VOA Learning English Youtube channel

A previous post, Voice of America (VOA) special English, tells about a special English radio broadcast. This is intended for those who learn English as a foreign language and it's an excellent tool to listen real English.

Moreover, VOA Learning English has got a video channel in Youtube. The channel is plenty of videos. Basically, they are news spoken in slow English with a box that displays the script of the speech.

The videos are classified into different lists: Technology Report, Economics Report, General Interest, Health Report, Education Report and Agriculture Report.

VOA Learning English channel

A news and information service used by English learners and teachers worldwide. Reports are written in VOA Special English, which is read one-third slower than regular English. VOA Special English programs are broadcast online, on radio and on TV.

New York City Celebrates Its 400th Anniversary



Links

• VOA Learning English Youtube channel
• VOA Learning English webpage
• VOA Learning English in Facebook
• VOA Learning English in Twitter

Other recommended links

• Babelan (language exchanges, classes & translators): www.babelan.net

Learning foreign languages: listening skills

Just reading some tweets you can find some interesting language related articles. Here, there are some language posts I found in Twitter. They have some helpful tips about listening skills:

• Why Listening is SO Important – Even If You Don’t Understand a Word!
• Music and TV for Homework: Learn Languages for Free

Other recommended links

• Babelan (language exchanges, classes & translators): http://www.babelan.net

Beginning Russian through film

Beginning Russian through film is intended for students of Russian. It's got a collection of videos, with its scripts, to improve your Russian. There are chapters of Eralash (a TV humor magazine for children from de soviet era) and films such as Crime and Punishment, Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears, The Pyatnitskaya Street Tavern, Volgograd and so on.

About this experient (from the web)

"Short digitized clips from Russian films are the primary source of language and culture in this course. We collected close to 400 clips and placed them on this Web site along with many supporting materials. You can use a Windows or Macintosh computer to take advantage of the course. No registration is necessary (or, indeed, possible), and no credit is given, unless the student is registered for first-year Russian at Cornell. (...)". Read all the text.

• Beginning Russian through film: http://russian.dmll.cornell.edu/brtf/index.htm

Related posts

• Learn Russian with Alla's videos
• RusskogoYazyka, a collection of Russian videos
• Russian Language Podcast

Language exchange online: Russian

This is a list of people offering to teach or learn Russian. You can participate posting your message or answering someone else's posting.

• Global language exchange (messenger, e-mail, voice, chat, skype, webcam, msn): Russian

The top 100 language blogs

"The Top 100 Language Blogs is probably the largest language blog competition hosted annually by bab.la and Lexiophiles. It is aimed at finding the best blogs related to languages and awarding language-loving bloggers."

In Top 100 Language Blogs 2010, you can find an interesting list of 100 language blogs. It's a list of online resources to learn a foreign languages such as Korenan, English, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Thai, Dutch, etc.

• Top 100 Language Blogs: http://en.bab.la/news/top-100-language-blogs-2010

Practicing and learning languages

In addition, you can find native speakers for a language exchange, a private class or a translator in Babelan.net: www.babelan.net

Do you speak English?

Humor about languages.

Top 5 ways to learn foreign languages for free online

This is a video (from Youtube) with some tips that could be useful.

Audio Lingua - mp3 in French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Portuguese

Audio Lingua is a great site to listen real native speakers and to improve listening skills of French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Portuguese.

You can search short audio files in the previous languages and listen them. All the recordings are uploaded by native speakers who talk about their interests, their countries or their lives.

In addition, you can contribute recording your own voice in your native language to help students of your language.

Audio-Lingua introduction (from the web page)

• What is Audio-Lingua? A collaborative bank of authentic audio resources, recorded by native speakers, for a freely pedagogical or personal use.
• Audio documents? Short, a maximum recording length of two minutes, on various subjects…
• Collaborative? It means that any person who feels interested may contribute sending personal audio documents by filling in the form.
• Authentic? For they are only made by native (English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish) speakers ! All accents can be useful.
• Aim? To train oral comprehension for anyone who would like to improve this language skill.

