Radio Lingua

Four years ago, in an attempt to keep my language teaching roots alive while focusing on other things working with the East Ayrshire education team, I decided to start teaching Spanish via a weekly podcast. Since then Coffee Break Spanish has become one of the most popular education podcasts in the world and this year we reached our 33rd language learning series and our 24th language. We now provide language lessons for languages from Catalan to Zulu. Hopefully early next year we’ll add Arabic, Afrikaans or maybe even Alsacien, and then we’ll really be able to offer language-learning from A to Z!

I’m delighted with how things have gone Radio Lingua-wise this year: we’ve now had over 82 million downloads – averaging around 1.7 million per month now; we have had three podcasts in the Best of 2010 iTunes Rewind list; and we’ve just found out that Coffee Break French, Coffee Break Spanish and Show Time Spanish were #3, #4 and #5 in the UK Professional Podcast category of the European Podcast Awards. We’ve also just found out that we currently have the #1 or #2 educational podcast in iTunes not only in both the UK and USA, but also in Australia, Canada, Egypt, Finland, Jamaica, Lithuania, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Niger, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa and Sweden! I love a bit of end-of-year stats!

What constantly blows me away about the whole Radio Lingua adventure is the huge amount of support we get from our faithful listeners around the world and the comments they post on our Facebook pages (CBF | CBS | Radio Lingua), on Twitter and in iTunes reviews for our shows. This support is hugely appreciated and we hope that learners around the world continue to enjoy our shows.

We are still a very small company with only 3-4 key staff, but I have a fantastic team of teachers and native speakers around the world with whom I have collaborated over the course of this past year to produce our new shows, and this remote team is growing all the time. I’d like to say thank you, merci, gracias, tack, ngiyabonga, дякую and 谢谢 to all of my colleagues with whom I’ve worked this year, and I look forward to further collaboration in 2011!

It’s not just the end of 2010, but also of the first decade of the 21st century and what amazes me is that my business could not have existed ten years ago. Even six or seven years ago it would have been difficult to create a company based on the publication of regular language lessons reaching a world-wide audience through mobile devices which learners can carry with them wherever they go. Who knows how language learning will be happening in 2020! In recent weeks I’ve heard about the launch of Word Lens, a new iPhone app which translates signs and information instantly simply by directing the camera towards the image, as shown in the screen grab below.

Is this the future? Or will we have this function built into contact lenses? Of course, the translation is dodgy, and can only be as good as automatic translation can be, but that’s improving all the time. I don’t think it replaces the traditional skill of language learning, and to have successful multilingual business and personal relationships, holding an iPhone up between you and your interlocutors would perhaps be a bit inconvenient! Who knows what the next decade will bring, but I hope to be involved in it and I hope that our style of language-learning through whatever medium the future brings will continue to help people around the world learn languages!

Radio Lingua Schools / Consultancy work

This year has been a big year too for Radio Lingua Schools – we launched our schools site last year and it has been developing nicely over the course of the year. It’s difficult to balance the workload between the consumer side of the company and working in schools, but it’s very often the schools workshops which I particularly enjoy.

In 2010 I’ve been in Strasbourg twice running Euroscola activities along with the inimitable Gerry Toner. In 2011 it seems I’ll be taking a greater role in the organisation of the Euroscola activities, so I look forward to that. It’s always a pleasure working with enthusiastic young people and working with them in intense language immersion activities in one of my favourite towns in France.

In the past year my work as an Apple Distinguished Educator and Apple Education Mentor has increased too. It’s been a pleasure joining a team of talented and committed individuals from all over the UK, Europe and further afield. I’ve had some fantastic opportunities to travel to amazing places, but more of that below.

