Using Twitter in Your Language Learning – Reading Practice

This is the second and penultimate post in my Using Twitter in Your Language Learning series. This time, we will be looking at the ways in which you can use Twitter as a means of improving your reading comprehension.

One of the easiest ways to find foreign-language posts is to use the Search function. For example, typing 日本語 into the search box will return results which include the word 日本語. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the search results will be written in Japanese but it’s a good starting point. A word of caution : some of the posts may be written by people who are learning Japanese so you will need to keep an eye out for posts written by native speakers if you want to read “real” Japanese.

The public timeline is another good place to look for foreign-language posts, though you will probably find yourself refreshing the page a countless number of times in order to find a post in the language you’re learning.

Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, you can try “deciphering” the tweet. Analyse the grammar (if the author made the effort to bother writing something grammatically sound), use an online or print dictionary to find the meaning of any words you don’t know and try to translate the post into your own native language. Analysing the way that people write can be a good way to reinforce and improve your own writing skills. Writing even a short post in the language you’re learning can be a challenge if you’re not sure how to express your feelings in that language or lack the vocabulary. It’s very tempting to try and translate things word for word but I’m sure most of you are aware that this is not the way to do it.

I find it very useful to memorise sentence structures and learn how to modify them for my own purposes. I enjoy breaking down Japanese and Mandarin tweets to get a feel for the writing style and learn new slang and idiomatic expressions. You’d be surprised how much you can learn from reading people’s Twitter messages, blog entries and forum posts.

Having said that, I wouldn’t recommend relying on Twitter as your sole means of reading practice. Don’t expect everyone to use correct grammar, spelling or punctuation. It would be unwise to assume that what you are reading is a good example of written Japanese, German, whatever. The character limit prevents people from writing in-depth posts and people commonly resort to abbreviations and “text-speak” as they only have 140 characters to work with. It’s also worth keeping in mind that a lot of the posts will be on very trivial matters, such as what time the author got out of bed and complaints about the weather.

If you’re determined to use Twitter as a means of boosting your reading skills, it might be a good idea to ask a language partner or native speaker to explain any unknown words or expressions to you or point out the differences between formal and informal written language. Make sure you supplement your reading material with other, more orthodox material so that your writing skills don’t suffer.

Using Twitter in Your Language Learning – Writing Practice

In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to write about how language learners can use Twitter in their language learning. Today’s post will look at how language learners can useTwitter (or similar microblogging services) as a means to improve their writing skills.

One thing that I like about Twitter is that it allows you to write a short message in the language of your choice. I find it a little intimidating to write a full-length blog post in any of the languages I’m learning as I’m never really sure how to link sentences together to form a coherent (and interesting) post. Microblogging offers me a chance to write short comments about the weather, my mood and the minutiae of my everyday life. I could post these short and somewhat trivial comments on my blog but I prefer not to. Why would my readers want to read a bite-size comment about how tired I feel at a particular moment when they could be reading a new podcast review or a post about my (lack of) progress in a certain language?

Many of my fellow language learners have created Twitter accounts in the past few months and most of them are using the service as a way to practice their writing skills. For example, Respondebat Illa uses Twitter as a means to post short, but sweet, messages in Latin, while The Glossophile (Derron Borders) uses it to practice his French, Spanish, Catalan and Basque. Twitter has a character limit of only 140 characters so it is the ideal way for a language learner to practice his or her writing skills without feeling the pressure of writing a long blog post. Some people don’t enjoy sitting down and writing anything longer than an average Facebook message so microblogging is the perfect way for these people to get some writing practice. After all, writing a few sentences in the language you’re learning is certainly better than nothing.

One drawback  is the aforementioned character limit. Unless you’re able to condense your thoughts or comments into a short sentence, you will be tempted to use abbreviations, slang or “text speak”. While this is not a problem in itself, it is a problem if you’re looking to use Twitter as your sole means of practising your writing skills as it may encourage bad habits and an lax attitude towards grammar and spelling. It is also not an ideal platform for having a text-based conversation with a language partner or fellow Twitterer (is this the correct term?). If you want to practice your writing skills through an online chat, you’d be better off using an instant messenger or email as these will give you more freedom to write as much as you like without being constrained by a ridiculously small character limit.

There’s no doubt that Twitter can be a fun way to practice your writing skills but I wouldn’t recommend using it as your sole means of practice. Unless you ask someone to correct your grammar or spelling, it’s likely that your mistakes will go unnoticed. If you’re looking to perfect your skills or learn how to write an article or essay, you should consider signing up for a language exchange partner on Lang-8 or starting your own language learning blog.

Edited on June 14th, 2009.

Using Twitter in Your Language Learning (Introduction)

It’s been a while since I wrote anything on the subject of language learning methods so I’ve decided to write a short series of posts on how Twitter and similar microblogging services can be used in language learning. I have to admit that I’m a bit of a latecomer to Twitter and that I’m still coming to grips with the jargon (RT?, #??), so I am by no means an expert on the matter.

