Mango Languages

Mango Monday: Do you speak Texan?

Do you speak Texan?
Mangoes traded the snowy Michigan weather for some southern hospitality (and sunshine) while attending ALA Midwinter 2012 in Dallas, Texas!

While we got a little taste of the south, we gave a taste of mango smoothies to stoppers-by at the Mango booth. Attendees could also check out demonstrations of the Mango iPhone app, Little Pim and learn some Hindi!

While we were sporting tie-dye and mango smoothie sugar-buzzes, we saw many wonderful familiar faces, made great new friends and heard inspiring language learning success stories.

We even got a short lesson in “Southern English” from a few true Texans, y’all!

Check out some pictures from our adventure and let us know: did you drop by the Mango Languages booth at ALA Midwinter in Dallas this year? Do you still remember how to say, “where is the bus station” in Hindi?

You’re never too old.

The  Mango marketing team was recently in Dallas where we met Lewisville Public Library patron Raleigh who told us his Dad’s story using Mango:

“I want to tell you about my Father. He is 88 years old and he decided he wanted to learn Spanish. We went to the Lewisville Public Library and registered him. He had to learn the Internet but once he did, he completed the Mango Basic course as well as the Mango Complete course. Each course was very understandable, great layout, great way to learn a foreign language. It’s all thumbs up for Mango from us!”

We love hearing stories about the young, old and everyone in between learning with Mango! Do you have any stories about learning a language very early or very late in life?

5 Ways to Make Language Learning Work for You

One of our linguist elves, Kimberly Cortes, wrote an article that was published today on www.HowToLearn.com. We are so excited about this!

The five ways to make foreign language learning work for you are listed here:

1. Get exposed!
2. Make it meaningful.
3. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.
4. Practice active learning.
5. Make it fun!

To read the entire article, click here.

What ways do you make language learning work for you?

Intuitive Language Construction – Part III Grammar

We are excited to continue sharing our language learning methodology–we call it the linguistic science behind the Mango Languages Online Language Learning Software.

Intuitive Language Construction was developed after looking at current products on the market and listening to feedback from users.  The one thing we heard over and over is that they wanted a program that was fun, easy, completely integrated, and that included the following components:

1. Vocabulary (Click to see previous post)
2. Pronunciation (Click to see previous post)
3. Grammar
4. Culture
5. Comprehension
6. Retention

In this post we are going to discuss the third component of Intuitive Language Construction…Grammar.  Grammar is the way the words combine to form sentences, and this is really at the core of what makes our Intuitive Language Construction methodology unique.

Many other language learning systems minimize the importance of grammar by teaching you simply to utter phrases and vocabulary rather than to carry on a real conversation.  I think this is so strange, because when I was in school all of my teachers stressed how important grammar is.  Unfortunately, it is underserved in most language learning tools.

Mango is different.  Because Intuitive Language Construction is based on real conversations, Mango students are continually learning sentence structure and grammar in addition to vocabulary and pronunciation and culture.

Mango incorporates a variety of grammar tools such as semantic color mapping, literal translations, grammar notes, and critical thinking exercises, which help users learn to adapt their skills and apply them to similar conversations.

They start to identify and recognize linguistic patterns, and they come to understand intuitively how to recombine the pieces they learn to construct new meanings.  The coolest part of it all is that this knowledge is acquired without the student even realizing they are learning it.  We really should call it “stealth grammar” because it sneaks up on you.  Grammar doesn’t have to be hard, but it is an essential part of learning a foreign language.

What do you think language would be like without grammar?

To Communicate Without Communicating: Is It Possible?

It is widely accepted that communication is needed for language learning.   Rooted in this idea is the communicative approach to second language acquisition, or Communicative Language Teaching (CLT).  Two main principles of CLT are: (1) the development of communicative competence, and (2) the supposition that communication is both an end and a means to language learning (Alcón, 2004).   Dell Hymes (1972) identifies the development of “communicative competence” as the main objective of CLT.

Communicative competence is really just a fancy term for the ability to communicate, that is, the ability to efficiently and appropriately use language in a given situation.  The idea that communication is both an end and a means to language learning is supported by additional research and theories such as Long’s Interaction Hypothesis.  As discussed in my previous blog post, Long argues that interaction and the fine tuning, or negotiation of meaning, of the target language input that occurs in conversational interaction is a driving force for language learning.

Communication is the main goal of using Mango.  Following the Communicative Approach to language learning and in agreement with Long’s Interaction Hypothesis, communication is both the end and means to language learning.  The Mango System applies this idea by beginning each chapter with an authentic conversation in the target language.  The student is then requested to use the target language as they learn it, either by repeating material that was taught or by creating new phrases/chunks out of previously learned material.  Once a chapter has been completed the student will then hear the initial conversation again.  So the Mango system begins with a conversation, provides input, solicits output, and then ends with a conversation, all of which are elements of communication.  With this we can see that Mango applies the concept of communication as a means and end to LL.

So what do you think?  Can you learn to communicate without communicating?

How Do Children Learn a Language?

In the previous post I talked about the example, John likes Mary more than his wife, and I said that it can be understood as having two meanings (John likes Mary more than he likes his wife and John likes Mary more than his wife does). I also said that these two meanings are easily discernible by a child. I can see you smiling full of doubt because a little child won’t be able to understand the connotations, so let us delve a bit more into this idea.

What do we mean when we say that a child can speak a language?

The answer is that a child can clearly and easily express his thoughts, his needs and his feelings. He can understand those around him and be perfectly understood. What’s more, through the language he can be transported to imaginary worlds where sticks of wood can speak and bad magicians turn people into frogs, and he has no problem whatsoever with doing that although none of these things happen in the real world. 

Let us think for a moment how a child achieves all that: he has no formal and systematic education; everything comes naturally, he doesn’t have to try hard and he always succeeds. Just compare a child to an adult trying to learn a foreign language and you will see my point. The speech the child hears is sometimes half-said, elliptic as we call it, and some children hears this truncated form of speech called motherese. In four years he is a perfect native speaker. But is what a child achieves truly a great accomplishment? 

Stay tuned!