LLAS News Blog

News articles of interest to higher education LLAS subject fields.

Tuesday 22 January 2008

Wikilengua aims to bolster correct use of Spanish

A new site called Wikilengua, a Wikipedia-style online tool, has gone live with the goal of helping the world's nearly 400 million Spanish speakers consult on the proper use of their language.

Friday, January 11, 2008 | 9:13 AM ET
CBC website

Monday 21 January 2008

Association for Language Learning competition

Students learning Russian at Schools, Colleges and Universities in the UK, including heritage learners, are invited to participate in the Second Russian Essay Competition 2008. The competition has been organised by the Russian Committee of the Association for Language Learning (ALL) http://www.all-languages.org.uk We hope that teachers will encourage their students to take part as this is an excellent way for them to compete nationwide with their peers in a field-wide event and to raise the profile of Russian at your institution.The contestants will submit their essays by 14 March and winners will be announced by 30 April 2008.Winners in each category will receive prizes and their essays will be published on the ALL website, in Rusistika journal and in London-INFO newspaper. The prizes will include books and CDs. The ab initio level winners will receive the Russian rapid courses with recordings of the Russian opera singer Tatiana Komova. We are hoping to invite the winners to a free lecture on the current exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London“On Russia: French and Russian Master paintings 1870-1925 from Moscow and St Petersburg”. All participants will receive certificates. For full details of the competition contact Natalia Tronenko natalia@tronenko.com

Prime Minister announces boost to "world's language"

The Prime Minister has announced a boost to English language learning, teaching and training facilities for people throughout the world.

17 January 2008
10 Downing Street Website

New sign language helps the deaf to become hands-on with science

New sign language helps the deaf to become hands-on with science

A new vocabulary of sign language that will revolutionise the way science is taught to deaf children in schools throughout Britain has been developed by teachers and language specialists in Edinburgh. Over the past year a glossary of more than 250 signs for scientific terms has been created that can be accessed over the internet by teachers, interpreters and pupils. Terms of daunting complexity – such as “photosynthesis”, “density” or “bacteria” — are explained by on-screen tutors who employ simple but descriptive gestures that suddenly create understanding.

Saturday 19 January 2008
Times online

Tuesday 15 January 2008

Januray 2008 LLAS e-bulletin

The LLAS e-bulletin for January 08 is now online

http://www.llas.ac.uk/e-bulletin.aspx

Reinvention: a Journal of Undergraduate Research – launch of new journal

Reinvention: a Journal of Undergraduate Research – launch of new journal

The Reinvention Centre, a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning based at the University of Warwick and Oxford Brookes University, launched a new undergraduate journal called ‘Reinvention: a Journal of Undergraduate Research’ in September last year. Following the launch issue, the journal will have two issues per year in April and October. The journal is a peer reviewed publication which accepts submissions from all subjects and is open to submissions from all undergraduate students.

To learn more about the journal please visit:
www.warwick.ac.uk/go/reinventionjournal where the launch issue is hosted as well as submission guidelines, a style guide and information on the international board.

Language learning website wins award

The winner for best educational site in 2007 is Friends Abroad (www.friendsabroad.co.uk).

Friends Abroad is a language learning network. It's free to join, with the ability to learn language skills with the online language exchange community of millions of users in over 200 countries speaking over 80 languages.

The judges felt that Friends Abroad should win because of the innovation and interactive aspect of the site. The site perfectly leverages the power of the internet in bringing global communities together by helping users learn other languages and communicate with different nationalities all over the world.

Tuesday, 15 January 2008
Yahoo