Mango Languages

Feature Friday: Libraries Rock

First, I have to say I LOVE my job. And this is one of those times that really reminds me how lucky I am to get to do what I do with such cool customers – Libraries.

Mango likes to have fun…and at the New York Library Association trade show we really like to do it up. Why? Because we have a serious reputation to uphold. We have won best booth for two years running and the themes of the shows keep getting better and better. This years theme is Libraries Rock. And we couldn’t agree more!

Libraries are centers of the community. They are Google, Amazon, and Starbucks all rolled into one super human hero of searching capabilities and knowledge. I read a tweet today from the #nyla11 Hashtag that said 60% of librarians had helped someone get a job this year. Libraries are helping to keep this country working too! Wow!

We are always humbled by the words of love that our customers give to us…we honestly love you too. We wouldn’t be here without you and say thank you for all you have given us! I know that I have made some wonderful librarian friends and can’t wait for next year’s theme and show to do it all again!

Libraries…YOU rock! Thanks for letting us be your groupies!

Meet Mango Elf Gulshen Karahann

Feature Friday:

We have had the pleasure of Gulshen’s presence at the Mango Grove since November of 2010. I recently talked to her about her background and found it super interesting.

Gulshen was born in Korla, People’s Republic of China. She moved to the U.S. in 1999 because her husband was going to graduate school here. She had learned English in college and had studied linguistics, specifically Turkic languages. Gulshen speaks Uyghur (her native tongue, a member of Turkic Language family), Mandarin Chinese, and English. She understands most of the Central Asian languages as well.

She loved the linguistic graduate program back in China as she learned about the history of her native language, why certain words are used and where many words are borrowed from. But when she moved to the U.S. she had to stop her linguistic studies, not many schools here specialize in Turkic languages. Hmmm…I wonder why. She started a family but made a promise to her dad to finish her Master’s degree.

After her son was born she applied to college here in the U.S. and decided to go into accounting. Crazy right!?! A friend of hers said she could get a good job in this field, so she thought she would give it a try. She ended up loving it and finished Schoolcraft College in August 2007 and transferred her credits to Walsh College in September 2007. She received her bachelor’s degree in accounting from Walsh College in December 2009.

She found Mango through an online job search and fell in love with the idea of working at a language company where both her passion for linguistics and her knowledge of accounting could be put into practice. Gulshen is The Numberist (number+linguist) who makes sense of our numbers and accounting here at Mango Languages. We are so glad to have her and her very rich background here at the Grove.

Do you use what you went to school for?

Tartan Day!

Tartan Day, a holiday celebrating Scottish heritage, is held every year on the 6th of April.  This is the same date on which the Declaration of Arbroath, the declaration of Scottish Independence, was signed in 1320.

What is Tartan, you ask? Tartan is the pattern we call plaid in North America. If you go to Scotland, though, plaid only refers to a tartan cloth slung over the shoulder, or a blanket.

Tartan Day originally began as a single celebration in 1982, but didn’t pick up steam until around the mid-80′s, mostly in Canada. There, an annual “Gathering of the Clans” takes place on April 6th or the Sunday nearest to it on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. This includes pipes, drums, and dancing hosted by Canada’s oldest civilian pipe band.

The United States, with an estimated 6 million people who claim Scottish descent, has been a little late in the game. It wasn’t until 2004 that the National Capital Tartan Day Committee successfully lobbied the House of Representatives to designate April 6th of each year as National Tartan Day. This Resolution was adopted on March 9, 2005.

Do you have any Scottish friends? Be sure to wish them a happy Tartan Day!

Video: Mango Languages – The Mango Culture, Webisode 9

We are a crazy bunch and act very much like a family…see some of our antics here!

If you worked at Mango what kind of office culture would you want to see?

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?