The general importance of foreign language skills is well known nowadays. With the ongoing globalization any kind of interactions between human beings of different cultures is increasing.
Consequently, people put more and more effort into the process of learning foreign languages. Different fields such as education, business, culture, politics, health care system and scientific research are affected by the significance of foreign languages.

This article focuses on global business with its intercultural actions and points out that successful global business also depends on foreign languages.
The first supporting idea is obvious: In order to interact with people form other countries we need to communicate. ONE common language is the necessary tool.
The second objective might be less obvious, but not less important: Knowing foreign languages does not only contain the language skills itself, but also the knowledge about the foreign culture. When talking about foreign language skills, we often forget that there is a whole new culture or country to explore. To explicate this idea, language means (cultural) identity.

What does this mean concerning global and intercultural business – business where people from different cultures take part in responsible and significant decision-making processes?
People in business have many different relations to each other. They could for example be partners, competitors, clients and providers etc.

Depending on this kind of relation, social and psychological values (often depending from cultural backgrounds) play an important role. This can be explained with the example of ´trust´ – a value that often leads to certain decisions – even in business. Obviously, it is easier to trust someone, if we “know” him or if we are somehow able to assess to someone´s character. Probably, this is even more difficult with people from a foreign culture. But if we learn and experience more about foreign cultures, it might be easier for us to trust those who interact with us. Trust is an important basic value for business.

Cultural differences also mean different social behaviour and different ways of communicating, even if people speak the same language. This often leads to misunderstandings in communication that is caused not necessarily by language/translation problems but by different social acting, as this also depends from our cultural backgrounds.
Finally, this shows the meaning of the expression: language is (cultural) identity and points out that language skills are basic, but without cultural experience, not sufficient for successful global business.

In conclusion, learning languages is a process that should always include the experience of a foreign culture. Therefore it is necessary to spend time in a foreign country. Exploring new cultures widens horizons and gives personal experiences. Additionally, it is of course easier and more exciting and effective to learn foreign languages abroad.

Language immersion programs are now very popular in different parts of the world and there seems to be endless possibilities to go through it. If you were given the opportunity or the choice to be enrolled in a language immersion program, would you?

First and foremost, a language immersion program is a program where students are placed in a classroom or setting in which only the target language is used. Different versions of language immersion include partial immersion or dual or bilingual immersion.

The origins of language immersion are said to be from Canada more than forty years ago and are today used as “a language educational program model used for a variety of purposes and across a wide range of social, cultural, and political contexts” according to Walker and Tedick (2000). Language immersion has been used since then not only to teach foreign languages but also to preserve almost extinct languages and to teach the language of a colonizer.

Language immersion education has developed from the Direct Method which is also known as the Natural Method of teaching additional languages which was developed in the late 19th century. The standard method of teaching languages at that time focused on grammar and translation but the Direct Method revolved around conversations between teachers and students. The method is based on the idea that a language learner learns his or her native language without being formally taught and can therefore learn his or her target language in the same way.

Aside from the Direct Method, the main reasons why language immersion programs have gained popularity include that many people go overseas to teach in countries where they don’t speak the local language; and students in the same class may have different linguistic and cultural backgrounds therefore there is an eclectic mix of native languages within the same classroom.

• The pros of language immersion include that since only the target language is spoken, language learners are forced to make communication attempts in the language; through language immersion, students see the different ways in which similar concepts can be expressed thus allowing exposure to different cultures. Another thing is, through language immersion, language learners learn languages in the most natural way possible.
• The cons of language immersion include that students may not understand instructions in the target language and it is also quite difficult to tell whether the lack of understanding is due to not understanding the target language or whether the concept would be beyond them even if it is in their native tongue. Another disadvantage is that the emphasis on speaking the target language comes at the expense of language rules such as grammar; total language development may be stalled if the other language skills are not developed.

Language immersion programs are effective means to learn a new language and culture since language learners will be in an environment where they can absorb language and the culture from where the language generated from. Immersion programs may happen in classrooms within the country where there is a concentrated population of people who speak the target language, or the programs can be availed abroad in the country where the language originated from.

Language immersion may not be for everyone since each person has unique learning styles. What may be effective for some may not be effective for everyone. If you were given the chance to be part of a language immersion program, would you enroll? Why or why not? Share your insights with us.

Language learners who want to develop what they already know about their target language would want to learn of more ways on how to improve their language skills. Those that have already had experienced language programs also want to know how to retain what they have learned about their target language. Most say that in order to improve and keep your knowledge of an acquired language is to use it frequently.

I have many friends who are not native English speakers yet they have acquired a level of English fluency that can compare to native speakers. Most of them have been exposed to the English language since they were young through books, songs, films, and informative shows. All through their lives, they have encountered the English language since it is part of the education system of the schools in their respective countries yet not every citizen around them can speak or read English.