Travel

Taking my liking for end-of-year stats to the extreme, I’ve been calculating my travel this year. I’ve apparently travelled over 34,000 miles in Europe and Africa. Before any comments about “too much time on my hands, these distances are calculated automatically by Tripit.com which I use for organising my travel plans! My work has taken me to Copenhagen, Dublin, Dundalk, Johannesburg, Kiev, Moscow, Nantes, Nice, Palma de Mallorca, Paris, Pornic, Prague, Pretoria, San Remo, Strasbourg and Svendborg as well as various trips in the UK to London, Edinburgh and Manchester. The links above are to my photos of each trip on Flickr. While I love travelling and seeing new places, I don’t like being away from home and it certainly makes keeping up with the ongoing Radio Lingua work that bit more difficult. It looks like 2011 is going to be quite busy for travelling too, so I’m looking forward to discovering new places and will hopefully get the chance to take lots of photos too. In addition to all the work travel this year, we also had a lovely family holiday this summer in France and Belgium, and we have some interesting plans for 2011 too

Music

This blog has been the home of my 365songs project and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting back into my piano playing again this year. I’ve also been playing a bit more of my accordion, and still stand by my challenge of being able to play Monti’s Czárdás by my 40th birthday! I’ve got 16 months to get that one sorted out!

Languages

I always seem to have a number of languages on the go in my personal language learning, and these are often linked to what we’re doing with Radio Lingua. This year I’ve dabbled in Zulu, tried my hand at Russian and Ukrainian before my trips in March, had an ongoing on-off relationship with Chinese, and continued my love of Scandinavian languages with various attempts at improving my Norwegian, converting it all to Danish for my trip to Svendborg in May, then trying to squeeze it into Swedish as we produced One Minute Swedish later in the year. I think 2011 will bring further interest in Scandinavian languages and Chinese, and I may have to rapidly improve my German before a trip to Switzerland in March where I may have to do a workshop in German! I’m not going to set myself any challenges this year, but I would definitely like to get more into Chinese – I just haven’t found the right course yet, so perhaps we need to make one! I’d also like to read some of my favourite Scandinavian crime novels in their original, so perhaps that’s a challenge I should try to complete this year: Mankell in Swedish? Nesbø in Norwegian? Or even Indriðason in Icelandic?!

Best wishes for 2011

I’m not sure who – if anyone – reads this kind of year’s review. I’m sure everyone is far too busy to spend time reading my thoughts, but they’re really just for me anyway – some thoughts on my plans for 2011, and perhaps I’ll look back at this next year or in ten years’ time. Anyway, if anyone is reading this, very best wishes for 2011: may it be a year of happiness, good health and success for you and all those who are dear to you.

First of all, I run the Radio Lingua Network of language-learning podcasts, and our educational branch is called Radio Lingua Schools. On our Radio Lingua Schools website you can read about all the digital creativity workshops we run, working in the field of languages in primary and secondary schools up and down the country.

Introductory Discussion

I spoke about Twitter – sign up for your own Twitter account at http://twitter.com and you can then start following me – @markpentleton – and all the other MFL Twitterati I mentioned via Joe Dale’s MFL Twitterers group.

I also mentioned Wallwisher where you can “build a wall” and have your students post their homework as graffiti on the wall. You can read more about Simon Howell’s use of Wallwisher within MFL and there are more details of Helena Butterfield’s work here.

Another technology we had a brief look at was Voicethread which is a tool for talking about and sharing images, documents and videos. Jo Rhys-Jones has discussed various ways of using Voicethread in primary MFL here.

Fiona Joyce has created a wiki for MFL teachers using Storybird and Lisa Stevens has some examples on her site, including video versions of the Storybird stories she has created.

I suggested that using Google Maps, and specifically Street View is an excellent way of bringing the foreign culture into the classroom. It’s worth using http://maps.google.fr rather than the English language version, so that the interface is also in French. Google Maps and Street View are particularly useful for talking about the town, working with prepositions (eg. next to, opposite, etc.) and for practising giving directions. In addition, using “real” shops and services, street signs and even adverts and notices can bring added authenticity to a lesson.

Creating content

I showed examples of animations and film-making projects. Useful software links include:

• Kudlian’s I Can Animate
• Boinx iStop Motion
• Windows Moviemaker
• Audacity
• GarageBand

The two podcast hosting services I mentioned were Podomatic and Libsyn.

