EXPLORING SPANISH AND ENGLISH OR LANGUAGES. TO LEAD A MEANINGFUL LIFE =vivir una vida que tenga sentido

    Working with people ageing is an essential worry for the achievement of all learners at all levels of inclusive lifelong learning can be improved in a meaningful way that enhances our opportunities for an effective participation in society.


What do I mean by lifelong learning?

The policy debate over the last 20 years (30 years in Spain as a Adult Education) has been about bringing all types of learning together and creating the frameworks able to recognise and validate it. The aim is to link the learning taking place in a variety of settings i.e. educational institutions, in-company training, on-line learning, courses organised by civil society organisations, learning resulting from daily activities related to work, family or leisure. It is relevant for a wide range of stakeholders and institutions, including those from the youth area, the voluntary sector and work. Lifelong learning covers “all learning activity undertaken throughout life, with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competencies within a personal, civic, social and/or employment-related perspective” (European Commission). A literal definition is simply ‘all learning’ that people acquire across their entire life spanL – in formal, non-formal or informal settings. Therefore, learning is a continuous task of the society and the individual that extends to all areas of life ‘from cradle to grave’. This concept emerged in European Union policy papers in the 1990´s. However, it is not new in international literature (UNESCO, OECD, Council of Europe). Of particular importance, the two landmark UNESCO publications, Learning to Be (1972), and Learning: The Treasure Within (1996) have been key sources for education policy makers and practitioners internationally. They have been influential in promoting an integrated and humanistic vision of education framed by the paradigm of lifelong learning and by the four pillars of learning to be, to know, to do, and to live together. The UNESCO is currently re-thinking education building on these key concepts. (See the entris of this blog)

A network of languages. What language is more important today? An answer.
Global Language Network by César Hidalgo. An profesor of Institute Massachuset.

What languages are the hardest to learn? The answer here
There's a reason why most students start with French, German or Spanish as a second language. These languages are somewhat similar to English and require (relatively) less time to learn than most. Using information from the Foreign  Service Institute, this infographic from Voxy categorizes 23 languages by the level of difficulty.
English and Spanish have the same difficult.

How about language.
Can any animals talk like humans?

Humans use similar sounds for common words in more than 6000 languages

But why do so many human languages demonstrate these ties to this hidden, universal language of  sounds that informs the way we speak? The researchers aren't themselves sure. They considered it could be the remnant of some form of "prehistoric protolanguage" that was once spoken by the earliest humans before the evolution of modern languages – but their own analysis suggests it's more likely that biology is somehow at play here.

Analizando.... Y PIENSA QUE LOS NATIVOS ESTUDIAN LOS SONIDOS AISLADOS PARA APREHENDERLES 

English: Stress-timed Rhythm                                                     Chinese: Syllable-timed Rhythm                 Pronunciation is important.

A stress-timed language is a language where the stressed syllables are said at approximately regular intervals, and unstressed syllables shorten to fit this rhythm. Stress-timed languages can be compared with syllable-timed ones, where each syllable takes roughly the same amount of time.
Example
English and German are examples of stress-timed languages, while Spanish and Japanese are syllable-timed.

También puedes leer a modo de introducción The differences between English and Spanish cuya referencia está en Coe, N. in Swan, M. & Smith, B. Learner English: A teacher's guide to interference and other problems. (1987) Cambridge University Press.

SPANIARS ARE IMPROVING OUR ENGLISH LANGUAGE according EF ENGLISH PROFICIENCY INDEX 2014 

The results show a continuing trend towards better English language skills in Spain, with the country one of the biggest improvers since 2007 — behind only Turkey, Poland and Estonia.