I asked a particular friend how did she become adept in writing and speaking English even though it is not her native tongue, and her only reply was: by reading. She loves reading books and started reading since she was a little girl.

When she entered grammar school, all the basic elements of English were taught from parts of speech to sentence elements to vocabulary to punctuations. As years went by, English classes became more complex and she strived hard to retain all of the knowledge into her system although she only uses English in school. The few times English became a part of her life outside school were during those times when she watched English movies, listened to English songs, and when she delved into her English-language books. Rarely was English used for casual conversations.

Reading is one of the four essential language skills and it can develop independently of listening and speaking skills but it often develops together with those skills. Reading helps build a language learner’s vocabulary and that is essential for listening comprehension during the later stages of learning a language. Reading also helps readers interpret and understand the script, find out the meaning of the words used, identify grammatical word classes, recognize basic syntactic patterns, and a whole lot more.

In the book Reading and Language Learning by Keiko Koda, a professor of Second Language Acquisition and Japanese at Carnegie Mellon University, the author said that reading and language are interdependent. Reading requires linguistic knowledge yet reading ability enhances linguistic knowledge expansion.

My friend has developed and retained her knowledge of English through reading and she is now teaching English literature to high school students. She may have honed her English skills differently from other people but she believes that reading holds an essential part in learning a language.

If you are a language learner or have already learned a foreign language, what is your opinion on reading in your target language?

Magazines are found to be rich sources of authentic materials that can be used in motivating language learners not only in their language classes but also for language teachers as a reference for activities that they can share with their classes. There are many available language magazines that contain numerous content about languages and culture that can help language learners have a better grasp of the target language.

A wide range of linguists, language organizations, enthusiasts and educators from different parts of the globe have collaborated in making language magazines for the language community. The major goal of most language magazines is to update the reading community of the latest updates of languages and the places where those languages came from or are spoken as native tongues.

Language travel magazines that are internationally distributed are also written by

people from different parts of the world and share a combination of the latest events, news, and developments of languages and the places where they are spoken.

Some of the popular language magazines from different parts of the planet include the following:

• Language Travel Magazine – a publication written for and read by student recruiters and educational consultants in more than a hundred countries every month. The magazine contains important information such as the latest developments in the language business and languages. Language Travel Magazine also hosts the international Language Travel Magazine Star Awards for International Education which honors language schools, school associations, agencies, educators, and insurance companies that are in the language industry.
• Language Magazine – was known as American Language Review in 1997 and since then has undergone changes. It is a popular periodical of language, communication, and education. It publishes twelve issues a year in order to meet the demands of its reading public which includes department heads, supervisors, government officials and such. Most of the subscribers include TOFL, TESL, TOEFL, as well educational administrators and university language departments.
• The Language Key Magazine – is a bimonthly business English magazine with an accompanying CD-ROM. The magazine was first printed and published in Hong Kong in 1994 and since 2002 it is published in Shanghai. The magazine is compiled by experienced native English language teachers who are teaching Business English to corporate clients in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong. The wide experience of the teachers in English Language Training (ELT) enables them to focus on the specific problems and needs of Chinese English language learners.
• Think Spanish! – a monthly publication that allows subscribers to study Spanish at his or her own pace. The magazine contains information regarding the Spanish language, lessons and cultural content. The magazine allows learning a new language and the life, culture, people, traditions and places of Spain and Spanish-speaking countries. All articles in the magazine are carefully written in Spanish and each is accompanied with a bilingual glossary that will enable the reader to read and learn Spanish without stopping to look up words in a phrasebook. Each issue also contains a grammar review, a useful monthly tutorial, functional phrases and idioms, a crossword puzzle and linguistic comparisons.
• ESL Magazine – is the primary magazine for American English language teachers and ESL and EFL professionals from around the world. Each issue of the magazine features the latest new in the language industry, a calendar of events, informative feature articles, and practical articles for teachers and reviews of the latest products on the market. The magazine is published 6 times in a year particularly in January, March, May, July, September and November.
  Learning more about languages as you learn languages with language magazines and be engrossed with all the things you never knew you will learn!

Languages Out There has published and released a course book that will surely benefit a lot of English language teachers and learners from different parts of the planet. Aptly called English Out There, the course book will allow teachers and students to use free social networks and free internet telephony to make their English learning experience more motivating, interactive, inexpensive and practical. Facebook and Skype users will have easy access and opportunities to expand their knowledge of English.

English Out There not only challenges publishing convention about how people actually learn a second language but the methodology it applies also drastically lowers the financial barrier for millions of schools, teachers, and students in different parts of the planet who would like to combine highly valuable native speaker practice into every single lesson for free.

Social media is useful in allowing language exchange among language learners. An application in Facebook allows finding Facebook friends on Skype and allowing language practice with among themselves using the lessons in the EOT course book.

