Why we have problems with 'foreign' accents

So, you don’t like the sound of that shifty foreign student, eh? Don’t worry, it’s not your fault, it’s your stupid brain playing tricks on you.

Of the many indignities international students endure, notes the Scientific American, accent discrimination may be the most mortifying, in part because it is still widely accepted in our society. New research by University of Chicago psychologists Shiri Lev-Ari and Boaz Keysar suggests that prejudice is only part of the problem. Non-native accents make speech somewhat more difficult for native speakers to parse and thereby reduces “cognitive fluency”, i.e. the ease with which the brain processes stimuli.

Like skin color or attire, accent is a characteristic we routinely use to identify someone as unfamiliar or foreign. But while most people understand that discrimination based on visual appearance is wrong, bias against foreign speech patterns is not universally recognized as a form of prejudice.

The US Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on national origin, but says nothing about the subject of accent bias. Moreover, employers who deny jobs to non-native speakers can protect themselves by arguing that a foreign accent impairs communication skills essential to the workplace.

Read more about this…

Angolan army general stresses the importance of English

The vice chief of Staff of the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA), General Abreu Muengo “Kamorteiro” called for the need of teaching of English language within the staff members of the Angolan army.

The training programme, noted the Angola Press, was sponsored by the US Embassy to Angola, lasted for 12 weeks and ‘upgraded’ 59 soldiers.

Read more of the full story…

Where to look for research papers

A hot topic at present it the one concerning how students are searching for research paper help from unusual sources. A student’s approach towards the given topic will go a long way towards establishing the effort they put into their research paper writing. Of course, teacher endorsement is not only necessary but generally mandatory before beginning full scale research on the given subject. Students need to make sure the research paper topic you selected does not have a constricted range source material.

Collecting information:

Once a research paper topic is known, students should start looking for the information on it. Their university library is the first place you should start searching for your required information. Bibliographies of books can provide them with other books and articles on that topic. Other than books, use of the internet, magazines, encyclopedias are great sources of information that help students in collecting information related to their research paper. When gathering the information students shouldn’t forget to note down the source of all the material they get for writing the bibliography. If at this stage the student is suffering from time management problems, one solution is often to look at how to buy research papers.

Correct citation:

After identifying the sources from where you can get the information on the your research paper topic, go through them thoroughly and make notes of the important points stated in them. If you are copying direct from the source, put quotation marks on it to evade plagiarism. Keep track of all sources from where you have gathered information. Give numbers or headings to the notes you make so that organizing them wouldn’t be a headache.

Making outlines:

With all the information gathered, it’s now time to systematize them and construct an outline which in turn will take the shape of the research paper. It needs to be more of a table of content which shows the headings and sub headings, and the order in which they will be written. Organizing ideas is when you evaluate and sort out the wanted material from the unwanted matter; students need to make sure the information provided in the research paper is precise and current. For many, making an outline is already one step too far. This is another common point at which many start to look for alternative research paper writing solutions.

Avoiding plagiarism:

In order to avoid illegal use of other’s work, documenting the source of information is significant. This is done by using footnotes, endnotes and a bibliography. The format you chose depends on your particular writing style. Again, many feel that a good solution to this is to get a totally original research paper from an online site.

Preparing your bibliography:

Writing a research paper bibliography provides the source of all the information from where it was taken and buries all the doubts of plagiarism. It is provided at the end of the report; it can be either on one page of several pages. As mentioned above it is very important to keep track all sources of information to make it easier to write the bibliography for research paper writers. The general layout of a bibliography is to provide the title, author, publisher and the date of publication. The bibliography can either be done alphabetically or any other format which is preferred by your teacher.

Your conclusion:

After all this hard work students tend to get sluggish and that is where they lose grades… when they don’t check slapdash mistakes such as grammar, misspelled words, punctuation and capitalization, etc. Instead of trying to find out how to write a research paper, students should focus on searching for appropriate material first. Although the material provided by the student is very good but this careless mistake end up dropping their grade therefore do a double check on them and proofread each and very word carefully, because students wouldn’t want such hard work go down the drain just to save a few minutes of work after putting that much effort in writing their research paper.

Revising and proof reading:

The draft first written is in very rough and raw form. You would want to tidy it up before submitting it. Therefore revision and proofreading is must after writing the research paper. It’s important to note that revision and proofreading are two different things. Revision is where you analyze your work as you did when researching for the topic. Delete what is unnecessary and add where you think the argument presented by you is weak. It’s all about thinking over your ideas once again and editing out all the mistakes made in the first draft. Make other people read it and discuss the points that require editing.

English language education in Korea: Is it a fad or the future?

About one-third the size of Japan, South Korea now outspends its Asian rival by a margin of three to one in English language education, according to unofficial industry estimates.

Due to its largely underground nature, notes Yonhap News, estimates as to the exact size of the South Korean ‘language market’ vary widely, but experts agree that South Koreans spend the equivalent of between $10 billion and $15 billion annually on English language education.

Given an economy of this size, is this likely to be just a fad, or is this the future of Korea?

Read the full story here…

8 great ideas for class blog posts

If this post were a tin then the contents of it would be exactly what you’d find written on said tin. Did that make sense?

1. Share a photograph of your classroom

Explain about the different parts of it and how it is being used. Invite other teachers and classes to write a similar blog post explaining about their classroom. Encourage children from your class to leave comments about what they like about it or even suggestions for changes they would like to see.

2. Publish student’s work

Don’t just post work that is flawless but also invite comments and suggestions on work that can be improved.

3. Publish your shared writing

As you produce writing with the class in your lessons, post it to your blog and invite the class or blog visitors to improve something and to comment.

4. Share your classroom rules

This can be done at the beginning of the year and is a good way to share your class agreement with the wider community.

5. Share a photograph of a classroom display

They’ve done the work, now show it off.

6. Posting homework tasks every week

Students have to leave comment as their task.

7. Art gallery

Post pictures of all of the artwork created in a session, make a gallery or slideshow.

8. Post Concept Cartoons for prior to a lesson or a week of work

Students are then asked to comment on what they think will happen and then these can be used as a start to the first lesson or as an initial assessment.

Thanks to edte.ch/blog/ for the inspiration.

A dummies guide to chunking

In recent decades, notes the New York Times, the study of language acquisition and instruction has increasingly focused on ‘chunking’: how children learn language not so much on a word-by-word basis but in larger “lexical chunks” or meaningful strings of words that are committed to memory.

A native speaker picks up thousands of chunks like “heavy rain” or “make yourself at home” in childhood, and psycholinguistic research suggests that these phrases are stored and processed in the brain as individual units.

Read the full story here…

Great list of free online journals

Blatantly borrowed from Clarissa at Talk to the Clouds blog:

There are many free journals that serve as sources of high-quality “do-it-yourself” professional development. These journals are online-only, for the most part (no international postage! no dead trees!), but many of them attract big-name contributors. The journals present a mix of scholarly research, useful reviews, passionate essays, and practical classroom techniques. Academic research, the bulk of the entries in most of the journals, has a bad rap with some classroom teachers, but this research is generally done for a practical reason (usually, to find out the best ways that people learn). You may find yourself motivated to try adapting a teaching strategy that was written up in a research study, so try some of those articles out.

Read the list here