"Spain is seeing the results of a significant change in attitude toward English language education. The Spanish government has defined English as one of  seven basic skills, alongside Spanish and math," the authors of the EF study noted.
The report also noted the huge increase in the number of bilingual schools in the country, where students spend 30 percent of the day in an English-speaking environment. The latest EF English Language Proficiency Index showed Spanish women had slightly better English than Spanish men, while people aged 35 to 44 had the best English. In terms of regions, the highest scores were in the Basque Country while the lowest were in ExtremaduraThe EF study also concluded there exist strong correlations between English proficiency and income, quality of life, ease of doing business, Internet usage, and years of schooling. These correlations are remarkably stable over time, stated EF in its findings.

THE ACCENT. 

The cumulative auditory effect of those features of pronunciation which identify where a person is from, regionally or socially. The linguistics literature emphasizes that the term refers to pronunciation only, and is thus distinct from dialect, which refers to grammar and vocabulary as well. The investigation of the ways in which accents differ from each other is sometimes called accent studies. Regional accents can relate to any locale, including both rural and urban communities within a country (e.g. ‘West Country’, ‘Liverpool’) as well as national groups speaking the same language (e.g. ‘American’, ‘Australian’), and our impression of other languages (‘foreign accent’, ‘Slavic accent’). Social accents relate to the cultural and educational background of the speaker. Countries with a well-defined traditional social-class system, such as India and Japan, reflect these divisions in language, and accent is often a marker of class.

In Britain, the best example of a social accent is the regionally neutral accent associated with a public-school education, and with the related professional domains, such as the Civil Service, the law courts, the Court and the BBC – hence the labels ‘Queen’s English’, ‘BBC English’, and the like received pronunciation (RP) is the name given to this accent, and because of  its regional neutrality RP speakers are sometimes thought of as having ‘no accent’. This is a misleading way of putting it, however: linguistics stresses that everyone must have an accent, though it may not indicate regional origin. The popular label ‘broad accent’ refers to those accents that are markedly different from RP.

 The emphasis which makes a particular word or syllable stand out in a stream of speech – one talks especially of an accented sound/word/syllable, or the accent(ual) pattern of a phrase/sentence. The term is usually found in a discussion of metre (metrics), where it refers to the ‘beats’ in a line of poetry – the accented syllables, as opposed to the unaccented ones. But any style of spoken language could be described with reference to the relative weight (accentuation) accent of its syllables: one might talk of the ‘strongly accented’ speech of a politician, for instance. Technically, accent is not solely a matter of loudness but also of pitch and duration, especially pitch: comparing the verb record (as in I’m going to record the tune) and the noun (I’ve got a record), the contrast in word accent between record and record is made by the syllables differing in loudness, length and pitch movement. The notion of pitch accent has also been used in the phonological analysis of these languages, referring to cases where there is a restricted distribution of tone within words (as in Japanese).

A similar use of these variables is found in the notion of sentence accent (also called ‘contrastive accent’). This is an important aspect of linguistic analysis, especially of intonation, because it can affect the acceptability, the meaning, or the presuppositions of a sentence (…) The term stress, however, is often used for contrasts of this kind (as in the phrases ‘word stress’ and ‘contrastive stress’). An analysis in terms of pitch accent is also possible. The total system of accents in a language is sometimes called the accentual system, and would be part of the study of phonology. The coinage accentology for the study of accents is sometimes found in European linguistics.

(CRYSTAL, DAVID (2008 ): A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Sixth Edition. Blackwell Publising, Oxford UK. P. 4) 

AN OPINION. Onestopenglish.com. Skills pronunciationWhat accent should I teach? I suggest you teach your own accent. Whether you are a native or non-native speaker, teach the accent that you speak. Tell your students there are many English accents around the world, and that you will expose them to some through the course materials, the internet and movies, and they can try them out too. Having fun with accents means having fun with pronunciation and gaining confidence.
What about Received Pronunciation (RP)? Although RP is a minority English pronunciation, spoken in the South East of England, it was for historical reasons selected as a prescriptive model of English in teaching materials. Those historical reasons are changing, and it is now better to treat RP as a point of reference and not as a preferred pronunciation target. Certainly RP has widespread intelligibility, but so do many other accents. The American English ‘equivalent’ is known as General American (GA).
So, what is the best pronunciation target for my students?The aim is not that they should sound like a native speaker, nor that they should adopt a specific accent such as RP. Rather, the aim for your students should be comfortable without difficulty or distraction, and when they listen they can comfortably follow what different speakers are saying.

