Unanswered Questions
51 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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How can English language teaching research be more relevant to teachers?
I have been teaching English as a foreign language for nearly 40 years, the last thirty-one years at universities in Japan. I have researched and published on a range of topics that include "the ...
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10
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Research on effectiveness of language teaching in ulpans / ulpanim?
After the creation of Israel in 1948, ulpans (or ulpanim) were set up for the intensive study of Hebrew. Today, ulpans still exist; they are institutes or schools "designed to teach adult immigrants ...
CommunityBot
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Online course or resources on speed reading in Chinese
In a comment to my previous question about the transfer of speed reading skills to other languages, someone wondered whether this would be affected by the writing system. This is very plausible. In ...
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Learn alphabet by replacing letters in native text
I've read before somewhere about a way to quickly learn how to read a foreign alphabet. You take an unfamiliar letter and put it in English words where the sound of that letter makes sense. That ...
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I want to train myself to use the Chinese grammar particle 了 correctly: how do I go about doing that?
Motivation: In Chinese grammar, there's a particle 了 which has two main uses: completion 了 (post-verb) and change-of-state 了 (end of sentence). I'm bad at using this particle (see How does someone ...
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What is the proper etiquette for a nonnative speaker who wants to practice Mandarin at a Chinese supermarket in the US?
There is a Chinese supermarket in the US I often shop at. I often hear the staff speaking Mandarin or Cantonese, and occasionally Hakka or Fujianese, amongst themselves and to Chinese customers. I can ...
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Is it more advantageous to learn the writing system or the spoken form of a language first?
There are several primary aspects of a language, including both the writing system and the spoken form of a language. What does scientific research say about the order to learn these two factors when ...
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Evidence that learning radicals speeds up character learning in Japanese?
Characters — in Chinese or Japanese (or Korean Hanja) — can be learnt in various ways, and it is plausible that paying attention to radicals helps memorization and retention. But is there any hard ...
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Based on research, is it better to learn a new language in your mother tongue?
I live in a multilingual country and often people that visit a language course will have the class in one of the languages spoken here, let's say French.
But most of these people do not speak a lot of ...
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5
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Is the number of exposures required for retaining new words related to the teaching method?
Recently, Rebecca J. Stones asked, Does it take “about 50 exposures for most words to be retained in long term memory”?
The question was about a claim by Terry Waltz that classroom learners need a few ...
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Is there any evidence that correcting a learner's oral mistakes in class has a negative impact?
In a comment on the question Is there a scientific evidence of class / teacher importance for adult learners? Gavenkoa makes the following claim:
There is evidence that certain teaching activities ...
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5
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High-qualilty videos for New Practical Chinese Reader
新实用汉语课本 or New Practical Chinese Reader is a series of textbooks for learning Standard Chinese published by Beijing Language and Culture University Press. There are six textbooks, containing 70 ...
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What are general cognitive principles that could explain why Heisig's method works?
This is a follow up to this question on Remembering the Kana.
James Heisig is author of a famous series of books involving learning Chinese and Japanese characters. These books are
Remembering the ...
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How to overcome language learning fatigue when learning Standard Chinese?
An acquaintance of mine has been learning Standard Chinese in his spare time for a number of years. He passed the HSK3 test with a very high score and started preparing for HSK4. However, he recently ...
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What can teachers do to promote or increase mastery of 把 structures in Standard Chinese?
Each lesson in the Chinese series of texbooks New Practical Chinese Reader contains a section entitled "Master the following phrases". Below are a few examples from lesson 16 (in volume 2):
现在就去 - ...
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