The Five Minute Linguist is a series of short programs produced back in 2005 and released as podcasts by the College of Charleston and the Museum of Language to celebrate “The Year of Languages” in America, and if you haven’t checked it out yet, then I highly recommend it.

Here is a description from iTunes:

“The Linguist” is not a single person, but a cross-section of the language profession that has come together to produce this show. Talkin’ About Talk is a collective effort by language experts from all parts of the country.

Some topics discussed in the podcasts are “How Many Languages Are There?”, “What causes foreign accents?”, “Why do linguists love Icelandic?”, “Do you have to go abroad to learn a language?”, and “Can you make a living loving languages?”.

There are over 50 five-minute episodes available and you can find them on iTunes here or listen to them individually online and find out more information on the program here.

I’m still here! It’s the week in between my two German exams, so I’m a bit all over the place. I had the written part last Sunday at 9:00am and had to get up at 5:50am for the bus! The oral part is this Saturday morning at 9:25am, so it will be a similar waking-up-before-six-on-a-saturday-and-then-write-an-important-exam story! I’m not too worried about it though, I need to describe a picture and talk about my hometime. Fingers crossed all will go well! On top of that, I’ve been having a bit of writer’s block lately, hopefully that will fix itself soon enough!

As a little treat, here is a fun little language trivia game called “The city of Languages” brought to you by the Goethe Institute. I tweeted about it awhile ago but felt like looking it up and playing it again, hehe. Enjoy!

I’ll be in Hungary for the next few days with my boyfriend visiting his grandparents, I’ll be back on the 30th! Maybe I can gather some Hungarian resources while I’m over there!

Alright so I just got the idea that every Thursday (since I got the idea today and today happens to be Thursday!) I will write a post on cool little language-related things that I have discovered or am using this week. It will be called “Tidbit Thursday”. The things I post will either be pictures of actual things that I actually have in my possession, or internet resources I have stumbled upon during the week.

So here’s what I’ve got for you the first Tidbit Thursday:

It’s time for: Wheel of Irregular Spanish Verb Conjugation!
Die Hueber Unregelmäßige Verben Spanisch Sprachdrehscheibe

I found this neat little thing at Frick Buchhandlung on Kärntner Straße in Vienna today while I was passing time after my German class before my bus left. I was browsing around the language section and came across these little wheels! They are made up of three plastic circles with irregular Spanish verbs printed around the edge of the largest circle of both sides, the German translation of the infinitive verb directly under the Spanish one, and then through little cut-outs on the circle the conjugations are shown. It cost €3,90 and I think it was worth it. It will be handy to have nearby. They had a lot of other ones too, I may have to check back again one day!

Itty-bitty dictionary:  Österreichisch – Deutsch

Now this was an impulse buy at the checkout. I thought it was cute, but it will also be useful as there are a lot of words that are different in Austrian German. It’s super tiny too, so I can bring it around with me in my bag!

Grammar Girl helps you with your English grammar, and makes it fun!

Mignon Forgarty is Grammar Girl and I discovered her website and podcast through bab.la’s list of  Top 100 Language Blogs of 2009. I began following Grammar Girl on Twitter and noticed that she had a new book coming out so I decided to pick it up when I was at home in Canada. Well I accidently got the wrong book, but it doesn’t matter because it’s still good! Now that I am actually writing a blog, I figured I should be always trying to improve my writing. Also, I have my laptop set to German so the spellcheck is checking for German words, so I need to be extra careful about my writing, and it is likely that mistakes are slipping through! Grammar Girl makes complex grammar questions simple with short but informative podcasts. I have just begun reading this book but I look forward to reading it over the next week.

Grammar Girl on Twitter
Official Grammar Girl website

A light read for language lovers: Biting the Wax Tadpole: Confessions of a Language Fanatic

When I was visiting my parents I went with my mom to Chapters. I went off to the language section and ten minutes later I returned like a kid with her arms full of toys saying “Pleeease mom! Can I have them? Pleeease!” except replace toys with grammar and language books. :)
This is an extremely neat little book best described as a language scrapbook. It contains little anecdotes, illustrations, tidbits of information and much more on the world’s languages. You can find out more about this book and the author Elizabeth Little on her website.

That’s it for this Tidbit Thursday, I will continue next week!

When I was living in Madrid last year, I needed to find a way to make some extra money to afford my year off from University to learn Spanish, so I did a search on Craigslist for English teaching positions. I e-mailed a few language schools and to my surprise, got a call the next morning asking if I could start that same day! A few hours later it was me, some kids, a white board, and a marker and I was scared, but actually didn’t do too badly. This went pretty well for a few months until the school ended up closing and I didn’t get my last paycheck, but that’s another story…

My biggest problem when I was teaching English (other than you know, not getting paid…) was that I felt guilty teaching. Why? Because I had absolutely no experience. I felt like I was wasting the students’ time and the parents’ money because I hadn’t had any special preparation, or Master’s Degree in English or a TEFL or CELTA or even that much experience with kids! I felt like I was helping my students (aged 5-20) somewhat with their English but I was distracted by the feeling that I couldn’t effectively explain everything “properly” because I wasn’t an English grammar expert, and for that reason alone, I shouldn’t be teaching.