This means two separate pronunciation targets: a speaking/productive one and a listening/receptive one. The speaking target can be slower and perhaps more careful and the listening target requires the student to follow more rapid speakers with different accents and differing clarity. For example, a student can say What’s the time? but needs to understand others saying wostime?.
Should students keep their own accent?We don’t need to tell students to lose their own accent because we all have an accent. We should help our students to speak and listen with comfort and confidence and enable them to discover that they have the capacity to develop and change their pronunciation in the direction of any accent, if they have the interest and will. The important thing is that they discover that they can learn new pronunciations, be understood, and enjoy it.
Won’t changing my students’ accents change their identity?We do not want to undermine a student’s sense of identity if that is connected with their pronunciation. But, nor do we want to hide behind identity as an excuse not to show students how to change their pronunciation and adopt the accent of their choice. I don’t think I have ever had a student in my class who was not excited by the discovery that they could change their pronunciation and then change it back if they wished!

 Expose your students to other accents of English whenever possible.
Constantly expose your students to short clips of different accents through course materials, online resources and accents of other teachers in the school. Expose them both to well-known global varieties of English for example accents from the United States, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, etc and to local accents of English from anywhere in the world for example in the UK this could be a Devon accent or an accent of someone from Liverpool or Edinburgh.

Invite them to notice and play with the differences between accents. The more they do this with their voice the more they will educate their ear to hear the distinctions when listening to different accents outside the class. Here are some YouTube videos you might like to use.
Twenty one accents https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UgpfSp2t6k
One woman, 17 British accents https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyyT2jmVPAk
Fun tour of American accents https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NriDTxseog
3. Be playful with different accentsThe best way to notice different accents is to try saying the different pronunciations. Get your students and yourself to do this playfully, and with pleasure. Encourage students to listen to the differences and above all enjoy it. If you the teacher joins in and experiments, you can relieve the anxiety and grow an atmosphere of creative exploration and fun in which there is laughter with each other, not at each other.
David and Ben Crystal have a website at http://www.panmacmillan.com/book/bencrystal/yousaypotato which consists of people round the world saying the sentence “This is how I say potato and I come from …” Your class could listen to the differences, and add their own. 
4. Practise sounds and words, but then immediately join them upHelp your students to practise individual sounds, but then ensure they join the sounds up into words, and join the words up into connected pieces of speech. A good tip is this: The right words in the right order is not the same as correct. When doing grammar and vocabulary exercises in class it is easy for the teacher to say good when you hear the right words in the right order. But it is not actually ‘good’ until it has the best connected up flow and clarity that they can manage at that moment. Students notice how it brings the language alive when you require this and you will quickly raise the standard in your class. Using a smart phone you can get students to practice recording and listening to their own versions of a connected up sentences that you are practising in class.
5. Aiming for comfortable intelligibilityTell your students that a core aim in learning English is ‘comfortable intelligibility’ when speaking or listening. This is important as it gives an overall standard for progress. To develop the ability to listen to rapid speech, get your students to imitate, and practice bits of rapid production. Not because they need to speak quickly themselves, but because this helps them to listen quickly. The mouth educates the ear. I tell my students “I don’t expect you to speak rapidly, but you still have to listen rapidly”.
 For more practical ideas see my blog www.adrianpronchart.wordpress.com

