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Dutch "Islands" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Links & Internet Resources |  | |
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5662 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 1 of 3 04 March 2012 at 6:53pm | IP Logged |
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Dutch Islands. Learn Dutch and English.
Inspired by several recent posts on HTLAL about Boris Shekhtman's language teaching/learning method called "islands", I put together a web site to explore the concept. I'll attach some material from the home page of Dutch Islands and a link to it. The main website is www.esdoornblad.ca. Esdoornblad is Dutch for maple leaf, the symbol for Canada. I see it as an expression of friendship with Dutch speakers everywhere. I invite you to have a look at Dutch Islands. It is an editable wiki. I have set up the infrastructure and populated some of the "islands", some just in English, and some in English and Dutch. There is both text and audio but the amount is very limited. I very much hope that it can grow and provide an extensive resource of Dutch and English islands. I especially hope that our native-Dutch members, and others who speak Dutch very well, will contribute. I intend to keep adding English islands. It would be great if these could be translated into good-quality Dutch. And if you could contribute Dutch audio, that would be even better. If you contribute a new Dutch island, I will translate it into English. Anyone can view the wiki. A simple log-in is required to edit. But that log-in in non-intrusive. You just need to establish a name and password, which is instantaneous. No other information is required or collected. Don't be afraid to edit. It is easy. It is backed up so it can easily be restored. Please edit, add and contribute. Comments and suggestions are welcomed. Here is some material from the home page: Welcome to Dutch Islands This web site is about learning Dutch by using a technique popularised by Boris Shekhtman, a very successful language teacher. His "method" is quite comprehensive and will not be addressed here. Rather, a part of his method called "language islands" will be used here to help Dutch and English language learners to vastly improve their conversational Dutch, and generally improve their writing, reading and listening skills as well. Language Islands A language island is a short paragraph about some specific subject in the language your are learning. The objective is to memorize the paragraph to ensure you could speak or write it very well. Ideally, your pronunciation would be native-like, but realistically, you pronounce it as well as you can. One island by itself is not very useful. The idea is to have many of these islands at your immediate disposal. You use them to help you with a conversation, or in your writing. Typically, they might be about: yourself (to introduce yourself in a conversation) where you live what you do (student, work, retired, etc.) things you like to do hobbies interests music, movies travels family things you need to do shopping traveling (directions, tickets, hotels, restaurants) whatever you want to talk about The people who have used "language islands" successfully say it really helps your confidence, your conversations and it really speeds your progress. You soon find yourself branching out from your islands, using parts of the information, the sentence structures and the vocabulary. Ideally, islands are first created in your native language from the things you normally talk about. Then they would be translated into your target language by a native who, ideally, would also help you with the islands and especially with the pronunciation. Here is the plan for Dutch Islands English and Dutch pairs of islands (to learn either). Each island pair will have its own page. Participation needed. This is like Wikipedia. We need your help to build new islands. Enter either an English island, a Dutch island, or both. Help translating if only one island of the pair exists. Add an island that you would like to have translated. Improve islands that exist. Contribute text and/or audio. Observe the Creative Commons Copyright Notice. Please do not contribute copyright material. Lets get started with Dutch Islands. http://www.esdoornblad.ca/JSPWiki/Wiki.jsp?page=DutchIslands 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5662 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 2 of 3 05 March 2012 at 2:51am | IP Logged |
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Example of a "constructed" Dutch island
I just added this "island" to Dutch Islands in the section Blogging/Language Blogging. I'll post it here as an example of what I think "Dutch Islands" is about. It is also an example of how you might build a Dutch island without being native Dutch. Comments and suggestions welcomed. ---------------------------------------------- (Notice: This "island" was an exercise in "island building". I wanted a Dutch island about language learning blogging. I harvested a whole lot of short sentences and expressions in Dutch from a language learning thread on http://www.wetenschapsforum.nl. Then I rearranged them to make a long "constructed" post. I retained most of the original Dutch, to retain the somewhat colloquial tone of the forum. Then I translated it to English. It is not meant to make much sense, but it has a lot of useful expressions for Dutch-language learners.) ---- Posted by: polyglot I had never heard of this site. But as already was mentioned in this thread, I am learning languages. Maybe I don't speak any language fluently. But I think I speak Dutch and English fluently. English is not my mother tongue. I can understand French well and speak it reasonably well. I can fluently read German. I can still translate Spanish with a dictionary. I can understand Spanish well, and I can speak it, reading goes well, but I make a lot of writing mistakes. I need spellcheckers. Portuguese: well