Audio Lingua: http://www.audio-lingua.eu

More links

• Babelan. Language exchanges, private lessons and translations

German language and Berlin in Babelan

Thanks to a user, Denis, Babelan has been translated into German. We appreciate it and would like to thank him for his contribution.

Moreover, we also added a new city in the list of cities and countries that you can find in Babelan: Berlin.

Visit here Babelan Berlin in German.

Babelan is the languages site to find native people for a language exchange. It also allows to search and offer language classes and translations services. All just a click away. No sign ups, no fees.

You can contribute and help us translating Babelan into any language. Further info >>

French film guide for English speakers

This web page is intended for students of French as a foreign language. Obviously, the user should have an upper-intermediate or advanced level.

French Film Guide for English Speakers has got a list of French films with comments about them. In addition, there is a "cheat-sheet" for every film which is a list of vocabulary, idioms and language notes useful when watching the film.

Some of the films that you can find in the site are The Story of Adele H, Nô, Le Placard, Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, Les amours d'Astrée et de Céladon, La face cachée de la lune, and so on.

• French Film Guide for English Speakers (http://www.ffguide.ca)

Moreover, you can find a language partner or a tutor and improve your French in Babelan (http://www.babelan.net).

Web pages to learn and practice Spanish

Here, there's a list of resources to learn Spanish online. Moreover, you can find native speakers, make new friends and practice Spanish in Babelan (language exchange).

Web pages to learn and practice Spanish

Aprender español - http://www.aprenderespanol.org

BBC - Languages - Spanish - http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/

Business Spanish - http://www.businessspanish.com

Espagnol pour débutants - http://www.golondrina.net

Learn Spanish - http://www.lingolex.com/spanish.htm

Learn Spanish online - http://www.frenchspanishonline.com/beginnerspanish/freespanish.html

OnlineFreeSpanish.com - http://www.onlinefreespanish.com

Spanish language and culture - http://www.colby.edu/~bknelson/SLC/index.php

Spanish pronto - http://www.spanishpronto.com/spanishpronto/

Spanish verb conjugation - http://www.verbix.com/languages/spanish.shtml

Spanish verb tense notebook - http://www.angelfire.com/amiga/detodoelmundo/

Spanish-tutorials - http://www.spanish-tutorials.com

Test yourself - Free online Spanish exercises - http://www.cicclapaz.com/spanishonline.html

Practica Español - http://www.practicaespanol.com

Links

• Babelan, language exchanges and lessons

Learning Korean online - web pages

A list of web pages to learn Korean online:

An Introduction to Korean - http://www.langintro.com/kintro

Mireene - http://coreano.mireene.com/

Let's learn Korean - KBS - http://world.kbs.co.kr/learn_korean2

Hangul Forest - http://hangulforest.com/index_e.htm

Korean123.com - http://www.korean123.com/

Learn Korean - http://learnkorean.elanguageschool.net/

Learn-Korean.net - http://www.learn-korean.net

Learnkorean.com - http://www.learnkorean.com

Life in Korea - http://www.lifeinkorea.com/Language/korean.cfm

Sogang Korean Program - http://korean.sogang.ac.kr

Practicing and learning Korean

You can also visit babelan.net. In Babelan, every user can find native speakers for a language exchange, a private class or a translator: www.babelan.net

Russian in Exercices

Usually, in this blog you find posts about other free and interesting language related web pages. However, this one is about a self-study book of Russian.

It's a grammar book titled Russian in Exercices. This book is an additional tool for your Russian classes or your self-study. Although, it's not a book to be used alone.

It is divided into different sections. The first one is an introduction to basic language topics (gender, noums, pronoums...).

The following section is focus in cases (accusative, nominative...), verbs and complex sentences.

At the beginning of each key point there's a short explanation of the grammar point, although, it is not comprehensive. Probably, this is a weak point of the book. On the other hand, the excercises cover all the most useful examples of each grammar point and this is why this book is so recommendable. The last pages of the book contains all the answers for every excercise.

