Friday, April 14, 2006 April 14 Mother Language Day in Georgia (Georgia Government Website) -- Georgian Parliamentary Chairperson Nino Burjanadze said that the authorities should spare no efforts to teach the Georgian language to citizens of non-Georgian ethnicity. Burjanadze was speaking at the parliamentary session on April 14, which marks Mother Language Day in Georgia, as on this day 28 years ago thousands rallied in Tbilisi to protest against the Soviet authorities' proposed law to replace Georgian with Russian as the official language in the then-Soviet Republic. The draft never took effect as a result of the protests. Nino Burjanadze said that the Georgian language "should become a factor of unification, rather than a factor of separation." "We should also respect the Abkhaz and Ossetian languages, as well as other languages which are spoken in Georgia. The Abkhaz language has special status and I am sure that we will need to learn at least a little Abkhaz," Burjanadze said. The Georgian Constitution says that along with Georgian, Abkhaz is an official language on the territory of Abkhazia. "I hope we will be united around common language and common values," Burjanadze added. 12:53:51 PM    comment [] iPOD as Language Learning Tool Newswise -- The 63 students studying intermediate French at Grand Valley State University each received an iPod on the first day of class. While they've listened to a lot of music, it has been music with French lyrics. Though iPods have been used at other universities to distribute lectures, this may be one of the first instances of their use for language acquisition. Each week the students were assigned four songs and worked on vocabulary, listening comprehension and pronunciation. The iPods were programed with text files including the lyrics of each song. In addition to music, students listen to authentic podcasts of news from French radio and complete assignments on the content of these. Also, the vocabulary lessons in their textbook are supplemented by flash card slide shows on the iPods, with images accompanied by sound of the words being pronounced. For their final class project, students will become French DJs, creating podcasts including their favorite French songs, mock interviews with the artists, commercials and weather forecasts. 11:01:44 AM    comment [] © Copyright 2007 Global Translations.

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