Tuesday 22 September 2015

Babel Magazine: Meet the Professionals.



I was recently interviewed by 'Babel, The Language Magazine' for their 'Meet the Professionals' feature. It's a summary of the most important things I've learned about teaching immersion English over the past nine years here in Spain. Here's a link:

Babel Magazine: Meet the Professionals, May 2015.

N.B., use Ctrl and + to zoom in if the text is too small. 

If you're interested in language(s), then Babel really is a great read. It has a wide range of articles every issue, not only for 'specialists' but also for those of us with a more general interest. Recent articles have covered British and American English; How new technology is changing language learning; Bringing up multilingual children; and Foreign words which have no direct English translation.
My favourite word from the last article was 'iktsuarpok', a word used by Inuits which expresses 'the act of repeatedly going outside to check if someone is coming.'
I was interested to discover with my class recently that the English verb 'nod' doesn't seem to have a direct translation in Spanish. Most dictionaries suggest something like 'saludar con la cabeza', but we couldn't find a Spanish verb which describes the act. The children suggested we should 'invent' a new Spanish verb, nodear.
Let's see if it catches on... 


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