Items of Interest

Spring 2025 SDLC 105 Syllabus

Spring 2025 SDLC 105 Calendar of Activities, Assignments, and Deadlines

Spring 2025 SDLC 110, 111, 112, 113 General Syllabus

Weekly log for language partners

Global Studio Catalog of Learning Materials and Resources

 

Self-Directed Language Acquisition Program

Sept. 3- Recorded Presentation by Derek Miller, UR Bonner Center for Civic Engagement, Guidelines and Resources for Community-Based Language Learning

Sept. 3- Bonner Guidelines for Community-Based Language Learning, PPT.

 

Benny Lewis: TEDx Talk on Rapid Language Hacking

https://youtu.be/HZqUeWshwMs

 

ACTFL Inverted Pyramid Proficiency Scale

 

New Electronic Catalog of Global Studio Language-Learning Materials

Over the last few weeks, our fantastic team of Global Studio Fellows have been creating an electronic catalog of language learning materials on reserve in INTC 226. There are interesting resources for Korean, Turkish, Hindi, Hebrew, and Portuguese See the ongoing collection, here. Use the tag list to focus your search.

 

Vocaroo for sharing audio files with language partners

Vocaroo is a great free tool to share audio recording files with your language partners. Check it out! https://vocaroo.com/

 

Open-Source Repository of Grammar Reference Textbooks

In internet searches, I came across an open-source repository of grammar reference books pertaining to a wide variety of different languages. Feel free to peruse the collection, here

 

Lang-8 and HiNative Communities for Native Speaker Feedback

This is a great free resource to get free feedback from native speakers of your target language. On the site, you can receive commentary on submit writing samples, or address questions of grammar and usage to an active online community. You can access the site, here. **Note: Lang-8 stopped accepting new members, but you can still access similar networking resources for writing feedback on their new site, HiNative

 

WikiTongues

Library of recordings from endangered languages.

https://www.youtube.com/user/WikiTongues

https://wikitongues.org/

 

International News Resources

Check out this curated list on interesting foreign-language news resources!

 

World Atlas of Language Structures

http://wals.info/

 

Endangered Languages Project

http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/

 

Which languages are the hardest to learn?

Here's a chart! What is difficult about the language you're learning?

 

Try Mango Languages 

Just starting a language?  The University now provides Mango Languages, which offers beginning or 'survival' language lessons in many languages.  To try Mango, go the Boatwright Library web, click Research Databases > M, and look for Mango Languages.  Once you have created an account through the Library site, you can download the Mango Languages app and use it on your mobile device.

 

Infographic on word etymologies and historical trade routes

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapping-words-along-trade-routes/?fbclid=IwAR2IQRiSW3KqaFGi_kjkrSbkjXUri_PZI7tAMEB4iKH5W0DPrp_yQj1OzuE

 

 

Articulatory Phonetics Memes

https://goo.gl/bzVfCL

 

Preserving Regional German Dialects

This article from Deutsche Welle discusses what is lost when regional variants of a language are lost. It also discusses the difference between a language and a dialect and why 'dialects' are losing ground in Germany.

 

Radio Segment on North Koreans on South Korean TV

On Sunday, January 31, 2016, NPR had a radio feature on the appearance of North Koreans on South Korean reality TV.  You can listen to the segment here: http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/01/31/464798910/south-koreas-newest-tv-stars-are-north-korean-defectors .

 

An Interview with Linguist K. David Harrison on When Languages Die

 

 

Slate article:  Photos of Women Who Could Go to Prison for Singing for Men


A series of photographs and a very brief discussion of things women in Iran are forbidden to do, including singing for me and studying English literature.

 

The 'Halal Internet'


A Deutsche Welle article about the 'Halal Internet' coming to Iran has been posted as a discussion item in the Persian group.  Join the discussion!

 

The Free Dictionaries Project


Looking for a free dictionary?  Check out the Free Dictionaries Project!  Especially interesting are the picture dictionaries.

  

Alphabet Blocks for Hebrew, Korean, and Arabic

The Global Studio now has alphabet blocks for Hebrew, Korean, and Arabic.  (The Arabic may be useful for the Persian learners.)  There are also magnetic letters for Hebrew.

What can you do with alphabet blocks and magnetic letters?  Quiz yourself on the letters, put them together to form words, and learn the names of the animals pictured on one side of the blocks.  The Korean blocks seem to have a puzzle, too.  Want to try?  Ask at the Global Studio desk!

 

Visit the Conflict Kitchen, a take-out restaurant that serves food from countries with which the US is in conflict.

