Linguamedia is an app that allows you to watch foreign TV stations online. Originally launched earlier this year with French channels,  Linguascope announced today that their Linguamedia app has been updated so you can now watch German, Spanish, Italian and English channels as well as French ones. They’ve also improved video playback, and updated it for the iPhone5 screen.

The app costs 69p and offers 16 French, 6 German, 12 Italian, 12 Spanish and 5 English channels (NB the channels are in that language not necessarily from that country so there is an Austrian and a Swiss channel for German) It is possible to access TV online e.g. by searching “RTVE” you can watch the stream of RTVE1, RTVE2, Telesport and Canal 24H, but for convenience, this app is great. You need a wifi connection to view the stations, and as Linguascope warn

I’ve mentioned Linguatrivia Spanish and Newshound previously but there are many other apps from Linguascope available. Worth a look!

Hurrah! In the last week, the following press release has been issued.  It looks like Primary language learning is going to be made statutory. At least that’s the ‘intention’.

On 6 July 2012 the Rt. Hon. Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Education, launched a public consultation on the Government’s proposal to make languages a compulsory subject at Key Stage 2 in maintained schools from September 2014. The consultation closed on 28 September 2012.

The vast majority of respondents agreed with the Government’s intention to introduce foreign languages at Key Stage 2. That consultation provided the Government with an opportunity to reflect on and reconsider its initial views in relation to specifying the choice of language at Key Stage 2.

Having carefully considered the responses to the consultation, as well as a range of relevant factors, the Government has confirmed its intention to make the study of a foreign language compulsory at Key Stage 2 and now seeks views on:

• The draft of the Order necessary to make foreign languages a statutory subject at Key Stage 2 from September 2014.
• A new proposal that requires primary schools teach one or more of French, German, Italian, Mandarin, Spanish or a classical language (Latin or Ancient Greek) to pupils at Key Stage 2. Schools would, of course, be free to teach other languages in addition if they wish to do so.

You can access the REPORT and the DOCUMENT as well as a SUMMARY of the consultation.

The report on the initial consultation makes encouraging reading with a high level of support for languages at KS2, and the responses obviously had the desired effect (as far as i’m concerned anyway!)

It seems that rather than dictating that schools focus on one language solely, the proposal allows for learners to experience more than one language (including languages not on the list of 7 as long as they do one of those too). That’s good, as is that fact that 1/5 of people mentioned the KS2 Framework as important – I still believe that it’s key to the success of PLL as it has a broad view of language learning as being far more than “learning a load of words”. There is still concern over KS2/KS3 transition – a thorny issue that we’ve got to get right! – and also concern over the damage that the ‘hiatus’ of the last few years may have done with loss of funding, loss of expert support and loss of impetus.

I’d encourage anyone with an interest in Primary Language Learning to respond to the two questions posed –

1. Do you have any comments on the draft Order attached at Annex 1? (i.e. that language learning should be made statutory at KS2)

2. Do you agree with the Government’s proposal to require primary schools to teach one or more of French, German, Italian, Mandarin, Spanish or a classical language (Latin or Ancient Greek) at Key Stage 2?  Please explain the reasons for your answer.

You can download the consultation response form from the website, or fill it on online.

You have until 16th December to respond. However, why not do it NOW so you don’t forget? ;o)

In celebration of the new features of Storybird, I’ve been back to the site and had another play around and written a new book!

I’ve written about Storybird before here, here and here. Oh, and here and here too!

New things on Storybird that I think are particularly useful from an educational point of view –

1. No more Flash so you can use and view the Storybirds on any smartphone or devices including iOS such as iPads and iPod Touch devices. This also means that you can write Storybirds in scripts that do not use Latin characters such as Greek, Mandarin and Arabic.

2. More categories, making it easier to search for a story written by someone else, and also filter for age appropriate stories.

3. New ‘create’ page and new covers.

HOWEVER,  you may now be able to write in other scripts but you still can’t publish them to the PUBLIC gallery, nor can you publish in any language other than English. The Community Guidelines state

‘While we celebrate all cultures and languages, we can not at this time moderate and thus approve Storybirds for the public library that are written in languages other than English. We will be expanding internationally soon, and we will add specific language support as we do. In the meantime, the stories can still be published in your private library and shared with your family and friends.’

Whilst I know that this is a small company and moderation in lots of languages costs money, the MFL Twitterati did offer to help, and I’m sure that offer still stands?! And I wonder what their plans are – the site is now 3 years old. I will tweet and ask. Watch this space!

