http://www.boroday.info/sign-language-classroom-games/
A look into the language courses people are searching for online reveals some curious things.
Overture provides a research tool that allows web developers to work out what people have been typing into the search engines over the last month. Being involved in language teaching, I ran a search on the 12 July 2007. This isn’t scientifically well founded research, but it is interesting.
Looking for what language courses people have been searching for, the top search is for English with 2,762 searches. Wow, remember these are searches in an English search engine. You’d have thought if someone spoke Spanish they’d use a Spanish language search engine wouldn’t you? Maybe people just use what comes with their browser. Perhaps what this is saying is that people in English speaking countries want English language courses, so maybe that’s not so surprising.
What comes next is a surprise too: Italian (2,160). There are about 61 million Italian speakers, and not much information on how many speak it as a second language in Wikipedia’s list of languages by number of native speakers. Basically it shows Italian as 19th most popularly spoken language worldwide. So why is it the second most popular search? Perhaps Italian culture is well regarded internationally. Could it be Italian football, Italian restaurants, even The Sopranos that’s driven this so high?
Next up is Spanish (1,266). That seems to make sense. For English speakers, Spanish is the world’s next most popular language that’s close to our own, and many of us holiday in Spanish speaking countries or work with Spanish speaking colleagues.
Quite a few people (792) would like to learn Japanese. The only person I know who learned some Japanese is an academic who, I fear, chose it in a narrow contest over Klingon as a dinner party curiosity.
The results from a search on “learn language” are different. This time it shows 7,788 wanting to learn Spanish, and the second most popular language (3,374) is sign language.
Now, there are lots of sign languages, including English and American which are mutually unintelligable, and very little information on how many ’speakers’ there are for each, but the British Deaf Association thinks up to 250,000 people use some BSL every day. If Americans do so in the same proportion, that would make 1,238,724 daily ’speakers’ which makes it slightly more popular worldwide than Bai, spoken in parts of China, and a little less popular than Makonde, spoken by the people of Mozambique and Tanzania. But that’s unfair .. people are much more likely in the UK or America to come across someone who signs than someone who speaks Makonde. All of which makes sign language an interesting alternative second language to Spanish, French, Italian and so on. Just in case it’s not clear, sign language is a proper language.
Another language I was expecting to see people wanting courses in is Chinese, given all the publicity about China being a burgeoning economy and all the trade we are doing with that country, but no-one seemed to want a Chinese language course. However, in the ‘learn language’ search, Chinese came up quite high with 3,374 seekers.
And the wildcard? Korean. 1,360 people a month want to learn the Korean language. I don’t know why.
Les Holland is learning Spanish and loving every minute of it. After trying lots of different books and classes, he found something that really worked. And then another. And then he built a system all his own that really really works. And in the end, he brought it all together in Learn Spanish Fast biz so you could benefit too.
Take ASL Love Katy & Sam
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CHART SIGN LANGUAGE 17 X 22 $1.99 Our long line of Cheap Charts are high in quality, yet low in price. It’s even large at 17″ x 22″. Information/reproducible activities are printed on the back… |
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SIGN LANGUAGE FUN IN THE EARLY $9.99 Help students improve verbal communication, visual discrimination, spatial memory, early reading skills, and more. Designed for teachers and parents, this multisensory approach can help all students (hearing, hearing-impaired, deaf, special needs, gifted, and English language learners) improve language and literacy skills. No previous experience with American Sign Language is needed. Includes teac… |
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SIGN LANGUAGE FOR THE EARLY $9.41 - 48 cards featuring photographs of a person signing in American Sign Language, each 4.25 in. x 5.5 in. – Signs are included for following directions, food/eating, feelings, people & pets, and manners/everyday signs – Teachers guide with descriptions of how to correctly perform each sign… |
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Photographic Learning Cards, Sign Language in the Early Childhood Classroom 48 cards featuring photographs of a person signing in American Sign Language, each 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″. Signs are included for following directions, food/eating, feelings, people and pets, and manners/everyday signs. Teacher’s guide with descriptions of how to correctly perform each sign…. |
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American Sign Language Clip and Create 5 – ASL Clip Art CD-ROM (Windows) $39.95 The Custom Printing section allows you to create various types of materials (e.g., single and double-fold cards, stationary, 2-5 page banners, labels). Once you have selected the type of material you want to make, you can import sign clipart from the dictionary, use shapes or draw freehand, add text, import other images, and of course, save, and/or print your creation. The new layering feature all… |