 

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Finding Books in Your Language


A number of people have asked about finding children's books, 'easy readers', and popular fiction in the SDLAP languages.  The Global Studio has children's books in Swahili and Turkish (thanks to Professor Grove), and I'm willing to buy more.  However, I prefer to buy books that are culturally authentic, i.e., not translated from English.

 

I have found the following online bookstores that seem to have a good selection.  Please send me (Prof. Scinicariello) a list of things you…

Read more…

What is Social Bookmarking? (That's Diigo)

Wikipedia: A Short Explanation

YouTube: Social Bookmarking in Plain English--This is about Delicious, but the theory is the same.

YouTube: Diigo V.3--This video has information about Diigo groups.

Latest Activity

Leo Barnes posted a status
Spring 2025 Cultural Post 4

In my South African History course, we've recently been learning about how apartheid affected South Africa's regional relationships. Throughout the 1980s, to win favor with the Reagan/Thatcher renewed anti-communist attitudes in the West, South Africa’s apartheid government marketed itself as a capitalist enclave within an increasingly communist Southern Africa. To win over anti-communist westerners, South African presidents took an aggressive stance against their…
yesterday
Jeremy Um posted a status
Discussion Post #9

Languages go extinct when the culture associated with the language dies. This includes whatever knowledge there was, mythology, ecological knowledge, etc. Anything that the language had previously contained would have to die or disappear. Despite there being over 7,000 languages being spoken worldwide, at least half may disappear by the end of the century. Losing a language can be detrimental as you aren’t just losing a language, you are also losing any knowledge or history…
yesterday
Joseph Jeon replied to Global Studio's discussion Due by 5pm on Sunday, March 30: Discussion Post #8 on the Ning
"I have started writing in Korean and I much prefer to handwrite when it comes to learning. It's much more tedious, but I've actually found that it's almost just as tedious and timeconsuming to search and find the correct symbol on the keyboard. In terms of learning, I can feel myself starting to be able to visualize certain words as I speak them. It seems that this is the key to being able to speak and write fluently. Being able to instantly visualize the structure of a word as I speak them…"
yesterday
Jeremy Um posted a status
SDLC 110 - Learning Journal #2

Recently, I have been working on the fluidity of my daily conversing abilities as well as being able to respond to simple questions or inquiries. My primary goal has been to refine and perhaps sound more eloquent and not hesitate as much during this process. In my previous learning journal, I mentioned that my task was mastering the number/calendar system in Korean. This time, it’s more so general and being comfortable with conversing in things that regard…
Tuesday
Logan Motyka posted a status
For this month's language journal, I focused again on my conversational Korean. We used many videos that allowed us to further our understanding of how different people speak Korean, not only just hearing Isaac and Jason from last semester. The videos include things from cooking videos, gaming videos, and even K-dramas. My favorite were the gaming videos, which I had subtitles on to understand the videos that I struggled to understand. I feel like watching the videos from other Korean speakers…
Monday
Lavi Ohana posted a status
Hebrew Learning Journal Entry #3

Over the past several weeks, I have had about eight lessons with Rabbi Sherry, and my Hebrew learning has become more interactive and analytical. We still go over long reading passages and practice basic conversation at the beginning and end of each lesson, but now we are focusing on me asking her questions, constructing sentences, and explaining them in Hebrew. This shift has been both challenging and rewarding, as it forces me to think more critically about…
Sunday
Lavi Ohana replied to Global Studio's discussion Due by 5pm on Sunday, March 30: Discussion Post #8 on the Ning
"Yes, I have started writing in my target language. I prefer to type. Yes, I have started to see patterns emerge in the structures between words, clauses, and sentences. Specifically my mentor and I spent our last lesson going over the roots of words and how certain words have core letters that remain in many types of words with similar meanings. In Hebrew, simple sentences provide a basis for communication by establishing basic subject-verb-object structures, while complex sentences allow for…"
Sunday
Ziqing Zhang replied to Global Studio's discussion Due by 5pm on Sunday, March 30: Discussion Post #8 on the Ning
"I have started some short writing in Korean. Personally, I prefer typing over writing by hand because it’s faster and easier to edit. I use a Korean keyboard to practice typing Hangul, which also helps me remember the layout of syllable blocks.
I’ve noticed some patterns in the sentence structure that is different from English. A sentence like “I eat noodles” follows a subject-verb-object structure in English, but in Korean the word order is subject-object-verb. So the same sentence in Korean…"
Sunday
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A network of participants in and friends of Richmond's Self-Directed Language Acquisition Program.

Diigo: Modern Hebrew

Diigo: Persian Learners

Diigo: Turkish Learners

Diigo: Asian Language Learners