Thursday, June 28, 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
16 Incredible iPad Apps for ESL Learners
English’s bizarre turns of phrases and seemingly boundless tendency toward exceptions to rules intimidates even native speakers, so one must hold sympathy for those learning it in a secondary or tertiary situation. Those with access to an iPad enjoy some seriously cool lesson supplements harnessing digital age technology in the service of their educations. Whether students only have a few minutes to scan a dictionary listing or an hour or so to sit and intently study mouth formations and pronunciations, an application exists to meet the needs of all ages and skill levels. Download the following when hoping to receive a relatively comprehensive look at one of the world’s most widely-spoken tongues.
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Intro to Letters, by Montessoreum
Appropriate for ESL children, this application runs through all the letters of the English alphabet, introducing them to the structure and pronunciation through tracing, audio, digital flashcards, and phonogram puzzles.
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Sounds Right, by British Council
It’s a simple chart with great big resonance; when learning British English, refer to Sounds Right for proper pronunciation of vowels and diphthongs, with the former listed by mouth shape.
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Sentence Builder for iPad, by Mobile Education Tools
The winner of IEAR’s 2010 Language App of the Year distinction targets elementary school students and challenges them to construct simple, grammatically correct sentences around provided pictures and videos.
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Speech Tutor, by Synapse Apps
iPad-enabled ESL adults who need to work on their (American) accent or require a refresher in pronouncing specific letters and phonemes might want to consider this incredibly detailed app, which features animations of the sides and fronts of mouths illustrating proper tongue and lip formations.
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iDaily Pro HD, by Frontier One
Frontier One’s innovative app turns English language news into valuable lessons in grammar and sentence structure with its super amazing custom dictionary allowing users to save words and phrases that need clarifying.
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Hello-Hello English, by Hello-Hello
This joint effort between developers Hello-Hello and The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages helps users with their conversational English, providing lessons culled from real-life scenarios, flash cards, note-taking exercises, and more. The app itself is free, but they charge $1.99 per course, or $14.99 for all 30.
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Basic Pronunciation: Clear Speech from the Start, by Cambridge University Press
ESL students between the beginner and intermediate level use Basic Pronunciation’s series of fun games as supplements to more formalized lessons in proper speaking.
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WordBook XL – English Dictionary & Thesaurus for iPad, by TranCreative Software
One of the most detailed dictionaries and thesauri available through the iTunes store partners all of its entries with audio, etymologies, synonyms and antonyms, anagrams, and the ability to bookmark for future reference.
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Learn English with busuu.com!, by Busuu Online S.L.
Use this application to build vocabulary regarding typical situations, listen to audio and watch video of native speakers, take tests, and other important ESL lessons; Busuu made sure to include materials suitable for all fluency levels.
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Adventures for Kids, by WireCloud
Suitable for children just picking up English as a primary or secondary language, these gentle story-based games nurture vocabulary skills through repetition.
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Word Wit, by Ballpoint
Adult ESL students who sometimes stumble over homophones, connotation/denotation, idioms, and other problematic English structures will appreciate how effectively Word Wit seeks to demystify them.
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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, by Enfour
Another excellent dictionary for English language learners, which emphasizes how native speakers actually utilize the 23,000 available words and phrases.
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Phonetics Focus, by Cambridge English Online
In 2011, the English-Speaking Union awarded Phonetics Focus with its President’s Award, making it one of the iPad’s most popular ESL applications. It offers a phonetic typewriter, games, flash cards, audio recording and playback, and other necessities for mastering the language.
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Sounds: The Pronunciation App
The charts included here cover both British and American English, and users tap different sounds to hear them as well as examples in a common vocabulary word.
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English is Easy – 1 HD, by Frank Meyer EDV
Suitable for all ages, the English is Easy app involves a series of 115 high-definition flash cards with some of the most popular vocabulary words — specifically nouns and adjectives — for the greenest of horns.
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Berlitz My English Coach for iPad – Classic Version, by Berlitz Publishing
Berlitz presents an encouraging animated English coach who walks ESL students young and old through vocabulary, sentence structure, phrases and idioms, questions and answers, practice conversations, history and geography lessons, and a handy dandy little dictionary all meant to beef up their skill sets.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
A Collaboration That Began With a Disastrous Lunch
In the annals of academic rivalries, perhaps none is fiercer than the crosstown one between Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
So getting both institutions to contribute their names, faculty, staff and money — big money —to a joint research institute was akin to negotiating a truce between Montagues and Capulets.
Eric Lander, the institute’s founder, had laid the groundwork for a joint venture: For his genomics center at the Whitehead Institute at M.I.T., he had tapped the expertise of doctors and scientists at Harvard’s medical school and its affiliated hospitals.
“Eric felt, rightly, that while M.I.T. had wonderful computer science, engineering, physics, research, unless you formally involved Harvard and the hospitals and the medical science, you would get into trouble,” said Dr. David Baltimore, the Nobel Prize biologist who introduced Dr. Lander to the billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad.
Mr. Broad and his wife, Edythe, agreed to be the keystone supporters of the new institute. But first the two giants at either end of Massachusetts Avenue had to be convinced.
The first formal meeting to discuss it took place over lunch at the Harvard Faculty Club. One of the few things that everyone who attended can agree on is that it was pretty much a disaster.
Dr. Steven E. Hyman, then the Harvard provost, recalls that the institutions’ presidents — Lawrence H. Summers of Harvard and Charles M. Vest of M.I.T. — approached it from different angles: Dr. Vest saw it as a chance to build relationships, while Dr. Summers “was very transactional and impatient, like he always is.”
Dr. Summers does not dispute that. “There had been a certain amount of keeping things going on happy talk,” he said in an interview, “and I thought it better to surface some problems that were going to come up.”
Dr. Vest had to contend with the reluctance of his own trustees to share the Whitehead’s prestige and resources with Harvard. “They kept saying, ‘Why do you want to let the camel’s nose under the tent?’ ” he recalled.”
But he realized that to achieve Dr. Lander’s vision, M.I.T. needed Harvard’s medical resources. So after the dreadful lunch, Dr. Vest called Dr. Summers. “There is a kind of warm and altruistic side of Larry,” he said, adding that finally “we both decided it was just the right thing to do.”
The two presidents left it to their provosts to hammer out the deal over a long series of breakfasts and dinners, many with “lawyers, guns and money” — and far worse than the lunch at the faculty club, said Dr. Hyman, now himself a visiting scholar at Broad.
M.I.T. has an orderly, centralized decision-making process; Harvard’s is highly decentralized. Harvard’s hospitals — Massachusetts General, Dana-Farber, and Brigham and Women’s — were worried that the new institute would cannibalize their best investigators. Decisions had to be made about issues like intellectual property and how grant money would be assigned to the various partners. “It was a messy process involving big personalities and different cultures, ripe for misunderstanding,” Dr. Hyman said. Still, as Dr. Summers recalled, “it was a no-brainer that Harvard had to be part of it.” He added, “I doubt there is anything more important that Harvard has done in the last quarter century.”
Today, the Broad Institute is a stand-alone entity that is still a joint venture of Harvard and M.I.T. Mr. and Mrs. Broad have pledged a total of $600 million to support it. For their part, said Mr. Broad, who has built two major businesses — KB Homes and the insurance company SunAmerica, now owned by A.I.G. — “my wife and I believe the most important thing we will have done in our lifetime is to be involved with the creating of the Broad Institute.”
NYT