For further information on making podcasts and using the apps mentioned, see these previous posts:

• Making use of free educational content for mobile devices
• Effective language-learning through creative technologies

You may also be interested in our Creative Classroom series of tutorials and screencasts from CrunchEd Productions.

iPod Touch Project for Gateshead Schools

Peter has asked me to remind you that if you want to be part of the MFL iPod Touch project then please email him at p.haywood [at] hgclc.org.

I believe that GarageBand, part of the iLife suite of applications, is extremely useful in classrooms as a tool for providing rhythm to help learners repeat words, phrases, equations, formulae, etc. and I demonstrated this to the assembled delegates by teaching them some Zulu. Having visited South Africa for the first time last month I picked up a few phrases (which may find themselves included in a future podcast series…) in Zulu and I decided that I’d begin by teaching the word sanibonani, which is how you say “hello” to a group of people. I wanted to get in one of the lovely click sounds of Zulu, so I also taught the phrase ngisaqala ukufunda isiZulu – “I’m learning Zulu”.

The Voices and World Music jam packs for GarageBand provide some fantastic African sounds, so I prepared a backing track using some loops and a simple melody based on the two phrases. I then got everyone repeating the sounds, using the African rhythms as a background. We split up the audience, giving one half the tricky ngisaqala, the other half ukufunda, and then everyone said isiZulu together. Finally, I recorded them a couple of times chanting these phrases before putting everything together in GarageBand.

I only had 15 minutes for the entire Keynote, so I didn’t have time to put the final piece together there and then, but the idea was that the recording could then be shared among the learners, further consolidating their learning as they listened on their own iPods etc. To be honest I’d forgotten about the whole project as the rest of the ATI took over, but I remembered about the GarageBand file this morning so I’ve put together a performance using the backing track and the recordings made at ATI and you can have a listen here and let me know what you think!

Ngiyabonga (thanks) to everyone at ATI, and I hope you like it.

I’ve copied the full text below, in case it disappears from the TES site – I’m not sure if these articles are permanent or not.

An award-winning language teacher’s podcasts and film workshops are bringing Mandarin to life in the classroom

The number of people in the world with some grasp of Mandarin has just gone up, as a North Ayrshire primary class took a month to learn the rudiments of the language. It’s a tough one for English speakers, say the pupils, but their teacher’s methods helped make it pretty painless.

“Chinese is hard at first, especially learning the different tones,” says young Lauren Bell. “But it gets easier as you get more used to it. We were doing the one-minute podcasts that Mark made.”

A language teacher whose interest in educational technology led to spare- time production of podcasts, Mark Pentleton eventually “gave up the day- job to concentrate full-time on Radio Lingua”, he says. “The podcasts often top the iTunes charts in the education category. They’re popular worldwide and have won awards, most recently European Professional Podcast of the Year.”

So why is Mark back in the classroom, and why has he got the P5 pupils at Glebe Primary in Irvine working with clay models and goose-necked webcams? “I’m a teacher,” he says. “It’s where I want to be. We’re increasingly working in primary and secondary schools. We’ve got our one-minute podcasts in 19 languages online, free. But for schools, we also do a teacher’s guide and we deliver workshops.”

During today’s workshop – the culmination of four weeks’ Mandarin classwork – the pupils are creating stories using only the words and phrases they learned through the introductory podcasts. “Then they’re bringing it to life by creating clay characters, animating the stories and filming them,” he explains.

There’s a lot to learn, says Reece Jamieson. “But if you like languages, Chinese isn’t too hard. We’re used to working in groups, so deciding who does what for the animations was somewhere between hard and easy.”

That’s also a good description of what it’s like to teach Mandarin using the podcasts, says teacher Kelly Russell. “The hard part was that I knew nothing about the language. It takes time to pick up the four different tones. If you use the wrong one, for instance, you could get ‘horse’ instead of ‘mother’. The kids pick it up faster than adults.”

A follow-up workshop will put the children’s dialogue on to their animated films, says Mark. “They’re using I Can Animate today to create stop-motion movies, frame by frame. They’ll then import the footage into iMovie to add titles and transitions, and then export to Garageband to record their dialogue – in Mandarin, of course.”

