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Web 2.0 Changes to come

By Ascolto on July 2, 2009 10:30 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

As a long time internet user I am interested in the development that takes places everyday within a virtual world where people have an increasingly limitless method of communication, and each day new surprises and method of communication across borders, cultures, and languages are created. Each day something new surprises me. Technology which once would have been seen as needless and more than superfluous has found our way into the everyday life. It has all created wonderful benefits and other terrible consequences.

I will list just a few of these changes that are taking place on the web:

Twitter: Twitter is one of those programs that has become popular, because it can connect people quickly, and doesn't overwhelm users with too many features. Simplicity is the backing which keeps it going. Recently, this connection tool was used to orchestrate protests in Iran as well as help the media around the world get a very good idea of what was happening in the country. People in Iran could share what their government didn't want them to share. Perhaps most troubling for all governments of the world is that with globalization it becomes almost impossible to have full control over what goes in and out of a country.

Youtube: Youtube has been changing rapidly ever since it began. Now people use Youtube almost everyday to listen to music, see family videos, learn something new, or for entertainment better than the Television. Youtube has allowed us to produce our own entertainment and to publish it so that thousands of people can see it. Building communities around real people and support for every group that needs some. Although trolls will never leave the internet people are able to look past everything that detracts and build real communities around each other, communities that support other people, and have done genuinely good things. More recently, Youtube has announced the introduction of their Beta Channels, which are an increasingly hated *new* feature, although they have been in development for more than a year. These profiles lack a lot of functionality and usability. The motive behind the change is one that is designed to make Youtube more profitable, but also cut down on bandwidth usage, which according to some reports is near $2 million a day. It will be interesting to see how Youtube deals with user discontent over a broken design that needs to be repaired.

The Pirate Bay: This file sharing site has also been a challenge to world institutions, especially copyright, which is in some sense fair and in other senses not. While I believe that paying for art is a good practice many corporations have exploited copyright to make a killing. People are no longer willing to pay more than an album is worth, and the Pirate bay gave people a way to fight back against this injustice. The owners were recently sued and slapped with fines and prison sentences. Unfortunate, considering Swedish law and the injustices that were numerous through the trial process. In a decision that will ultimately lead to the downfall of the bay the owners are arranging a deal to sell it to a gaming company. Of course, the owners were left with little choice in the matter, after their loss in the trial, it will mark a giant change on the internet. However, I hope it will spur people to create a bigger and better network that will back against those that take too much advantage of consumers for their own benefit. In a way you could see an unethical element to both sides, however TBP certainly didn't get a change at a fair fight. Corporations simply don't deserve to win because they have more money.

Livemocha: This doesn't really fit with the other, but why not. I am impressed with this website time and a again. They have introduced paid courses now, which are at an affordable price, and it looks as if they will introduce a paid tutoring system soon as well. The lessons on the website are not perfect, in fact, they tend to be be filled with some errors which keep learners on their toes, and may be utterly confusing for a novice to comprehend. The website is an excellent supplement to traditional classes or intensive self-study. It is also a wonderful place to make new friends.

Speech Accent Archive

By Ascolto on June 29, 2009 6:00 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Recently, I met a Colombian, we met each other through chat at first, and we continued speaking for a while, and eventually I showed him a video of me speaking Spanish, and we has impressed by my abilities and near mastery of the accent. He was also wondering what I thought of his English accent. So we exchanged some clips and I was surprised by the very good accent he had in English, but later he started speaking again in Spanish and I was astounded by the very neutral sound of his accent. It seems that where this speaker lives the Spanish spoken there had a very neutral sound, which makes it easy for speakers to develop an almost natural sounding English accent. This particular speaker was from Santa Marta and as far as I can tell the accent there is quite neutral, which would be a definite plus for leaners of Spanish who would prefer a neutral and less thick way to develop listening skills, while later making your way through the more thick accents.

I researched a little more and found a great database of speakers and their accents in English. The database is called the Speech Accent Archivce. The website also has recordings of natives, which is really handy for illustrating some of the differences between dialects in the United States.