This series of posts will focus on three key topics :

1) Using Twitter for writing practice.
2) Using Twitter for reading practice.
3) Useful language learning resources on Twitter (e.g. words of the day, grammar tips).

I’m afraid that’s all for today as it’s getting late and I need to be up again in less than seven hours (oh, the joys of work). Needless to say, now would not be the best time to sit down and write a coherent and insightful post about the merits of Twitter so please check back later this week for the first post in my Using Twitter in Your Language Learning series.

じゃ、またね！

Guest Blogger – Katie Wilson – 4 Effective Ways to Learn a Foreign Language on Your Own

The following article was written by Katie Wilson, a writer for Online Universities.

There are times when I’ve often wished my parents had different mother tongues. Admittedly they would have found it difficult to understand each other unless one or both of them were multi-lingual, but we kids would have had the benefit of having two mother tongues and growing up learning two languages. It’s easiest to learn a language when it’s spoken at home, when you’re surrounded by people who speak it all through your childhood, and when it’s part of your growing up process. Although it takes more time and effort and much more motivation to learn a foreign language when you’re all grown up and leading a busy life, there’s no reason why it cannot be done, even when you have no one to help you out. All you need is the interest, the determination, and the means to do it. So if you want to master a new language, here’s what you need to do:

1. Experience it: The best way to learn a new language (the spoken version) is to live amongst people who speak it on a daily basis. So if you’re moving to Spain, you’re definitely going to pick up more than a smattering of Spanish in a few months. Necessity is the mother of invention, and when you need to communicate, your brain is motivated to learn. The more time you spend with people who speak the language you intend to learn at home, the faster you’re going to pick up this new tongue.
2. Sing it: Have you ever realized how easy it is to memorize songs when the melody is catchy? It’s something you do unconsciously; you don’t really focus on learning the words, but when you listen to a song again and again, the lyrics become embedded in your brain. If you want to learn a new language, listen to songs written in the tongue. It’s a slow learning process and not complete in itself, but it is an effective linguistic learning tool.
3. Watch it: Movies and television programs, especially those that come with subtitles are great ways to pick up a new tongue. You could tape your favorite programs, watch them, see if you understand, and then use the subtitles to learn what the characters are saying to each other. You can pick up common phrases, slang usage, and the local flavor of the tongue when you learn from movies and television programs. Formal learning materials teach you the right sentences without injecting any of the local flavor into it (the way the sentence is spoken by natives).
4. Use it: And last, but certainly not the least, you must practice what you’ve learned. You must speak the language on a regular basis if you want to develop your vocabulary and remember it. Yes, you may make mistakes and even be laughed at, but that’s all the more reason for you to persist with your efforts. Practice makes perfect, so use every opportunity you get to show off your newly acquired skills.

This post was contributed by Katie Wilson, who writes about the online universities. She welcomes your feedback at KatieWilson06_at_gmail.com.

If anyone wants to know more about guest blogging opportunities at Aspiring Polyglot, please email me at aspiringpolyglot_at_gmail.com.

Language Learning Tips – Personalised Phrasebooks

Today I discovered that one of my long-time readers felt it was a shame that I deleted many of my old blog posts when I deleted my blogs Aspiring Polyglot (version 1) and Dragon Fruit. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to retrieve many of them due to something called robots.txt (this prevents blogs and websites from being archived) but I have managed to find some of my deleted posts thanks to an RSS archive that had saved some of my more recent posts.

Here is one of the posts I managed to salvage from obscurity. I’ve edited it slightly but hope that it is still useful after all this time.

I originally got this idea from Bill Handley’s book Fast Easy Way to Learn a Language, where you would keep a notebook of key phrases and sentence structures you find essential or useful to know. While this may encourage learning in parrot fashion and would certainly never make you fluent on its own, I think this is quite a good way to get to grips with basic conversational skills in your target language and is a good first step towards mastering the spoken language. This is certainly true if you learn how to substitute words efficiently as it allows you to build up your language skills methodically and at the very least you will have a small arsenal of phrases and expressions to use while you struggle towards fluency using other methods.

I have several such notebooks, one for each language I’m working on, though I don’t always have the time to re-read over the phrases I have already entered. In a way, these notebooks are my own personalised phrasebooks and cover those phrases I feel I need for everyday life. My Dutch notebook includes a selection of phrases I feel might be useful to know for future jobs as well as a selection of more ‘colloquial’ expressions.

In creating my own personalised little phrasebooks (which are far from complete), I tend to use a variety of sources. I usually scan my self-study course books for phrases and structures that I feel I will be most likely to use and ignore anything I know I won’t have to use in a hurry. I also keep a note of any phrases or expressions used in podcast lessons or audio courses as these are more likely to be representative of the spoken language (this is not always the case with the language used in textbooks). Sometimes I jot down expressions I might hear on TV or on the radio and occasionally run these through Google to see if I can find some examples of their use. Blogs can also be a good source, although you run the risk of picking up bad language and grammar mistakes this way.

Do any of you use a similar method for boosting your spoken language skills? If so, what sources do you use and how do you record them?