Will Slade's Language Teaching Blog

Several people have asked me for recommendations for studying Spanish in other countries.  I tell them that my first recommendation comes from my own personal experience; CPI or Centro Panamericano de Idiomas did an amazing job teaching conversational Spanish with well-organized units based around grammatical topics and interesting content.  The locations are spectacular, the teachers competent, interested, and friendly, and the host families became my second and third families! Another school that I would love to visit is Cetlalic or Centro Tlahuica de Lengua e Intercambio Culutural in Cuernavaca, Mexico.  They teach with a focus on social justice and Mexican cultures that is unique among the programs that I have heard of.  My friend and professor, Deborah Palmer, studied there and has taken students and her family there; she recommends it very highly! Another program that friends have recommended is in Antigua, Guatemala. Ixchel Spanish School  received high praise from my fr

I was searching for ideas for interviews that students could do with random people in the community, but I stumbled on some pretty cool resources that might help with job interviews as well. Talk English. com has a bunch of sample questions and advice on how to answer them.  It's pretty advanced, but it could be really helpful even for a native speaker. I may have posted this before, but the University of Iowa's English Phonetics page is a really powerful tool for the mechanics of producing sounds in English!  They have other languages' phonetics too, such as German and Spanish!

I have been fairly impressed with two apps for language learning.  These are by no means a magic solution that replace attending class and practicing with real people (nothing is, despite the claims of Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone).  But they do as good a job as much more expensive software for providing basic vocabulary, spelling, listening, and functional grammar practice. Duolingo has options to study French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German for English speakers.  I just now noticed (maybe it's a new addition) that they are offering English for Spanish speakers, French speakers, Italian speakers, and Portuguese speakers.  Good for them!  Complaints: sometimes I have noticed that the stress on the syllables in the Spanish version are incorrect, leading to some strange pronunciations that a Spanish speaker would not understand.  Also, I find the typing on the phone a little bit cumbersome, so I actually prefer the computer version.  But there are options to repeat less