The finished products will then be uploaded to the Radio Lingua Schools website for the whole world to see, and there will be a presentation to parents, says Miss Kelly. “We’ll also be getting them to demonstrate the skills they’ve been learning to the P6s and P7s.”

While the language course is relaxed and spread over a month, its culmination in the two-day animation workshop takes concentrated learning and teaching, with Mark circulating, demonstrating and dispensing advice.

As lumpy, colourful characters move jerkily against a painted backdrop, he points out the biggest problem for apprentice animators. “You’ve moved them too far between shots, which is why you’re getting that jerkiness. You need to think in millimetres. Who knows how big a millimetre is?” Thumbs and forefingers, variously spaced, are held up for inspection.

“Take a look at your rulers,” Mark says. “It’s only this big. To get good animation, you need to move your characters just a few millimetres. Did you notice any other problems?”

A child’s hand had appeared briefly in shot, so he demonstrates the simple remedy – deleting that frame during editing. But there’s also a lesson to take back to the shooting stage. “Have you watched Holby City when they’re trying to resuscitate somebody?” he asks. “When you’ve got your characters in place, the person on camera should do what they do – shout ‘Clear!’ to tell everybody to get out of the shot.”

The 10-lesson language courses could easily be used in class without the animation workshops at the end, Mark says. “But what they do is give kids something they can keep and show to parents and friends. It makes it much more memorable. You can see it’s exciting for them.”

The former teacher indicates the busy little groups around the room, moving their characters, taking their shots, talking, learning, laughing – then confesses something that’s obvious anyway in his eyes.

“Actually, it’s quite exciting for me too.”

Douglas Blane, Times Education Supplement, 12 February 2010

Gillian Penny – head teacher and fellow ADE – asked me to come into the school and do some work with the pupils and we identified together the kind of phrases they wanted to include in the course I would create for them. I then worked with some original recordings I had made for the One Minute Languages courses with Ann (Russian), Dag (Norwegian) and Yoshiko (Japanese) and created five lessons for each language. The full courses and lesson guides are now available over on the Radio Lingua Schools site. I hope they are useful to teachers and pupils in other schools too!

This past week I've had the privilege of spending six days in Strasbourg in the company of a fantastic group of young people from schools in East Dunbartonshire. The students were taking part in a Euroscola activity, a day of debate and discussion organised by the European Parliament. Throughout the day the students were mixing with their counterparts from across the EU, discussing the future of Europe in a mixture of French and English.

Bé ja és molt tarde aixi que us dic bona nit i fins demà

It has been really interesting working with 玲玲, especially because of my own interest in Mandarin. Simplifying Mandarin into ten short lessons (surely you don’t need any more clues by now!) has been quite a challenge and it’s been fun balancing the two criteria for the phrases in our course: keeping it as simply as possible and trying to ensure that the chosen phrases are the most natural way of saying things.

We talked at great length about the whole issue of tones, and I often feel that too much concentration on tones puts learners off. Given the type of learner we’ll be aiming … ok I’ll say it … One Minute Mandarin at, putting learners off is the last thing we want to do. The whole point of the One Minute Languages courses is that they’re a structured approach the absolute basics of a language, hopefully helping learners catch the bug to learn a bit more. They are absolutely not intended to create fluent speakers, and this comes back to my own feelings about fluency.

I firmly believe that the vast majority of learners of a foreign language do not need to be fluent, or indeed anywhere near fluent. They need to be able to communicate at whichever level is most appropriate, and at the level which will serve the purpose they require at a given moment. In my experience being able to say a few phrases in a language has literally opened doors which would have otherwise remained closed. Through learning the basics of a language with our One Minute Languages courses, learners can say things like “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I’m learning (Mandarin/Catalan/Russian, etc). It’s quite difficult. Can you help me?” and I believe that these are the phrases which native speakers will appreciate.

I don’t intend this blog to be somewhere where I advertise our products – absolutely not. But it’s quite nice being able to share the ideas behind what we do.

