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  • Why Should I Take French Classes?

    Why Should I Take French Classes?

    French might not be your favourite subject. I mean, it might be – and if it is, you should definitely take it. Keep learning and improving, discover new words, and build on what you already know. But it probably isn’t your favourite subject, or you wouldn’t be having a hard time deciding whether or not to take it!

    If you struggle with French, why should you continue to take it?

    It’s always better to start early. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve heard, as adults, say that they wish they’d paid more attention to French while they were in school. Some have tried to learn French later, but it’s always easier to build on what you’ve known for years than to start from scratch.

    Knowing French will help you to learn other languages. Even if you aren’t interested in knowing French, learning it anyway will make it much easier for you to learn languages in the same “family.” For example, you will have an easier time learning Italian, Spanish, or Romanian if you already know French.

    Your job choices will double – at least – if you speak French. No matter what you want to do when you’re older, you will have many more opportunities to do it if you speak French. Most jobs in Ontario actually require people to speak and understand both English and French.

    You’ll be able to watch and read some pretty cool stuff. If you like reading comic books, your library will double. You’ll be able to read things that French kids enjoy, like Astérix and Obélix. You can watch movies like Le Roi et L’Oiseau. That has the added bonus of being little brother or little sister-proof, so when you feel like a break, you can pop in a French DVD – they won’t understand! Voilà – instant alone time.

    Before you decide to stop taking French, think carefully about whether or not you might one day wish that you hadn’t. Make a pro/con list. Talk to your parents, or do some French research online. If you decide that you definitely don’t want to keep learning French, fine – but make sure that you don’t stop just because it’s difficult. It’s usually the harder things in life that end up being most worthwhile.

  • Career Profile: French Teacher

    Career Profile: French Teacher

    A French teacher’s task is to inspire students to enjoy the French language. Learning is made much easier if the learner is enthusiastic about it; thus, a French teacher must demonstrate the benefits of speaking and using French every day. It is certainly not an easy job, but with enough passion and patience it can be a very rewarding one.

    Education
    In Ontario, teachers must hold a four-year Bachelor of Arts degree from any recognized University. A primary/junior teacher (grades K-6) will have a degree in any discipline (although a variety of courses is recommended). An intermediate/senior teacher (grades 7-12) is required to have a certain number of courses in two “teachable” areas – for example, French and History. Then, a teacher must take a one-year Bachelor of Education degree.

    “Teacher’s College”
    The Bachelor of Education is a combination of education classes and student teacher training. An example schedule would be six months of courses and two months of student teaching. French teachers would also take courses specific to teaching French to the age group they have chosen.

    The French Classroom
    The first year of employment in any profession is often the most difficult, and teaching is certainly no exception. In teaching, there is a lot of autonomy – that is, the teacher gets to decide what happens in his or her classroom without supervision. For some teachers, this is very scary, while others love the freedom. Teaching French is unique in that it involves teaching many classes of students at different grade levels. A single French teacher may teach six different classes every day, either in his or her own classroom, or by traveling from classroom to classroom.

    Skills and Challenges
    A French teacher must be highly organized, particularly because the job requires so much flexibility. Teaching grade 2 French, then grade 4 French, then back to another class of grade 2 French requires quick adjustment and well-planned materials. The job also requires a great deal of confidence, as does any teaching position; however, the French teacher might teach in front of students as well as coworkers, if he or she is on a “rotary” schedule. Teaching French can also be challenging because many students see French as an unnecessary chore; it can be quite challenging to earn class interest and attention as a result. A solid background is also required, as students quickly become skeptical of a teacher whose French knowledge is limited.

    Rewards
    For people who cannot imagine working in an office, the classroom is a liberating environment. Teachers direct the action of classrooms, and can decide what the class is doing at any given time. The feeling of getting a student interested in French, or having already-interested students show enthusiasm in the classroom, is the reason many teachers go into education. It is an extremely challenging but rewarding occupation.

    One word of caution, however: teaching should never be chosen for the vacations or “shorter hours.” Despite what non-teachers might say, teaching is a profession that is every bit as demanding, if not more demanding, than it is rewarding.

  • “Esperanto” – The Beginning of a New Language

    “Esperanto” – The Beginning of a New Language

    Invented languages can be fun. Have you ever used a language like Pig Latin with your friends and watched as other people struggled to understand you? When you use these kinds of invented languages, your purpose is usually to keep other people, such as your parents, from understanding what you say. However, what if an invented language could actually help strangers from around the world to understand each other? That’s what a man named L. L. Zamenhof hoped when he invented the Esperanto language in the late nineteenth century.

    L. L. Zamenhof was born in the city of Bialystok, Russia (now Poland) in 1859. He later moved with his family to Warsaw, the capital city. When he was growing up he learned several languages, including Russian, Polish, and Latin. He became a doctor but dreamed of inventing a world language that would allow people of all countries to speak with each other. In 1872, he began to invent a language which he called Esperanto or Eo; the name “Esperanto” means “hope”. Zamenhof hoped that Esperanto would eventually overtake all other languages and gave it a third name, “La Lingvo Internacia” or “the international language.”