Language teachers and language schools can purchase a copy of English Out There (EOT) for only £14.75 and legally photocopy the teachers’ direction and associated student worksheets. One book can teach a whole class instead of every single student needing their own copy. If a teacher or language school buys a book, they will have the opportunity to get a 50% discount on another eleven levels of similar English materials for just £24.25 via the Languages Out There website.

The EOT Intermediate TD4 course book was already involved to thousands of hours of teaching to fee paying students for more than six years prior to publication and the end result is a book that has been used, taught, and tested more times prior to publication than possibly any other book in the history of ELT publishing.

The English Out There Intermediate TD4 course book consists of twenty-three hour lesson plan with minute by minute instructions for teachers and each plan has between four and ten pages of attractive student worksheets written by teachers and experience English language teaching writers. The materials of the course book were graphically designed by Guardian Professional, and have some entertaining articles by Charlie Brooker. The lessons in the book focus on a specific topic and language focus and were planned around the most useful and up-to-date vocabulary and situations needed to be understood at that course level.

Traveling is one exciting activity and learning a language while traveling may be more exciting than ever! Learning languages abroad has its many perks – it allows faster assimilation of the language in a language learner’s system since he or she will be immersed in the language and it gives a lot of opportunities for learning more about the place like its history, culture, and people!

There are many things to consider when traveling to another place yet one of the most important concerns would have to be accommodation. Knowing where to stay when traveling in another place assures the traveler that he or she will have a secure and clean place to stay while enjoying his or her vacation or language abroad program.

One of the most convenient forms of accommodation for travel is a hostel. Hostels are a type of accommodation that provides budget oriented and sociable lodging where guests can rent a bed, and share a lounge, bathroom, and sometimes a kitchen with other occupants. Rooms in hostels can be shared among occupants though there are some private rooms available. Hostels are normally cheaper for both operators and occupants and they only assure that the best services are available at affordable prices.

If you are planning to learn a language abroad and would want to spend time with fellows who love traveling and learning languages too, you can opt to stay with any of our partner’s hostels. Hostelworld.com provides on-line confirmed booking for hostels, budget accommodation centers and package tours, as well as comprehensive content such as city and country guides. The staff of Hostelworld is composed of people from different parts of the world and has many years of experience in the budget travel industry. All of the bookings made with Hostelworld are made securely and in real-time, guaranteed for travelers like you.

Hostelworld has hostels on different parts of the planet including the more popular locations such as London, Amsterdam, Paris, Prague, Dublin, Berlin, New York, Vienna, Edinburgh, Sydney, Munich, San Francisco, Glasgow, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Rome, Venice, Florence, Budapest, Lisbon, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

Aside from providing quality services to their customers, Hostelworld.com also donates a portion of their service charge from every booking to UNICEF. UNICEF provides assistance to and works for long term improvement in the lives of children from the poorest countries in the world by supporting programs aimed primarily at protecting children through immunization, education, health, and the long term eradication of poverty as well as emergency relief. Booking your hostels with Hostelworld.com assures you great accommodations, as well as helps you help underprivileged children from different parts of the world.

Booking for Hostelworld hostels is easy; all you have to do is enter your destination city and country, date of arrival, and the duration of your stay. You can book for hostels from the Abroad Languages main page and look for the Hostelworld widget at the left sidebar. You can also connect to Hostelworld’s website and search for more than twenty thousand hostels in over one hundred seventy countries.

Are you set to explore the world? Equip yourself with foreign languages and book in superior hostels right now!

There are many organizations in the world that support and promote education for children in developing countries. These organizations see to it that they give proper funding to the mode of education they impart to children as well as see to it that the learners will be abreast with the latest technology used in other parts of the world.

Image by One Laptop per Child via Flickr

The One Laptop Per Child Association, Inc. or the OLPC, is a non-profit organization in the United States that was set up to oversee the creation of an affordable educational device for use in the developing world. The mission of the organization is to create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power connected laptop with software and content designed for collaborative, self-empowered, and joyful learning.

The OLPC has already had a successful run in Latin America and some African countries and recently it has launched the program in India to aid young students with specially designed laptops at a subsidized rate for better learning.

The OLPC President and CEO Satish Jha has said that more than a thousand laptops have been made available to students in the age group of 5-12 in twenty schools in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. He also stated that the scheme would be launched in Himachal Pradesh and other states soon.

The laptops provided by the organization are unbreakable and water-proof which will make them easy to handle without any risk. They have been created specifically to suit Indian conditions. Each laptop only consumes one watt of power and its screen can be visible in sunlight.

The laptops can easily hold course contents and books used in the schools in local languages. However, if it is part of their curriculum to learn foreign languages, the language courses can also be added in the laptop! The laptops are powerful tools of education for the less-fortunate children of India – they will not be left out from the rest of the world since they will be learning through modern means.