Anxiety in Foreign Language Classrooms

By Ascolto on June 26, 2009 4:30 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

I have finished my 6 week course in Arabic at the University of Utah. Throughout the course I became really interested in how people pickup vocabulary in foreign languages and especially how people deal with stress and the anxiety of learning a Less Commonly Taught Language (LCTL). In the past I have always had a remarkably easy time memorizing and remembering the vocabulary in Spanish and Portuguese. Having learned languages similar to English this is of course an expected outcome for learners.

However, with Arabic I struggled to pickup the vocabulary quickly, especially because the vocabulary was being thrown at me at an incredible rate at about 20+ words a day - more or less- and then I was expected to recognize around half of the vocabulary that was on the list to learn. In addition to this the foreign script and unfamiliar sounds made visualization of the word even more difficult to tackle. So I set out to learn a way to memorize vocabulary more easily.

I researched some of the more common ways to learn vocabulary. With no surprise Mnemonics were the tips topping most lists. Relating the new word to a word you already know seems to be the most dominant way to memorize vocabulary that seems difficult. For example, relating the new word to any word you know that sounds similar to the new word, and then putting a mental image in your head relating the two words together. As an example take the word al-izdham(الازدحام), which I related to the words "his ham," then I imagined people crowding around his ham, and the rest is the magic of mnemonics. This technique in most research seems to be the most effective since the visual and auditory queues help to store the vocabulary more readily in the mind, and eventually the mnemonic device becomes unnecessary.

Another problem that seems to be evident at least within my studies in Arabic and possibly of LCTLs is that the vocabulary is not presented in orderly fashion, which means that the new vocabulary is presented to the student in the form of a story, which means that the new vocabulary is essentially random, and may or may not have any real utility for the student. This is the biggest problem in learning and teaching a language, and the fact is students will not strive to retain any vocabulary that will not be directly useful to them. Useful vocabulary is anything that is used multiple times or information that is necessary for what the student has the desire to communicate, and for the most part the random vocabulary presented may not represent what the student wants to say. I`ve found that the best way to learn the vocabulary with a solid foundation is to use the vocabulary in a contextual environment, which means that writing the vocabulary out in context plays a key role in remembering any of it, and the advantage of reading and hearing the new vocabulary in context from a native text is also extremely useful as well.

I also audited the 6 week course that I took, which means I didn't` have the pressure of a final grade or the stress of failing in a language which was completely foreign to me. More than half of the students in both sections of the course dropped the course, because of emergencies, fears, and a general lack of confidence. Students taking the class for a grade had an incredible time coping with the stress of the class. Although I was auditing the course I tried to keep myself to the same levels as the other students earning a grade, and I did just that, as I kept up with most of the homework during the program, and I didn`t miss a day of the 6 week course. With that said I had a very stressful 10 hour per day schedule. After the first week I was feeling stressed, and came close to dropping the course.

During the course I noticed a fluctuation in the anxiety levels of most of my classmates. During the first week of learning the script and learning to write students were noticeably more anxious and insecure of their abilities. The initial shock of the program also caused the anxiety that lead to most people leaving the course, even a linguistics major, who seemed content on staying throughout the course. From what I've read about anxiety in the classroom, and especially LCTLs anxiety when learning is not a useful strategy. Certainly a healthy amount of anxiety is natural and happens in most classroom situations, but when the anxiety becomes higher, then students tend to underperform, or drop out, and stop learning the language completely.

This underscores an essential problem in learning LCTLs, because the anxiety of learning something completely foreign with a different script and drastically different sound patterns makes learning something more difficult than with the languages that are taught and learned more frequently. Unlike Spanish the Arabic language takes a considerably longer amount of time to master, which means the learner is forced to become much more patient in order to gain even intermediate proficiency. This is a frustrating aspect to learning a language such as Arabic, because the language does not lend itself very easily to foreigners, and is unremitting when it comes to the desires of the learner. Although I should warn future learners that past the initial hurdles of a beginning course there is hope on the horizon, and that you too can begin to understand and speak such a foreign language.

There are of course numerous problems that work against learners of LCTLs. Arabic is one that really requires a fight to gain any proficiency at all and proficiency that lasts and can create an effective communication between you and a native of the language. Arabic is unfortunate in that there are multiple dialects that can vary greatly between countries, and speaking Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) has the tendency to come of as elitist. This means that most learners will at some point need to come in contact and partially master a dialect of the language in order to have a greater and more conversational usage of the language.

