Hola amigos!

How are we all doing on this fine Tuesday morning?

In this, my first offical post *drum roll please* I will be reviewing cúpla language learning blogs and websites that I was checking out over the weekend. This is all in the name of CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning). CALL can be defined as:

“the search for and study of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning” (Levy, 1997, pg. 5).

This incidentally is exactly what we will be doing today!

1. Bitesize Irish Gaelic

This first blog I read tackled the problem that is Irish phonetics. Eoin discusses how it’s practically impossible to learn Irish by reading alone and attempting pronunciation that way. He makes quite a few other insightful observations such as this and it’s an interesting blog to learn about the structure and logistics surrounding the Irish language. However, the blog is definitely targeted for beginner level Irish learners and doesn’t really cater for those wishing to dig deeper into the Irish language. That said there the option to do a paid course as well as the free material the blog provides, perhaps a good alternative to those more advanced.

 

2. Luca Lampariello

Luca Lampariello has a blog in the works but his main content is concentrated on his YouTube channel. He has quite a large following with 64,000 people tuning into watch his videos that focus on honing and training your language learning skills. Although he only speaks one of the three languages I am studying, I found his videos really useful as he focuses on developing skills, like building a “core” in the language you are learning, the difficulties we face when encountering phonetics that do not feature in our native language and the common mistakes you make when learning a foreign language and how to avoid them. All in all I found his content very accessible, 10/10 would recommend to a friend.

3. Euro Linguiste

Euro Linguiste provided very in-depth teaching of Mandarin, Croatian, French, Italian, Japanese, German, Korean, Russian and Spanish. It contains an almost overwhelming amount of resources including a guide to help you discern which language learning resources to pick as well as things to consider before taking on any language and even a language learning keyboard! There is also a link to an app called ask me every which keeps you accountable on your language learning journey. I was very impressed with its audio and text/literature resources including Harry Potter in German, Music etc. I plan to use this website frequently from now on and feel it will be very useful for my personal German study.

 

4. Coffee break German

I found Coffee Break Languages to be an incredible resource. It is extremely in-depth, helping you tighten up and refine your grammar, vocab and pronunciation skills with engaging podcasts and blog. I also found the layout and colour scheme really engaging, something I’ll keep in mind when personalizing my blog. I feel like the vast selection of resources will come in handy when practicing for my German oral in December.

 

5. Multilingual Musings

Last and (kind of) least we have Multilingual Musings. This blog held a lot of promise as it appeared at first to be a more in depth look at the Irish language. However the website is not only messy and outdated but also very dark and hard to navigate. On top of that , although the author can speak a vast number of languages, he chooses to focus primarily on comparing English, French and Welsh words to each other. This is such a niche genre and certainly didn’t help me with my language learning.

I hope this brief reviews will be useful in your language learning quest. I feel it is important to keep in mind that CALL remains a topic with many unknown areas still in need of exploration (Beatty, 2013). With that in mind I intend to research this topic in more depth in my next two blogs.

Slán tamall!

Saoirse x

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Levy, M., 1997. Computer-assisted language learning: Context and conceptualization. Oxford University Press.

Beatty, K., 2013. Teaching & researching: Computer-assisted language learning. Routledge.