understood, speak moderately, but reading and writing are bad. I don't speak a word of Italian. Italian is a damned difficult language, at least for me. But I can read it without a dictionary. Do you know what is crazy? Russian and Japanese do not interest me. So sad. But I speak a bit of Polish. But believe me, I am bad in Arabic. I think some people here exaggerate a bit about their languages and their vocabulary. I am curious. I am, by nature, a skeptic. I think that a number of members of this forum considerably overestimate their own knowledge. Nobody can speak another language fluently if it isn't their mother tongue, unless you grew up multilingual, or lived for years in some country. In my opinion, it is impossible to speak a language perfectly. Foreign language learning is a life's work. But I dare say that my Flemish is almost perfect. I have also learned Norwegian and Swedish in school. But I was a rather lazy student. I also had two years of Finnish. Afrikaans would have to be my second language. I had it for eight years. My passive knowledge of French is better than my active knowledge. It is not perfect. Yet I can read a French book. I am busy learning Spanish and also Portuguese. So if anyone can please teach me Spanish ... please! Languages are indeed also not my hobby. But I speak Chinese almost fluently, apart from specialised texts. In Germany I can order a beer. Cheers! I speak and write fluent Danish. Also I can translate a number of Latin texts without a dictionary. A good vocabulary in Latin is very handy for Romance languages.This year I have a new textbook for Latin vocabulary. Today was a very bad day. I made hundreds of spelling mistakes. I find that there is a big difference between grammatical mistakes and spelling mistakes. Everyone makes, to a lesser or greater degree, spelling mistakes in written language. But when you make grammatical mistakes, then you will do that also in spoken language. \\ \\ \\ Gepost door: polyglot Ik had nog nooit eerder van deze site gehoord. Maar zoals al eerder in dit draadje is opgemerkt, ik leer talen. Misschien spreek ik geen enkele taal vloeiend. Maar ik denk dat ik spreek Nederlands en Engels vloeiend. Engels is niet m'n moerstaal. Frans kan ik goed verstaan en redelijk goed spreken. Ik kan Duits vloeiend lezen. Spaans kan ik nog net vertalen met woordenboek. Ik kan Spaans goed verstaan, spreken kan ik ook, lezen gaat me goed af, maar met schrijven maak ik veel fouten. Ik heb spellingscontrole nodig. Portugues: verstaan goed. spreken matig, maar lezen en schrijven slecht. Ik sprak geen woord Italiaans. Italiaans is een verdomd moeilijke taal, tenminste vind ik. Maar ik kan het lezen zonder woordenboek. Weet je wat het gekke is? Russisch en Japaans interreseren me niet. Zo triest. Maar ik spreek een beetje Pools. Maar geloof mij, ik ben slecht in Arabisch. Volgens mij overdrijven sommigen hier een beetje over hun talen en hun woordenschat. Ik ben benieuwd. Ik van nature sceptisch ben. Ik denk dat een aantal leden van dit forum zijn eigen kennis beslist overschat. Niemand kan een andere taal vloeiend spreken als het zijn moedertaal niet is, tenzij je meertalig bent opgevoed of jaren in zo'n land bent gaan wonen. Ik ben van mening dat het onmogelijk is om een taal perfect te spreken. Vreemde talen leren is een levenswerk. Maar ik durf zeggen dat mijn Vlaams bijna perfect is. Ik heb in het school ook Noors en Zweeds geleerd. Maar ik was nogal een luie leerling. Ik heb ook twee jaartjes Finse gehad. Afrikaans zou mijn tweede taal moeten zijn. Ik heb het acht jaar gehad. Mijn passieve kennis van het Frans is beter dan mijn actieve kennis. Het is niet perfect. Toch kan ik een Frans boek lezen. Ik ben bezig met Spaans leren en ook Portugees. Dus als iemand me graag Spaans kan leren... graag! Talen zijn inderdaad ook mijn hobby niet. Maar ik spraak Chinees bijna vloeiend, behalve heel specialistische teksten. In Duitsland kan ik 'n biertje bestellen. Proost! Ik spreek en schrijf vloeiend Deens. Verder kan ik zonder woordenboek een groot aantal Latijnse teksten vertalen. Een goede woordenschat in Latijn is erg handig voor Romaanse talen. Ik heb dit jaar een nieuw leerboek over Latijnse woordenschat. Vandaag was echt een rotdag. Ik maakte honderden spelfouten. Ik vind dat er een groot verschil zit tussen grammaticale fouten en spelfouten. Iedereen maakt in meer of mindere mate spelfouten in de geschreven taal. Maar als je grammaticale fouten maakt dan doe je dat ook in de gesproken taal. ---- 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5662 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 3 of 3 06 March 2012 at 8:51pm | IP Logged |
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New Dutch Islands added
There have been many English-Dutch islands added to "Dutch Islands". Some audio has been added. Many more islands are waiting to be populated. It would be much appreciated if some of our native-Dutch members could visit "Dutch Islands" and review some of the material in the Dutch islands and/or contribute new islands or Dutch audio. English-Language Learners English-language learners are invited to request, via this thread, or via the Comments page on "Dutch Islands", any English "island" that they would like to see built. The following English-Dutch islands have been added to "Dutch Islands", listed by categories. Conversation Hello The Weather - 01 Goodbye About Yourself My Work - Teacher What I did today Your Town My Town Blogging Computer Blogging Language Blogging Misc Blogging Skype Exchanges Skype Exchange-01 Geography Netherlands Amsterdam Belgium Rotterdam Sint Maarten There are many additional islands that are not yet populated in the following categories: Your Interests Your Family Your Travels Your House Your Sports Your Gadgets Books Music Songs Gadgets Television Science Computers Mathematics History Language Learning Edited by tommus on 07 March 2012 at 3:32am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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