Excerpt from the preface

Russian in Exercices is intended for beginners. It contains exercises designed to consolidate and activise basic Russian grammar and vocabulary. Russian in Exercices falls into two parts: 1. An Introductory Lexical and Grammatical Course, and 2. The Main Course.
(...)
Russian in Exercices is based on a limited number of commonest Russian words, a feature which makes it possible to use it to supplement any comprehensive Russian course.

Practicing and learning Russian

In addition, you can find native speakers for a language exchange, a private class or a translator in Babelan.net: www.babelan.net

Watch to Learn Chinese

Watch to Learn Chinese offers a collection of videos to help you to learn Chinese. They are arranged in three different categories: beginner, medium and advanced. There are over five hundred videos uploaded by 120 different users. Also, If you find a interesting video you can submit it.

About Watch to Learn Chinese... "This site was created by Philipp Lenssen and Yinxue in 2008, living in Germany, with YouTube videos by their respective creators. I hope the currently 564 videos from 120 creators can help you train your Chinese, along with additional material you may have or classes you may take."

• Watch to Learn Chinese - http://watchtolearnchinese.com

Easy Beginner Chinese Lesson: Shopping 1 "I don't want it!"



Practicing and learning Chinese

In addition, you can find native speakers for a language exchange, a private class or a translator in Babelan.net: www.babelan.net

Learn Russian with Alla's videos

Allatek's Channel has got several videos to learn Russian from scratch. In a pleasant way, Alla, an Ukranian language teacher, helps to improve Russian with her videos.

The lessons cover from the beginner (with the alphabet) to a high level (with vocabulary, idioms, useful topics -such as travel, work, family...-, etc).

Alla states in her channel "My name is Alla Shubina and I'm an online Russian Teacher and Tutor. I specialize in teaching international business clients, university and high school students, and those with romantic relationships. I'm now offering live, online one-on-one Russian Language lessons via Skype or MSN Messenger. After teaching and studying various world languages over the past ten years, I've found there is no substitute for live conversation and instruction with a native speaker. Live interaction provides immediate feedback and dramatically increases fluency."

• Enjoy learning Russian: http://www.youtube.com/allatek

Watch one of the videos: Asking Directions (straight ahead, left, and right)


Practicing and learning Russian

In addition, you can find native speakers for a language exchange, a private class or a translator in Babelan.net: www.babelan.net

Freechineseblog.com - Learn to speak Mandarin Chinese online free

Freechineseblog.com is a web page that offers Chinese video lessons. It was built by David, in Taiwan, and the videos are presented by himself. There are videos with basic topics, grammar, greetings, introductions and formalities as well as fun vocabulary.

In addition, there's a list called Learn Mandarin Resources with interesting web pages.

Video presentation about Mandarin from the website



"Hi! My name is David! Here you can learn Mandarin Chinese online by watching over 30 original videos that I’ve made. Chinese is really not as hard as you might imagine at first. With some studying and determination you too can learn to speak fluently one day! This site will give you a very good start and if you wish to pursue a more in depth linguistic training please purchase any of the highly recommended Chinese courses offered for sale on this site. I hope this website gives you some inspiration to pursue learning the language and I wish you good luck!"

Freechineseblog.com: http://freechineseblog.com

Practicing and learning Chinese

In addition, you can find native speakers for a language exchange, a private class or a translator in Babelan.net: www.babelan.net

How to Learn French Online. Web pages

You can find in this post a list of resourses online -webpages- to learn and practice French. If you know more you can post a comment about it.

Apprendre.tv - http://www.tv5.org/TV5Site/enseigner-apprendre-francais/accueil_apprendre.php

Aula Fácil - http://www.aulafacil.com/CursoFrances/CursoFrances.htm

Bonjour de France - http://www.bonjourdefrance.com

Moddou - http://www.estudiodefrances.com

Fannygrosse-FLE - http://fannygrosse-fle.wikispaces.com/

Cours de langues - Radio Canada (for children) - http://www.radio-canada.ca/jeunesse/courslangues/

French tutorial - http://www.frenchtutorial.com/index.es.php

Lexique FLE - http://lexiquefle.free.fr

Polar FLE - apprendre le français - http://www.polarfle.com

RFI - Langue française - apprendre - http://www.rfi.fr/lfes/statiques/accueil.asp

Practicing and learning French

In addition, you can find native speakers for a language exchange, a private class or a translator in Babelan.net: www.babelan.net

Teaching English: How Do You Teach English to Adults?