    In 1887, Dr. Zamenhof published a book outlining the grammar and vocabulary of his new invention. To make his new language easy to learn, L. L. Zamenhof designed it to be as simple as possible. He used many of the words that already existed in languages like German, French, and Spanish but simplified the spelling and pronunciation. He used the same alphabet as these languages (with a few additional letters) but reduced the number of words in the vocabulary.

    Instead of having a different word for everything, Esperanto uses a smaller number of basic words. These words then have extra letters called affixes added to the beginning or end of the word for different meanings. For example, “mi” means “I” and “mia” means “my.” “Mal” means “bad” and is used to change almost any word to its opposite. For example, “granda,” meaning “big,” becomes “small” with the word “mal” at the beginning. The language also has its own rules for how to put sentences together, much like English and other languages. It has fewer rules than most other languages, and the rules are generally easy to learn and follow.

    The idea behind Esperanto was to make sure that everyone has an equal chance to learn and use the language of communication. So far, Esperanto has spread to 115 countries, including Poland, where it first started. Eastern Europe has the largest population of Esperanto speakers, although many parts of Asia and South America also have people who use the language, and some in North America. By 1999, about two million people had learned to understand and speak Esperanto.

    Why would anyone want to learn a language like Esperanto? The language has never reached the kind of acceptance that its inventor hoped it would. However, if more people begin to learn it, who knows what might happen in the future?

  • Teaching English as a Career

    Teaching English as a Career

    The English language has a lot of short, easy words. Just think of words like “run” — a short, three-letter word that is easy to spell and easy to learn. But are they really that easy? Think of how many meanings words like “run” have. You can run a race or get a home run in baseball. A newspaper has a run, and you can run out of time. How can non-English speakers ever learn such a complicated language? That’s where English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers can help.

    Teaching the English language can be a good career option, especially for anyone who enjoys travel. Over 400 million people around the world use English as their first language, which is the main language that they are most comfortable using. However, over 700 million people use English as a second or third language, and the number is growing all the time.

    English is spoken all over the world and is the standard language used in many businesses, in technical and scientific studies, and for transportation on airplanes and ships. You might even hear a German-speaking airline pilot talking to a German-speaking airport employee, not in German, but in English. Most communication by computers and even traditional mail is in English, and use of the English language is still growing.

    As the need for English skills is increasing, the need for English teachers is growing as well. This kind of teaching goes by several different names which often reflect the needs of the students. Teaching English as a Second Language is often about teaching immigrants how to speak with their neighbours and co-workers. Practical vocabulary and grammar are important parts of each lesson.

    In other countries, English as a Foreign Language or English as an Additional Language (EAL) are often the terms people use. Without the chance to use English every day at home or at work, the students often have to work harder at getting a chance to practice their skills. The kind of help the students need is normally the focus of the classes. Lessons could focus on conversational skills or grammar or both.

    What does it take to work in TESOL (Teaching English as a Second or Other Language)? In North America and many other parts of the world, a Bachelor of Education with an emphasis on teaching language to non-English speakers is probably the best option. In some cases, a TESOL certificate or local training might be enough, especially if the school where you want to work has its own training program.

    Teaching English can be a good option if you love variety and adventure. You can teach in Japan, China, Mexico, or right in your own city. You can work with young children, university students, or retired people. You can teach in a classroom or tutor people at home. Wherever you go, teaching the English language can be a rewarding career for anyone.

  • How Babies Learn Languages

    How Babies Learn Languages

    When you were just a tiny baby, you probably cried a lot – just like every other baby. A few months later, you started to make sounds called babbling. By the time you were six or eight months old, your babbling might have started to sound a bit like words in the language you heard most often at home. At the age of one or two, you could probably use a few words. By about age five, you could speak well and understand what people said to you.

    Your language learning is still continuing now and will likely go on for many more years. How did this lifelong process of language learning start? Until recently, researchers believed that children began learning to speak and understand a few months after birth. Now, however, some researchers believe that children might begin to learn even earlier, maybe even before they are born.

    How do researchers know how much babies understand when they are still unable to speak? One way is to watch how they react when they hear the sounds of the language their parents use. An experiment with babies who were only a few hours old showed that the babies reacted differently to sounds from their parents’ language than to sounds from a foreign language. Languages all over the world have many similar sounds, but often they are pronounced slightly differently. That is especially true with vowels like a and e. When English speakers use these sounds, they normally add a y sound at the end and thus actually use two vowels instead of one. Other languages, however, are different. Making the vowel sounds from different languages allowed researchers to see that babies seemed to react to the sounds of their own languages.

    Another way that researchers could tell how much language babies had learned before birth was to listen to them crying. To most people except the parents, one baby’s crying can sound very much like another’s. However, researchers have noticed that babies seem to cry differently depending on the tones and melodies of the language they hear. If people tend to raise their voices at the ends of sentences or talk in a musical way, babies will also use that sound pattern when they cry. French babies, for example, tend to cry with a rising sound at the end like the language they hear around them. German babies use a falling tone at the end like their parents do when they speak. Although some researchers think the babies might just be imitating their mothers, others think that children might already be learning their language.

    As they grow up, children slowly learn to speak and later to read and write. Researchers know a lot about the different stages of learning, such as when children usually begin to use single words and when they start to use sentences. This new research, however, could change the way people think about babies and language learning. Who knows how that knowledge will help children and parents in the future?