Author Archive
Let the machine guide you: Touring with your ears
To know the world, just listen to it – these words from writer Amin Maalouf are the motto of Zevisit. The website offers free audio guides to a number of destinations, mostly in France, but also to other places around the world, such as tours to Istanbul or the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. The number [...]
“An interesting and intelligent teacher”
Not such a bad idea to broaden your target group by teaching them the language you are broadcasting in, right? The British Broadcasting Company – BBC – offers several services to learn and improve your English. Besides the “The Teacher” videos – who is in his own words “a very interesting and intelligent man” explaining [...]
Learning with the heardrum
“Neural tissue required to learn and understand a new language will develop automatically from simple exposure to the language” – that’s Paul Sulzburger’s main argument . The PhD graduate of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, taught Russian for several years to Kiwi students and watched them consistently drop out. What makes it so hard [...]
Babbel investor Kizoo: “In business, at the end of the day, you have to trust each other”
Babbel Blog’s Interview with Frank Schüler und Matthias Hornberger of Kizoo, a Babbel investor. Schüler is Kizoo’s president and was managing director of subsidiaries of Web.de; Hornberger is Kizoo’s CFO and responsible for Finance, Controlling, Investor Relations & Corporate Affairs. (For the original German version click here) When did you first hear about the “internet”? [...]
Babbel-Investor Kizoo: „Am Ende des Tages muss man sich bei Geschäften vertrauen“
For the english translation click here. Interview mit Frank Schüler und Matthias Hornberger von Kizoo, einem der Investoren hinter Babbel. Schüler ist Kizoo-President und war zuvor bei Web.de als Geschäfsführer einiger Tochterfirmen tätig. Hornberger ist als CFO für Finanzen, Controlling, Investor Relations & Corporate Affairs bei Kizoo verantwortlich. Wann haben sie das erste Mal vom [...]
Failed symbolism – perils for non-native speakers
Imagine the moment, when the responsible editor of the “Max Planck Research” magazine learned, that the chinese symbols on the cover of its latest issue were an advertisment for some kind of strip club. That was not intended by the publication of the old and respected German research institute - as can be read in [...]
Lack of language a security risk?
More then 200 Million high school students in China study English while about 25,000 of their U.S. counterparts study Chinese language according to a Report from a Northwestern University graduate journalism student. It is not only global competition in economic terms which suffers under the unwillingness of more then the half of US high school [...]
Jason Lutes: “Making the leap from cold history to something that feels more alive”
The recently published “Berlin – City of Smoke”, playing in 1929/30, is the second book in an eventual graphic-novel triology. Its creator, Jason Lutes, talks about diving into German history without speaking German. You hadn’t been to Berlin before you started the comic – How did you make a picture for yourself? I did about [...]
Does code count as a language?
The following statement of Kristian over at web-translations made me wonder. He was writing about how much is too much in language learning, and ends with the following: “As for me, well, I speak 6 languages…English, French, small talk, MSN speak, some basic programming languages (do they count? They should as they have strict syntax [...]
Connectivism: Education as an act of liberty
How about a glimpse into the future of online education? Stephen Dowes’ article about “The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On” is an informative read about recent trends in eLearning. It also gives quite plausible predictions for things to come. Besides statements about “informal learning” (have a look at our factsheet for all these [...]