Teach English to adults by choosing topics, vocabulary and expressions that are relative to situations in their normal daily life. Practice speaking, perform common activities and learn a foreign language with tips from a teacher in this free video on education.

Expert: Michael Walter Mitchell
Bio: Michael Walter Mitchell has a masters degree in education from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been teaching English and history at various secondary schools.
Filmmaker: Paul Volniansky

Learning and teaching Languages

In Babelan.net, every user can find native speakers for a language exchange, a private class or a translator: www.babelan.net

Sydney in Babelan

Babelan has added a new city to offer and find languages exchanges, classes and translations services. The new city is Sydney. Currently, the list of cities in Babelan is as follows: Sydney, Toronto, Vancouver, Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Paris, Mexico DF, London, New York & Chicago.

• Visit Babelan Sydney

Learning Japanese - web pages

Everyone can find several web pages to learn Japanese online. Probably, it is difficult to say which is the best, however, you can use some of them together in order to learn and practice the language.

Here, there's a list. Some web pages are in English and others in Spanish.

A Japanese guide to Japanese grammar - http://www.guidetojapanese.org

Aprende japonés - http://www.aprendejapones.com

Bilingoz - http://www.bilingoz.com

Charles Kelly's online Japanese language study materials - http://www.manythings.org/japanese/

Japanese grammar guide - http://www.guidetojapanese.org

Habla japonés - http://www.hablajapones.org/

Japanese lessons - NHK - http://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/

Japanese learning - http://www.japaneselearning.com/

Japanese listening comprehension exercises - http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/japanese/listen/

Japonés por libre - http://www.japonesporlibre.com/

Japoneando - http://japoneando.com/

Learn Japanese in 20 weeks - http://www.japanesein20weeks.com/

Minna - http://opal.ecis.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~jems/hosokyoku/bangumi.html

Reading tutor - http://language.tiu.ac.jp/index_e.html

Survival Japanese - http://www.ajalt.org/sj/howto.html

Practicing Japanese

In Babelan.net, every user can find native speakers for a language exchange, a private class or a translator: www.babelan.net

Lyrics Training - Improving your foreign languages skills

"Lyrics Training is an easy and fun method to learn and improve your foreign languages skills like English through the music and lyrics of the songs."

It offers music videos in different languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Dutch). Their lyrics are displayed under the image with gaps to be filled in. This way the user can improve their listening skills. All the videos are categorized by levels (easy, medium and hard).


Lyrics Training: http://www.lyricstraining.com

Other recommended links

• Babelan (language exchanges, classes & translators): http://www.babelan.net

In order to learn a language well, we should also learn about the country as well as the cultures and lifesty?

This is an interesting question published in Yahoo! Answers. Read the answers or leave yours.

In order to learn a language well, we should also learn about the country as well as the cultures and lifesty?

Meet people from around the world (language exchange)

Thousands of language students search native speakers to practice foreign languages (penpals). New technologies (skype, messenger, e-mail, voice, chat, webcam, msn,...) allow students to make new friends and talk in different languages.

In babelan, the languages site, users can find native people from around the world and practice languages, discover new cultures and have fun.

• Global language exchange

Discussion: Internet, tools to learn foreign languages

The chances to learn and practice a foreign language thanks to internet has increased.

Although, How do you use internet to learn a foreign language? Which tools do you use?

Leave your comments and experiences. Share your ideas as they can be useful for everyone.

Babelapoint, Russian grammatical dictionary

Basically, babelapoint is a reference tool for students of Russian as a foreign language.

The user will find all the noums and adjetives declination forms (Nominative, Prepositional, Accusative, Genitive, Dative and Instrumental) as well as the verbs conjugations.