UPDATE

Here is the Twitter conversation with Storybird! (NB read from bottom up!)

So it seems we have a while yet before we can freely share our Storybirds on the site.

HOWEVER, to get around this, you can embed them into a blog (as I have here), or share the URL of your Storybird (I shared with my own email address then opened the book and copied the URL)

And there is also the wonderful MFL Storybird wiki. Whilst the URL way will still work, the fact that you are now given an embed code means that the books can now be embedded on the page and read there and then rather than having to be transferred to Storybird.com to read!

A shame that you have to “know the right people” to be able to access all these stories in other languages but better than nothing!

La vida sana. on Storybird

I’ve received notification of what looks to be a very interesting event to be held at Coventry University London Campus on 24th October. Text messaging and Language Development.

I quote from the email I received –

Researchers from Coventry University, led by Professor Clare Wood, will present the results of their ongoing research into the effects of text messaging on children’s written language development.

In particular they will report on their most recent longitudinal project which has examined the relationships between texting, grammatical understanding and spelling ability in children and young adults.

The event will give delegates the opportunity to discuss and benefit from hearing the implications of these findings for their own areas of interest and activity as well as others and reflect on the broader implications of the work for children’s development.

All interested parties are encouraged and welcome to attend this free event. Refreshments and lunch will be provided.

Although you have to register before you receive further details on the Coventry University events page, they have kindly sent me the agenda so I can share it with you. It’s a half day event followed by lunch and an informal discussion with the presenters! And if you go to the Nuffield Foundation site , there is an outline of the research.

Whilst I can’t go, my interest is now piqued and I’ll be reading the research with interest!

Happy European Day of Languages.

Here’s an idea of what you might do if you hadn’t planned anything and want to do something!

This map was published on the Oxford Dictionaries blog last week for World Gratitude Day and features over 20 ways to say thank you from around the world.

Why not try out a few different ways to be grateful today.

And if that’s not enough,this site has more words, and even tells you if it’s formal or informal!

And here’s a video to help too!

httpv://youtu.be/xP_A_9A4NUw

I’ve just received an email about an exciting new venture from Lingua@Hillcrest.  Based at Hillcrest School and Sixth Form centre in Birmingham, Lingua@Hillcrest is already known for its virtual visits to France, Spain and Germany including passport control, currency exchange, shopping and refreshment experience as well as language games.

Now they are offering …

Murder Mystery? 

 in French, German and Spanish

Why not challenge your students to solve the crime at

lingua@hillcrest

Birmingham

Using their language skills students take on a role in a team of detectives in order to solve the crime.

Investigations include

• examining the scene of crime
• forensics   
• scrutinising news bulletins, recorded interviews & CCTV
• analysing suspects’ bank and telephone records
• cross-examining suspects

Recommended for year 9 – 11

Available every Monday

Bookings before 31 December 2012 – £150 per session or £250 for the full day.

After 1^st January 2013 – £180 per session or £330 for the full day.

For further details www.hillcrest.bham.sch.uk/lingua

Contact 0121 464 3172  or email lingua@hillcrest.bham.sch.uk

Sounds fun to me and a great way to learn and practice language that can become very ‘borong’ after a while – personal identification, descriptions and so on!

Details of other activities at Lingua@Hillcrest are below.

Do you want to get your pupils ahead of the game in MFL?

fun, hands-on activities for KS3 in

French, German and Spanish

lingua@hillcrest,  Birmingham

Half day visits include:

• Passport control
  
• Exchanging currency at the bank
• A carousel of interactive language activities
• Simulated shopping in our international shopping village
• Collecting stamps for every transaction completed
• Buying refreshments and souvenirs at the shops

 Available every Monday

Bookings before 31 December 2012 – £150 per session or £250 for the full day.

After 1^st January 2013 – £180 per session or £330 for the full day.

Discover how your pupils could benefit from a visit at

www.hillcrest.bham.sch.uk/lingua

To book a visit call us on 0121 464 3172 and ask for lingua bookings

or email us at lingua@hillcrest.bham.sch.uk 

I had a bit of time today as my youngest was ill so decided to make some simple resources to go with my previous post about Nubeluz and their song Quiero ser…

I used Tools for educators, a great online worksheet/puzzle/resource maker about which I have previously written.

So, here you have –

vocabulary sheet    jobs vocabulary

a labelling worksheet   job labelling

a set of bingo cards (10 different cards in total)  Jobs bingo

a boardgame 

A very versatile site which is really useful to a pretty average drawer like me! And resources such as the board game and the bongo cards can be used for multiple languages so could be used in literacy as well as Spanosh/French/German etc.

