foreign language e-learning

Summary

Palabea is a social network site for practicing, learning, teaching and otherwise communicating in foreign languages. It has a beautiful site design and its features are quite strong.

After testing thoroughly the entire user interface, I am convinced that this is one of the most solid social language learning network platforms in cyberspace. It has a clean and friendly interface, the site loads quickly and the wide variety of features were well thought-out and executed.

The features include:

• uploading and sharing audio, video, photos and documents
• managing friends and meeting new people
• creating and partcipating in virtual classrooms
• watching videolectures, reading documents and listening to podcasts from other users
• calling friends and translating on the fly
• tool for recording audio and video right through their site!

There are plenty of others, too. And the team seems to be active in developing more features and improving upon those already available.

Palabea is currently ad-free! I'm not sure what their business model is, but they've partnered with Deutsche Welle, Babylon and Café Babel. They partnered with Babylon on the widget to translate on the fly while talking with someone (or just surfing), but I am not sure exactly how they are affiliated with the other two - both of which are very cool, by the way!

The site is localized in 6 languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish.

So congrats to the folks at Palabea! I know I'll be stopping in over there.

From Website

Learning a new language just became fun, easy and free.

palabea.net is an e-learning website and social community that offers opportunities to learn and practice foreign languages. It offers a wide range of tools and technologies which support its users with their learning endeavours, and allows people to communicate and learn about different cultures.

Changes in society triggered by the effects of globalization developed the need to learn and respect cultural diversity. To maintain a dialogue between people in different countries, and to forge multicultural relationships, learning foreign languages is essential. Some obstacles in learning a foreign language, including: lack of motivation and time, and high costs, but using palabea.net everyone has the opportunity to learn a foreign language and communicate with people around the world without leaving their home.

palabea.net users are able to:

- Access a portal of contents (video lessons, podcast and multimedia educational material), information on language schools, au pair opportunities and traveling abroad. More information will be added as the portal develops.

- Have online conversations in a foreign language: palabea users can easily find friends who share similar interests, and who will help them learn and practice languages. Users will be able to speak about any topics, or if they prefer, use lessons or situation games designed for to improve language skills -Practice comprehension with audio and video applications. The users can listen to podcasts in other languages or watch video lessons, which help explain grammatical aspects of the language. -Play teacher and assist others in learning their native language which allows for innovative ways in collaborative learning.

- Generate their own content, as individuals or a group. People can present themselves with information, pictures/videos. - Unlike other social networks, palabea.net offers an integrated video-chat system that appears on the page and doesn't require users to download an extra application. -palabea has created virtual classes to help users practice their written language skills. In these classes the users collaborate with documents and assist each in learning languages. These virtual classes can be created by a group of users, or if the user prefers, they can request the services of a professional language teacher.

Palabea.net complements traditional language schools rather than competing against them. It is another distinctive aspect of palabea.net, who from the outset, worked with many schools to help produce e-learning applications that are both be easy to use and effective.

Palabea.net was founded by Sebastian Schkudlara, Guido Veth and Patricia Sierra Fernandez in Berlin. The Palabea.net team is a small and international group of multilingual speakers, with three official languages: English, German and Spanish.

Visit Palabea.net

Summary

UK India put together a basic lesson for learning to write Arabic script. Don't mind the lime-green background as you click through their web pages and learn the basics of Arabic script.

There is also a ZIP file available for downloading the lessons, which can be used for non-commercial purposes.

From Website

Arabic is the language of a large part of our planet . It is one of the permanent languages of the UN.

These are a few very basic learn to read the alphabet lessons.

Visit UK India.

Summary

SinoSplice is a great resource not only for learning Chinese, but also for other aspects of living in China, especially Shanghai. It is maintained by a guy who has been living in China for over 6 years and studies linguistics.

For the Mandarin Chinese learners out there, check out the language section of SinoSplice. Among many other things, you will find:

• Pronunciation of Mandarin: Setting the Record Straight: A response to the glut of bad information on the harder points of the pronunciation of Mandarin.
• Mandarin Chinese Tone Pair Drills: Exercises developed by John Pasden specifically designed to target problems with the pronunciation of tone combinations.
• The Process of Learning Tones: If you've decided to learn to speak Chinese and you're anything like me, this is what you can expect.
• The 5 Stages to Learning Chinese: I have been aniticipating a future in applied linguistics for some time, so I have been very cognizant of the learning processes of myself and others. Here is where I recount them.
• Chinese Study Book Reviews: Recommendations on books for learning Chinese based on personal experience. These reviews are especially useful for those in China, as many of the books reviewed were bought here.
• Chinese Vocabulary Lists: A collection of vocabulary lists you won't find in most textbooks. For example, instead of country names in Chinese, you will find Western alcohol names in Chinese.
• Shanghainese Soundboard: Although it's far from a complete course in Shanghai's dialect, this soundboard should give you some idea of the sound of Shanghainese, with Mandarin for comparison.
• The Moon Represents My Heart: It would behoove any student of Chinese to learn this classic Chinese song. (In Chinese characters, pinyin, and English.)

There is also a lot more on the site, such as a free, downloadable Mandarin Chinese Tone Pair Drills course.

If nothing else, head over to learn about the stages to learning Mandarin Chinese. It might make you crack a smile.

From Website

Sinosplice 1.0 was launched April 30, 2002 as sort of a "public diary" for friends and family to replace the mass e-mails I had been sending. I soon became aware that I was a part of a fledgling expat China blog community, and I started the China Blog List, which continues to expand today. With the launch of Sinosplice 2.0 in April, the year 2003 saw the genesis of the Sinosplice Network, my effort to support the foreign China blogging community by sharing some of my server space. While teaching English has been an interest of mine for years (see Teaching in China: A Guide for the Uninitiated), I'm even more interested in Chinese pedagogy. See Sinosplice's language section for some of my efforts there. I hope to further develop Sinosplice in that direction in the future.

Visit SinoSplice.