Each laptop for each child costs Rs 11,000 only and other organizations such as Microsoft, Red Hat, Nortel Networks, Bright Star Corporation and Google are helping in funding the project.

Arabic is one of the most spoken languages in the world and here are some reasons why it is an excellent language to learn:

1. Arabic is the fifth most spoken language in the world. More than twenty countries all over the planet as well as over three hundred million native speakers make Arabic one of the most spoken languages on the planet. Arabic is also among the official languages of the United Nations, the African Union, and the organization of Islamic Conference.
2. It is the language of the Qu’ran, the Holy Book of the Muslims, and it is understood by Muslims all over the world even though it is not their native tongue.
3. The Arab world has a rich heritage. Art, music, cuisine, literature, and way of life of the Arabs are unique. In order to appreciate more of Arab contributions to world progress, it is a great advantage if you can speak and understand their language.
4. There are many significant contributions to world civilization in Arab. During the Middle Ages, the Arab-Islamic civilization was at its peak and contributed a lot to the development of medicine, science, and philosophy. Arabs have also made significant contributions in mathematics, astrology, literature, architecture, and navigation. Learning Arabic allows the exploration of the knowledge the Arabs imparted to the world in the original language they were published in.
5. There is a high demand and low supply of Arabic speakers in the Western world. Very few Westerners learn Arabic, now that the Middle East plays a major role in international affairs; it is advisable that more Westerners should know more about the Arabic language and culture. Those in the West who know Arabic will have the opportunity to find jobs in many fields where knowledge of the language is an asset.
6. Arabic speaking countries are a fast growing market for trade. The countries in the Arab region are becoming more active in international trade. In order to do business deals in these countries, it is very helpful to know the language and culture of the people in order to do business with them effectively.
   Knowing the Arabic language can help promote intercultural understanding. After the historical events that happened during the beginning of the new millennium, Arabs have suffered from prejudice and racial stereotypes. Learning Arabic can be a powerful key to bridge linguistic and cultural gaps between Arabs and other peoples.

Arabic is an important and influential language. It is worthy to be learned for the many benefits it can impart to learners as well as its native speakers. Learn Arabic now and expand your horizons!

Everyday we read about different ways in learning languages. Recently, I ran into a story about how a research conducted by a language teacher will help revolutionize language learning.

Paul Sulzberger PhD, of Victoria University in New Zealand has conducted a ground-breaking research which may help change the way of learning and teaching languages. Dr Sulzberger’s research has found that the best way to learn languages is through repeated exposure to the sound patterns of the languages even though the learner doesn’t have a clue to what they mean.

It may sound “crazy” to some people but the research has revealed that language learning is possible just by listening to the language. He stated that “The ability to learn new words is directly related to how we have been exposed to the particular combinations of the sounds which make up the words.” A stated example is that when someone wants to learn Spanish, frequent listening to a Spanish language radio station on the internet can help the language learner to learn new words and hone the ability to pick up the language.

Existing language learning theories are being challenged by the research of Dr Sulzberger. The main hypothesis of his study indicated that by simply listening to the new language, the structures in the brain required to learn the words are automatically set up. Dr Sulzberger has also stated that babies learn their first language through a neural tissue which is required to learn and understand a new language; this is the same tissue which will develop when a language learner constantly listens to a new language.

Dr Sulzberger conducted the research after having spent seven years teaching the Russian language to New Zealand students and having observed the drop-out patterns of the students. A lot of students dropped out from the classes because they felt that they are not making progress in learning the language.

The Russian language teacher also did the research because he was interested in understanding what makes it difficult to learn foreign words when people who are learning languages constantly learn new ones in their native tongue. The answer lies on the way the brain develops the neural structures when a language learner learns a new combination of sounds.

In learning foreign languages, the language learner is faced with various sounds for which he or she has no neural representation. People who are trying to learn a foreign language may have few pre-existing neural structures that’s why learning the language for them seems difficult.

Dr Sulzberger searched for ways people could develop the particular neural structures and make the language learning process easier. The result of the research is simple; it is by the extensive exposure to the language which is made easier by new technology and globalization, which makes language learning easier. People can expose themselves to their target language through the internet and other media.

The researcher has also stated the people who are trying to learn a foreign language in their home country are at a disadvantage compared to those who travel abroad and become immersed in the sounds of the language and the culture.

He also said that, we all need to rethink about the way foreign languages are being taught. The language teachers should recognize the importance of extensive aural exposure to a language. Spending an extra hour on listening to a target language on an iPod or CD player can help compensate for just an hour in class.

Learning languages is a skill and it is not quite like learning a fact. In order to learn a language, the language learner must grow the right brain tissue and to do it is by listening to movies, songs, and what have you of the target language.