Language learning on social media

If Australia is  going to take on online language learning in a big way, as the new White paper suggests, it's time we all really started to critically explore all angles. Two articles: 

On the attractiveness of social media for language learning: a look at the state of the art <http://alsic.revues.org/index2436.html>

Facebook-ing and the Social Generation: A New Era of Language Learning <http://alsic.revues.org/2413>

in a special issue on “Social media and language learning: (r)evolution” of the French journal ALSIC

(sourced by way of Joe Dale's Twitter stream).