Ultimately we decided to take a low-maintenance approach to tones and have introduced them once the learner is well into the course. Even then it’s linked to the fact that listeners have already learned 是 (shì) and then need to learn 十 (shí). I hope our treatment of tones goes down well with learners when we release the show. For info, when we release our larger-scale Mandarin projects there will be more help with getting used to tones!

So, instead of saying bona nit tonight, I’ll be saying wǎn ān – 晚安！

Bon vespre, jo sóc en Mark, i com na Lisa jo també estic intentant de millorar el meu català. Sóc també professor, o sigui sóc antic professor de castellà i francès i ara tinc la meva pròpia companyia que produeix materials per a l’ensenyament de les llengües. Visc a Escocia amb la meva dona que s’en diu Catriona i els nostres dos fills. I cal dir que prefereixo escriure en el meu bloc que parlar davant una càmera de video!

Penso que una mica de català cada dia és molt millor que una o dues hores una vegada a la setmana: per això m’agrada molt el refrany qu’em va ensenyar la Lisa: de mica en mica s’omple la pica.

Translation after the jump.

Unfortunately I don’t have enough time to write this blog every day. However, I don’t mean by that that I’m not thinking about Catalan every day! For example, on Sunday I listened to some podcasts in Catalan; yesterday I spoke with Lisa Stevens who’s also trying to improve her Catalan (or rather her Mallorquín); and today I’ve done lots: I listened to a podcast in the car on the way to a meeting, I chatted with a Mallorcan friend who was very suprised that I now speak a little Catalan, and I also listened to the interview between the IBWEB presenter and Ana Fernández Mora with whom I’ll be doing One Minute Catalan.

I think a little Catalan each day is much better than one or two hours once a week: for this reason I really like the saying which Lisa taught me: de mica en mica s’omple la pica, which literally means “the sink fills up little by little”.

Avui només he fet una mica de català: no he tingut molt temp perquè ahir celebràvem l’aniversari del meu fill i avui hem fet una festa per a ell i els seus amics. El meu fill es diu Matthew i ara té set anys. El temp passa molt de pressa!

Aquest vespre he anat al gimnàs i he nedat durant una hora. No hi havia molta gent: m’agrada quan no hi ha molta gent perquè és molt més relaxant.

Ara ja és tard i estic molt cansat aixi que és hora d’anar al llit. Fins demà.

[Translation after the jump]

Translation

First of all, I must say thanks to Ana for her help with my post from yesterday. Thanks also for the recording which you sent me to help me with my pronunciation!

It’s now late and I’m very tired so it’s time to go to bed. Until tomorrow.

Some thoughts and questions for further study

First of all, I was really pleased that I didn’t seem to make too many mistakes in yesterday’s post! I realise I’m giving myself un repte and not un desafiament. I’m still curious about the difference between llengüa and idioma, and I’ll have to sort out reflexive verbs and reflexive pronouns.

The other thing which seems quite tricky is to know which tense to use when talking in the past. I’m guessing that the perfect is used in a similar way to Spanish, as in today when I said aquest vespre he anat al gimnàs. I wonder if I could equally have said vaig anar al gimnàs, or would this be more like “last week I went …”? And would I ever use aní al gimnàs? I’ll have a look in the various books I have to see what I can find out.

Tomorrow I’ll write a post about the various resources I’m using: in addition to the books I’ve already mentioned, I’ve also been using some technology to help with my Catalan too. More about that tomorrow. Bona nit!

Em dic Mark. Visc en Escòcia i sóc director d’una companyia que ofereix materials per a la gent que vol aprendre altres idiomes. Sóc antic professor d’idiomes i parlo castellà, francès, italià, i una mica d’alemany, i de noruec. M’agrada aprendre altres idiomes perquè m’agrada comunicar amb altra gent. Per això, vull aprendre el català: vaig a passar algunes dies en Barcelona i hauré de parlar amb la gent en català. Vaig a intentar de millorar el meu català abans de viatjar allà.

És molt probable que, al veure aquest blog, vas pensar que ja parlo català. Però cal dir que vaig escriure aquest missatge amb diccionari, i llibre de verbs i gramàtica. Espero que esdevé (esdevindrà? esdevingui?) a poc a poc màs fàcil durant les properas setmanas.