I can only say that in order to combat this there are several tactics that one might take to eliminate the numerous problems that exist within teaching LCTLs. My suggestions below, with some reiteration:

Script: Teach learners early on not to be afraid of the script, and that as foreign as it looks it is extremely easy to conquer with only a little bit of practice.
Vocabulary: Use mnemonics and present useful vocabulary; make sure to put the vocabulary in context as often as possible. Remember that some people learn vocabulary differently. Some people prefer flashcards, some need kinetic energy to get benefit, others need music, but everyone should use the words in context. Experiment to see what works.
Anxiety: If I were to teach an LCTL my first and primary goal would be to eliminate any initial anxiety about grades. Encourage the students with assurance that their grade is not based on their overall ability in the language, but the effort and time they spend to learn the language. A strict grading scale simply isn't an effective method to keep students learning the language. If students are aware that they aren't expected to be masters they will suffer from less anxiety during the course.
Dialect Mastery: This bullet really relates to the fact that learning a language is a task that is more musical than anything else. Learners, who begin to pickup vocabulary and can memorize entire sentences with ease in foreign languages, are usually to the point where they can hear the acoustic qualities and patterns in the language. Production is no longer a recitation of memorized tables, but rather a pleasant and communicative action. To hear the music of a language as it were continual practice and listening of all forms is helpful in mastery of the task.

I've planned to take the Fall course in Arabic at my university as well, and I hope that I will be able to report back the progress that I`ve made from the remainder of my summer and what I happen to learn as the new semester begins. It will be an interesting experience, and interesting to see how far I am able to progress in my studies.

Intensive Summer Language Course

By Ascolto on May 29, 2009 2:47 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

I've been away for a while, and haven't really written anything here, but that's how things go I suppose. However, I've enrolled in a 6 week intensive summer Arabic course, which seems to be a really intense(hence the name) way to learn, or begin learning a language. I've learned much of what I wanted to, namely how to read, which was my initial goal to begin with. Speaking the language was not essentially what I really wanted, but I've learned a lot of verbal communication, and I even have a very small functional vocabulary. for me the best part being able to learn to read and write in Arabic within only one week, and really within the same week to be forming basic sentences and telling about myself in writing and in speech, which is really quite a great accomplishment to have made. Although the course spans five hours five days a week, and is really very tiring, it is well worth the time and money. I'm interested to study a language that is complex and still well designed. The most difficult point for me has been the unsystematic nature of plurals, while the rest of the language seems to be very systematic and well formed.

Sin ti Sin mi

By Ascolto on May 6, 2009 10:30 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

A great video and song too.

Returning

By Ascolto on May 6, 2009 8:06 AM

After a long year of dedicated work and lot of things learned. I'm hoping that I can return to this blog and post some interesting little bits of information, but first thing first is to see if the automatic publishing queue is working, which will allow me to write multiple entries and publish them over a distributed amount of time. That makes this a test entry.

Gaza

By Ascolto on January 6, 2009 4:10 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

The situation in Israel and Gaza is of great importance. There are so many conflicts from day to day between these people, as each side parades its wounds about displaying how barbaric each side is. I wonder when these people will realize that if they begin to fight no more, launch no more weapons, then the other side may realize something in their actions. I wish that the human penchant for revenge were not so strong, and people could learn that to gain peace they must bear the suffering, remain without violence, and then remain with the eyes of the world waiting for someone to have the compassion to help them for once.

I do not blame Israel or the Palestinians for the incitement of such a conflict. I do blame them for the atrocities of war they have comitted against each other in the name of something that no longer has justice. Israel and the Palestinians no longer have any justice in what they claim to say or do. They both lie and exploit their dead to a certain claim.

Sadly, people tend not to realize the guilty of Israel. Christians throughout the world parade around feeling sorry for the Israelis. People should leave their religion aside, it is not Christ like, nor in the fashion of Allah, to kill another human being. It is not in the fashion of any sane human to justify the death of another human being, ever. Do not justify the wars of one nation with the justification of an ideology, of a racial precedent, or with the lies that you may hear.

