How To Speak Like A Native Can an adult learn to speak a second language with the accent of a native? Not likely, but new research suggests that we would make better progress, and be understood more easily by our conversational partners, if we abandoned a perfect accent as our goal in the language learning process. For decades, traditional language instruction held up native-like pronunciation as the ideal, enforced by doses of “fear, embarrassment and conformity,” in the words of Murray J. Munro, a professor of linguistics at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Munro and a co-author, University of Alberta linguist Tracy Derwing, argue that this ideal is “clearly unrealistic,” leading to disappointment and frustration on the part of most adult language learners. (MORE: What Invented Languages Can Teach Us) Both of these assumptions are wrongheaded, contend Munro and Derwing. (MORE: The New Ways Doctors Learn) MORE: High-Status Stress
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Free E-books All of these e-books are licensed for free noncommercial distribution — as long as you credit me as the author, don’t alter them in any way, and don’t exploit them commercially, you are welcome to download and share them with your colleagues and contacts. 20 Creative Blocks – and How to Break Through Them There are few things more frustrating than creative blocks – and they come in all shapes and sizes, so there’s no universal solution. This free 114-page ebook covers many different types of block — and offers practical solutions you can use if you ever find yourself blocked. The project started as an experiment on my blog, Lateral Action. More about the Creative Blocks e-book Download 20 Creative Blocks (and how to break through them) Freedom, Money, Time – and the Key to Creative Success Illustration by Joan Vincent Canto, licensed from istockphoto A creative person needs three things to be happy: Freedom – to do what you want, when you want and how you want it. Photo by alexsey.const
Increase Student Engagement by Getting Rid of Textbooks Editor's Note: Today's guest blogger is Shelly Blake-Plock a high school classroom teacher from Maryland, who blogs at teachpaperless.com. Drool in the textbook. That's one of my most lasting impressions of high school. I can't tell you the number of times that I fell asleep -- face down in my textbook -- during various history and foreign language classes. And these days -- as a history teacher and as a foreign language teacher -- that's one of the memories I'd rather not impart to my students. It's not that textbooks in and of themselves are in toto 'bad' or 'good'. But not this year. In fact, I've spent the last three years shedding textbooks from my classes. And guess what? Take that Latin text. Medium does matter. Unfortunately, the textbook does not serve the students quite as well. The students do not learn "better" because my life as a teacher is "easier." As for "keeping on the same page"... And then we get to the political issue. That's pretty much how it works.
vizualize.me: Visualize your resume in one click. Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics 15 Places To Download Free High Quality Stock Photos There are many free stock photography sites. I set out to find as many good ones as I could. I found 15 good, solid resources out there. Royalty Free does not mean the images are free; it means that you don’t need to pay the photographer a royalty each time you use the image. These sites offer free royalty-free images. Today I am going to share 15 websites where you can download free stock photos. You can easily get a quality and beautiful wallpaper for your desktop or simply an illustration for your blog. Free stock nature photography. This site is a community for travel photographers. This is a huge resource of over3 million photos! This site provides tons of high quality and high resolution free stock photos. The photos on Imagebase are free to use, and are licensed under a Creative Commons license. Stockvault is a very classy, modern site with thousands of images and some Photoshop tutorials. Morguefile is a completely free source for stock photos. All the photos are free to use.