Amber Smith ESL 509

     This week's Google alert came up with a fun article about learning a language. In Jennifer Still's article "I've taught myself 5 languages for fun — here are 6 tips for getting a language to stick" she explains how she has taught herself French, German, Italian, Korean, and even Russian. She then goes onto explain what tools or techniques she uses to help her learn or keep what she has learned in her head. Here are her tips and tricks: I listen to music and watch TV and movies in the language I'm trying to learn. When I have a moderate amount of vocabulary under my belt, I read books in the language I'm learning. I keep a [Language I'm learning]-to-English dictionary handy for regular reference. I make it a point to learn idiomatic expressions. I make flashcards. I do lessons on language learning apps like Babbel and Duolingo.       The advice that really stuck out to me was to listen to music and watch TV and movies in the language y

I was a bit nervous trying to find an article about technology and language from my Google alerts this week, but eventually, this one popped up providing a really interesting topic to share. In this weeks alert, I discovered that English is a scientific language and not only that but it is the most common and preferred scientific language! So what does that mean? Well, anyone in any country that is studying things like AI needs to know English so that they can communicate across borders with others.  The article goes on to state how this gives any native English speaking countries an advantage when it comes to these scientific studies because other countries not only have to concentrate on what they are studying but also learn or use English to communicate. It was also really interesting that they stated there is a correlation between a country's English proficiency and scientific innovation.  Before reading this article I didn't even know that there were scientific lan