I don't know who ultimately holds responsibility in the conflict. I do not rightly care who remains with the most responsibility, but both sides should feel shame. The people whether in Palestine or Israel should stop firing their weapons, and with time the barrage of fire from the other side will purge some compassion in the people there, and let them realize, if only momentarily, that such a massacre can never be justified.

I side with the people who remain human in this conflict, and do not endorse war and the loss of any life in conflict. Few things in the world can bring me to tears, like the have today, and to see the separation between the people of the world.

Linguistics Cold Hard Facts

By Ascolto on December 31, 2008 9:22 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

After being immersed in a linguistics course I can say at least with some sense that I now understand why people rever Linguists to be heartless and cold hard boring individuals. Linguistics unlike most other studies lacks a view of human nature, human culture, and more importantly what's so cool about human language.

You can break the study of linguistics down into small parts each one serving to explain a certain part of a language, and to simplify is syntax analyze the semantics and understand just what exactly is being said, or so we think. There is nothing inherently wrong with this process, it makes sense, it is natural and necessary for understandings to exist. However, what the study of linguistics lacks is a commitment to human language.

Linguists of today transcribe many of the languages that are on the verge of death, attempting to save them, preserve their sounds perfectly and may convey cultural remnants of the dying language. A simple taste of the people. This is all well and good. However, there is a divide between the person who studies in depth a language, and a person who studies all language in general. The transcription process does not so much as empathize in the process of preserving the language, it simply catalogs it, and preserves it in another database where it is essentially forgotten.

Let's face it, how many endangered languages have you been exposed to from online catalogs? Why is it so difficult to access these languages that have been so hopelessly "saved"? The answer is a mix not for lack of trying, but the nature of the linguist that deliberately it seems catalogs the data at hand, then stores it away without any artful presentation of the data. UNESCO has of course pledged to make the clips available and viewable to the entire public, sadly the clips are disorganized, the languages are presented in clips, and no cultural overview is presented, no translation. I can scarecely imagine how language can be valued without the culture that was promised. Perhaps the online sample is unfair to judge from, but how else should the public obtain these records? Why has such a poor attempt at real preservation been made? I think linguists look at the cold hard facts, see data, sounds, semantics, and coldly ignore the rest.

I think the not very old and the new very well heard adage that has accused linguists of being boring individuals is not altogether incorrect. What are linguists preserving? We worry about the languages we are losing, but what of the cultures, the people? Unfortunately, language is mistakenly said to convey the entirety of culture, but a language is nothing without its people. I wonder if the preservationists are really doing enough to save these languages or only saving the parts that happen to serve their study.

Blue Kiss

By Ascolto on December 29, 2008 2:22 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

I had one of my poems translated to Portuguese from my love affair in Brasil. Many thanks to Douglas and his friend. It's a wonderful translation!

Blue Kiss

Perhaps tomorrow I'll choose some lesser sorrow,

and on that morrow I shall sail away,

away from your shallow veins of blue.

I wish to nevermore feign the pains of bloodstained blue,

but now i'll cut into that hallowed aqueduct of love.

To chance I'll leave the sight of this tenebrous light, named love.

For that chance I led my heart through thorns,

to find that fragrant rose in bloom.

But I found that deathly flower far too late,

perhaps my love for you was doomed by fate?

But remember this, My lustful lie did not die.

Trust still in my blue stained eyes,

that begot my lovelorn wish.

Perhaps one last kiss to blissful sorrow?

----------------------------------------------------------

Beijo Azul

Talvez amanhã eu escolha uma dor menor,

E nessa manhã irei navegar para longe,

Longe do azul de suas veias rasas.

Desejo nunca mais fingir as dores do sangue manchado de azul,

Mas agora vou penetrar naquele santo aqueduto de amor.

Ao acaso, vou deixar a visão dessa tenebrosa luz, chamada amor.

Por causa desse acaso eu guio meu coração pelos espinhos,

Para encontrar a perfumada rosa em florescência.

Mas o que achei foi aquela rosa mortal longe, bem tarde,

Talvez meu amor por você foi condenado pelo destino?

Mas lembre-se disto, Minha mentira desejosa ainda não morreu.

Ainda há confiança nos meus olhos corados de azul,

Que criaram meu desviado desejo de amor.

Talvez um último beijo para a minha feliz dor?

Poetry

By Ascolto on December 22, 2008 6:00 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

by: T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"