My one issue is that there is a distinct lack of women in the library of job images!

You can make wordsearches which are fun but not my favourite activity in the classroom as well as crosswords and mazes. ANd there’s a new ‘guest tool’ which I will be investigating called Comic Strip Maker that allows you to make dialogues between the Anime style people on the pages.

Thanks to Pat Sweeney on the Yahoo MFL Resources group for pointing out this group.

If you like Hi5, and you love a bit of 90s “cheese”, you’ll love Nubeluz.

As Pat writes –

“Many of Nubeluz’s songs seem to be innocent good fun and definitely have catchy tunes that make you want to dance and sing along.
However, some “carry a message “. For example “Papi, deja de fumar!”
( Daddy, give up smoking!) or “Cuidado ” ( Be careful!) which warns of being mislead by friends to get involved in things that are not right or good.”

She goes on to pose a question –

“I would be very interested to know what people think of the songs and whether they would deem them suitable for using as teaching aids..and if so..with which groups..how?”

So…here are some ideas for how to use  Yo quiero ser

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm1ZqJel8-c

I think this would fit well with the topics People who help us or Jobs people do that are part of EYFS and KS1. I think that the chorus is the most useful part.

Activities you might do:

• ask learners to identify the jobs they hear in the chorus. They are repeated at the very end so there are 2 chances to catch them. You might provide a tick sheet with pictures for younger learners or the names in Spanish for older ones.
• make a pelmanism game with job images and names in Spanish for matching first then for playing.
• cut the lyrics (chorus) into strips. Ask learners firstly to see if they can match the jobs with the description of what they do. This uses their LLS as they will look for cognates, make connections between the word for the job and words in the description and so on. Then they can check their answers by listening and watching again.
• I might use Amara (was UniversalSubtitles) http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/ to put Spanish subtitles on the video too. (See this example and also this post about how and why)

• I might use other video clip such as Los oficios which features a famous song, or this version with the words.
• This clip Cuando sea grande would be a good step onto using the future tense. Seré dentista/artista etc. I also like the final lines – “Cuando sea grande, haré mil cosas/Porque estoy seguro que podré. Y mientras tanto llega la hora/Solamente niño quiero ser”
• There is a whole unit of work on Udicom on Los oficios. These resources are intended for ‘alumnos de compensatoria’ or learners needing extra help in Spain so many are very simple exercises on copywriting, phonics, matching and writing words and short phrases. I particularly like the phonics sections and the use of little rhymes too.
• This interactive site is useful for learning the names of jobs by hovering over the people, and clicking to see/hear a short sentence about what they do. Further forward (click on arrow bottom right) it talks about “profesiones” – professions as opposed to “oficios” – jobs.
• Here’s a free poster that you can download – I believe you need to purchase the other posters tagged Los oficios but you can look at them for ideas!
• I also found this blog with an image and short descriptions for 6 jobs/professions.
• And this is a wonderful site with lots of ideas and materials for a wide age range. There are a number of stories at a variety of levels (primary and secondary) as well as comics and ‘information books’, all presented online. As this resource is aimed at social studies for Spanish learners, so you need to bear that in mind e.g. Look at the complexity of language rather than going by the age indicated. I looked at a few stories – Alejandro el canguro pintor (basic) is a lovely tale about a kangaroo that draws all the time, and Maria auxiliar de ayuda a domicilio is more complex and a home help who makes Grandma’s life better. There’s a teachers guide that includes ideas and some activity sheets. Well worth an explore if you’re looking to work cross curricularly at primary or secondary level!

So, Pat. Does that answer your question? 🙂

I, amongst many many other people, used the extra day we have this year and blogged on Feb29th.net. Brainchild of @deputymitchell to get the world blogging in a simple and easy way, Feb29th.net has collected flags from 91 nations and been visited over 21,000 times. More importantly, thousands of people, young and old have added their post, however short, to the project. If you look at the tag cloud on the website, it’s great to see the size of the Under12 and 12-17 tags – the bigger the word, the more it appeared.

I read several posts and this one caught my eye. I hope “Harry Gardner” doesn’t mind me copying his blog post –  did ask him in the comments! Love that an under 12 has chosen to post so many reasons for language learning! I love number 6, and can tell you that you do need number 11 to learn a language (intensively especially!) as it doens’t just happen. Unfortunately.

My post is here.