Language is power, to teach language is to empower.

I have now settled on the news feeds that I will be using for this blog. They are as follows:

BBC News, the Education section

Language and Education, searched on Google News

NPR Topics:Education

U.S. Department of Education

So far I have found BBC News to be most profitable.

Hello, everyone.  I’m Chris.  I’ll add stuff about me to the about me section soon.  For now I’m just going to talk about my topic.

Here I plan to discuss Language Education.  The focus will be partly on language teaching methods and partly on the expression of complex ideas through writing in a second language.  I chose this topic because I am a German major, English minor, have taken Spanish, and am currently starting French.  I enjoy languages quite a bit.

I think it will be fun and beneficial for me to discuss teaching methods of second languages.  My current favorite teaching method (without researching) is the immersion style.  This is where the English (or whatever is the first language) is not spoken at all in class, only the language that is being taught is being used.  This makes it hard to learn at first but students can achieve mastery quicker overall.  Once I’ve done research, my views may change, but this is the current style of my French class and I like it quite a bit.

The Second Language writing topic should also prove quite interesting.  I have trouble expressing my ideas through writing in German.  It must be quite difficult for ESL students to complete writing assignments.  I’d like to find some strategies for circumventing this barrier to well written essays.

The RSS feeds I will be using in this blog are as follows:

BBC News | Education | UK Edition     http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/education/rss.xml

ESL ESL news posts  http://eslgfx.net/rss/news_default_www_de.xml

language and education – Google News  http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=language+and+education&ie=UTF-8&output=rss

NPR Topics: Education  http://www.npr.org/rss/rss.php?id=1013

U.S. Department of Education  http://www.ed.gov/rss/edgov.xml

Hopefully I can find articles relating to second language acquisition with these feeds.  I may have to change or add some in the future.   I hope others are at least slightly interested in my topic.  I know I’ll enjoy writing on it.