The best way to see what it can be found is an example.

If you look a noum, e.g. up house (дом), you will be able to find:

• A main view with all the declination forms
• An advanced view for новый & дом declination forms (adjective-noun view) including prepositions in: genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental & prepositional

If you look up a verb, e.g. to buy (покупать), you'll be able to find:

• All the forms for the verb. (It tells that покупать is imperfetive. Although, it doesn't state that the perfective form is купить. This a weak point in the verbs area.)

Finally, you can also look up a preposition with an adjective and noum and get the appropriate delination forms.

Related links

• Multitran dictionary
• English Russian online dictionary

Other links

• Babelan, the languages site

Learn Croatian

"Welcome to Learn-Croatian.com, site designed for free grasping of the Croatian language. Whether you're coming here for holidays or business, you'll find enough information on this site to communicate with the locals and get what you want - providing you don't get into deep conversations :) Everything on this site is free to use and is compensated by ads to pay for the hosting and work put into the site."

This is not a site to learn the whole language but to begin learning Croatian. Hence, this is a web page for beginners. The user can reach a level enough to visit Croatia and get by in shops, retaurants, means of transport and so on.

You'll find a set of lessons with basic grammar and a complete and useful phrasebook. In addition there are recordings that will help you pronouncing Croatian.

On the other hand, they also offer paid translation services, although there's a basic and free service.

Learn Croatian: http://www.learn-croatian.com

More links

• Babelan. Language exchanges, private lessons and translations

Reasons to learn a new language

A bit of humor

A New Twist in Cat and Mouse Relations

Two mice sat in their hole watching the Cat lurk outside. "I know how to make the Cat go away," said the first mouse.

"How?" the second mouse asked in surprise.

"Watch! Bow, wow!!!" barked the first mouse. Peering through their hole in the wall, they saw the cat running away in fear.

"Ah, see the benefit of knowing another language!"

Russificate

It is not difficult to find web pages to start learning any foreign language. The trouble is to find sites for upper beginners or intermediate students.

Russificate is a blog (all in Russian) for students of Russian who have already studied for a while and are no beginners.

This blog is built by a Russian teacher, Yulia, from Moscow. And she states: "This blog is dedicated to Russian as a foreign language and, at the same time, to some elements of the Russian culture. I´ll try to do my best so that you´re not get bored. The exercises will concern both vocabulary and grammar and even podcasts! Learn Russian with pleasure!"

You can practise several skills with Russificate, reading, listening, reading and writing. And there is diverse stuff you can find in the blog. Here's some examples:

• Learning book reviews: Полезные сайты. Какие учебники русского языка купить?
• Writing & reading exercises with answers: Пишите письма. Ответ на приглашение. Уровень 1.
  
• Listening skills: Занимательные истории
  
• Grammar points: Грамматика: Несовершенный и Совершенный вид. Уровень 2.
  
• Lexicon: Туризм
  
• Russian Culture: Коммуникация: поздравить с Новым Годом и Рождеством
  

In addition, there are videos, links to other Russian resources, slang examples and so on.

• Russificate: http://russificate.blogspot.com

Other interesting sites

• Russian for everyone
• Babelan, the languages site

RFI - Radio France Internationale - Langue française - apprendre

"RFI doesn’t just broadcast in French, we teach and promote it too. Some listeners want to be able to converse in a language they don’t have the opportunity to practice every day. Others need to master French for work and require help getting more familiar with it. Many simply like French and French values. RFI has a team of specialist teaching and radio professionals to help."

This is a really comprehensive site to learn French. The learner can find several resources in order to improve their French skills: news, podcasts, activities, multimedia, radio shows, excercises, bulletins, teaching materials (for teachers) and so on.

The web page is so huge, hence, the best option is to browse and find the stuff you need for your level. In any case, you can conctact its team of French teaching and learning specialists (langue.francaise@rfi.fr).

In addition, you can find a list of learning centres for French as a Second Language.

• RFI - Langue française - apprendre

More links

• Apprendre.tv
• Bonjour de France
• Babelan