Estic molt agraït a tots els que em poden (puguin?) ajudar amb el meu desafiament. Si em equivoco, si us plau, corregiu-me!

(Read more, including translation after the jump)

This is what I was trying to say:

My name is Mark. I live in Scotland and I’m the director of a company which provides materials to people who want to learn other languages. I’m a former languages teacher and I speak Spanish, French, Italian and a little German and Norwegian. I like learning other languages because I like communicating with other people. For this reason I want to learn Catalan: I’m going to spend a few days in Barcelona and I’ll have to speak with people in Catalan. I’m going to try to improve my Catalan before going there.

I’m very grateful to all those who can help me with my challenge. If I make mistakes, please correct me!]

So, any comments? I had to skip about a bit in the grammar book – I’m not at all sure about the reflexive pronouns and where they go. I’ve seen “me” and “em” both used, and I think there may even be differences in Mallorquín and Catalan usage there as I’m almost certain “My name is…” becomes “me nomen…” (they call me) in Mallorquín. Is there a rule as to when it’s “me” and when it’s “em“? I can check this in the grammar book in the next few days.

I hope I’m correct in thinking that you can combine ir with another infinitive to talk about the past in a simple way: vaig escriure… = “I wrote”.

In terms of what I’m hoping to achieve, I don’t simply want to learn a speech off by heart – that’s not the way I learn languages! I want to be able to communicate with people in Barcelona, and perhaps even understand and answer any questions which may be asked following my presentation.

So, now that I’ve admitted it to the world, I’m going to have to do it! And I’m hoping to use social networking to help me reach my goal. So, if you’re a native Catalan speaker and you think you can help, follow me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/markpentleton) – perhaps by eavesdropping on your conversations I’ll understand a bit more!

Va a ser un viatge molt interessant! Necessito l’ajuda de tots vosaltres!

I started my ‘big trip‘ a week past on Thursday when I flew from Glasgow to Keflavík in Iceland. Arriving late at night it was great to be picked up by a member of staff from the Northern Lights Inn at the airport. Joining me in the minibus were two elderly gentlemen who were planning a week of fishing in Iceland, recreating a trip of 50 years ago. I chose to decline their kind offer of a vodka nightcap, but wished them well on their holiday.

The Northern Lights Inn was a great discovery. I’d read a few reviews on Trip Advisor and it sounded my kind of place, near enough to Keflavík, and just next to the famous Bláa Lónið (Blue Lagoon) which Ewan had recommended. The staff couldn’t have been more helpful and ran a great taxi service back and forward to the airport and to the Blue Lagoon.

I spent the morning at the Blue Lagoon which was quite a unique experience. I was told that I’d chosen the best time to go because the lagoon becomes very busy late morning and in the afternoon because some of the buses which travel to the airport from Reykjavík stop off at the Blue Lagoon to allow people to visit on the way to the airport for a later flight. Soaking in the mineral-rich waters under a clear blue sky was heavenly!

I spent a few hours in Reykjavík before returning to the airport. I always enjoy a Scandinavian capital, and Reykjavík proved to be a very walkable city. Although I didn’t see a huge amount of Reykjavík in the short time I was there, I enjoyed walking along Laugavegur (as the photo shows, the “main shopping street”, just in case there is any doubt) and soon headed back to the bus station and headed towards the airport.

My favourite thing about Iceland? Without a doubt the language! No surprises there… I’ve always liked the sound of Icelandic and I admire the fact that it protects the integrity of the language by avoiding anglicisms and neologisms. There’s more information on Wikipedia, but as an example, the word for “telephone” is sími, which actually means “wire”, but is now used as the standard Icelandic word for telephone – including the wireless variety! I wonder if you buy a “sim” for your “sími”, or is there another word for sim?!

I’d love to go back to Iceland. I may try to follow up the link with the hotel with a view to doing One Minute Icelandic at some point. It would be great if I could combine that with seeing the Northern Lights, but that’s perhaps not the most financially sound reasoning!