When I came back to Austria this Summer, I was speaking to my friend from England who has lived in Vienna for a long time and who had also taught English, and she told me that the very first class that she taught was at the University of Vienna in front of 70 students, and she also didn’t have any experience! She ended up teaching English for years! That definitely made me start thinking differently the whole “teaching English without experience” thing.

The other day I saw this video posted by Steve Kaufmann (blog) and it made me realize that it really isn’t so important to know English grammar inside and out, backwards and forwards in order to be a good language teacher. It is more important to be resourceful, to have empathy, and to motivate your students to learn the language.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n8QM7U4F8c&hl=de&fs=1&]

Here is a quote from the video on whether or not it is important for an English teacher to be deep into their grammar:

Why does that matter? I’m sure the average English teacher speaks English at least as well as the average native speaker and if the learner is able to speak as well as the average native speaker, I think the learner is probably going to be quite happy. So, why does it matter?

He also says that he would rather have a teacher who is an interesting, average person than someone who has four degrees in Linguistics and who would make a point to teach him a bunch of rules.

So I have decided to give English teaching another go. I currently live in a small-ish town outside of Vienna and since it has proven nearly impossible to find an apartment in Vienna I will be communting to Vienna everyday but returning here for the evenings, so I will be offering English tutoring in the evenings and weekends to students at the local schools.

A native speaker who speaks their own language quite well but doesn’t know any grammar rules, to me makes an excellent language teacher.

… and on that positive note, I am going to go work on my flyers that I will be posting around the local schools this week!

I think I have just decided to start really learning Hungarian. It’s about time!

I have been with my boyfriend for two and a half years now and we have spent a lot of time in Hungary because he is originally from there. His family lives here in Austria so I have also spent a lot of time here as well. After our first summer together here we went to Canada and I learned some German at University because it was the only one of the two languages offered. I’ve gotten pretty good in German during the past two and a half years (from thinking that “Gesundheit!” was just some weird sounding word that people said when somene sneezed and not realizing it was the German word for “health”, to being almost ready to study at the University of Vienna) but I still cannot count to ten in Hungarian.

My boyfriends parents only speak German and Hungarian, the rest of his family only speaks Hungarian. Why have I put it off for so long? I’m really not sure!

So as of now, I am officially adding it to my language-learning tasks! I’m going to go collect some internet resources.

I just found out yesterday by catching a glimpse of an article on the Deutsch Perfekt website that today is European Day of Languages, and it just happens to be on the day before my birthday, how nice!

The European Day of Languages has been celebrated since 2001. Here is a quote from the introduction on the website.

Being convinced that linguistic diversity is a tool for achieving greater intercultural understanding and a key element in the rich cultural heritage of our continent, the Council of Europe promotes plurilingualism in the whole of Europe.

When I first came to Europe I thought that it was so cool that you could drive through a border and be in a completely different place with a completely new language and different culture. Where I am in Austria right now is very close to the Hungarian border, and I love that you can drive across the “border” (no more passport control since over a year ago) and there is this completely new language that is nothing like German.

I’m glad that the Council of Europe has made the effort to designate a day for languages and that they recognize the role of languages in maintaining the diversity that makes Europe so cool.

Celebrate today in any way you can! Work a little hard on your own language learning (European language or other!), read a little about a new European language or culture, or spread the word about European Day of Languages in your own blog.

The website lists some ideas on how you can participate.

EVERYONE really can get involved in the European Day of Languages, even if it is just about inviting neighbours from different cultures for tea or decorating the house with the European Day of Languages posters and stickers. You may not become a polyglot in the space of a day but it is likely to widen your horizons and it will almost certainly be an enjoyable and fulfilling experience!

Well I’m not sure if I would decorate my house with European Day of Languages posters or stickers… ah who am I kidding, I totally would if I had them.

welcome!

I have moved over to wordpress. for pretty much no reason at all except for the fact that I have noticed a lot of my favourite blogs using it and also my boyfriend has used it with much success for his gaming blog, wearetheinternetz.com. I also like the basic layouts and until I add CSS or HTML to the list of languages I am learning, I will have to rely on the layouts provided on the website.

I have also changed the name of my blog from (“ichestudiofrancais”) to “ichestudiolangues”, since I found the first name put too much influence on the “français” part, and my french is actually unfortunately on the language learning back burner for now.

So welcome to ichestudiolangues, a blog about my language learning adventures here in Austria! This blog will feature all sorts of language related things. Learning tips, podcast reviews, and some of my personal experiences. Thanks for stopping by!