ENGLAND TODAY
The most potent symbols of the British establishment, including the coronation of the next monarch and the House of Lords, need to adapt to reflect modern Britain, which is increasingly less religious, less Christian and more diverse, a major new report says.
“Britain’s landscape in terms of religion and belief has been transformed beyond recognition,” says the report, Living With Difference. It points to three “striking” trends:
• The rapidly increasing number of people with non-religious belief and identities, now almost half the population.
• The decline in Christianity, now a minority of the population – and among those, a huge shift away from mainstream denominations to evangelical and Pentecostal churches.
• Increased diversity in faith and rapid demographic growth of Muslim, Sikh and Hindu populations in the UK.
(...)
Acknowledging that society “needs customs, symbols and ceremonies which give public expression to how it sees itself”, it says that those responsible for such events, including the coronation, should “ensure that the pluralist character of modern society is reflected”.
Article. The Guardian.2015/dec/07. Key Symbols of the Establishment must reflect modern Britain

Has the queen become frightfully common Received pronunciation / Estuary pronunciation
By the middle of the 20th Century, the class system itself had become a little more fluid; now, accent was one of the few ways to mark out those who had inherited their wealth from those who had earned it.
(...) As more and more people of working class background have begun to occupy positions of power – some characteristics of more regional southern English accents have started to creep into the crystal tones of Received Pronunciation.
(...) he thinks an answer comes from some interesting recent psychological studies looking at the art of conversation. Various experiments have found that each time we speak to someone, our accent moves very slightly to match theirs, perhaps an unconscious effort to build rapport. There is also some evidence that it improves your comprehension of what they are saying

ACCENTS
These are the accents we find the most and least attractive

Most attractive British Isles accents:

1. Irish (42)

2. Received Pronunciation (31)

3. Welsh (20)

4. Yorkshire (15)

5. West Country (13)

Least attractive British Isles accents:

5. Glaswegian (-29)

4. Cockney (London) (-30)

3. Mancunian (-31)

2. Liverpudlian (-33)

1. Brummie (-53)

SAYINGS. Refranes y expresiones populares. Los dichos de las abuelas inglesas.

1. Every cloud has a silver lining = “No hay mal que por bien no venga”
2. When God shuts a door, He always opens a window. Una mezcla entre “Dios aprieta pero no ahoga” y “Cuando en un lugar se cierra una puerta, en otro se abre una ventana”
3. Can’t judge a book by its cover. No juzgar un libro por su cubierta, es decir, la expresión que nosotros solemos decir:no juzgar por las apariencias, o “El hábito no hace al monje”
4. Easier said than done. “Más fácil decirlo que hacerlo”
5. Spill the beans. “Levantar la liebre”
6. To hit the sack/sheets/hay . Para lo que en inglés literalmente se traduce como “golpear el costal” o el “heno” nosotros diríamos algo tipo “irse al sobre”
7. In the nick of time. “Justo a tiempo”
8. Better late than never. “Más vale tarde que nunca”
9. Cat got your tongue? “¿Te ha comido la lengua el gato?”
10. Feeling under the weather “No sentirse bien”

Do Spaniards use a more obscene language than the French or the English, for instance? The short answer is: yes in Why do the Spanish “shit in the sea”? El Pais, 2015/06/23 in English y en español

1º.  S- IN ENGLISH in English.
I'm sure most of you are having some serious problems with the pronunciation of some sounds or words in Spanish or in English. For example, one of the most typical mistakes in the pronunciation of English by Spanish speakers is, precisely, words like Spanish, speaker, sport, study... Typically, they add a non-existant vowel before the "s", that's because such a combination of sounds does not exist at the beginning of a word in Spanish, so it's more difficult for us.

LONG WORDS
On the other hand, English speakers have some serious problems with long words in Spanish, they tend to make them shorter. That's because in English, there's a difference in length between stressed and unstressed syllables. For instance, an English speaker might have some serious problems in producing a word like "esdrújula" properly.  One of the objectives of this BLOG is that you help each other with these typical issues. I'd like you to participate in this forum thread and tell us what pronunciation problems are you facing as a non-native speaker of the language when speaking English or Spanish.

S- IN ENGLISH in Spanish
Estoy seguro que la mayoría de vosotros sufrís de serios problemas con la pronunciación de algunos sonidos o palabras en español o en inglés. Por ejemplo, uno de los errores más típicos en la pronunciación del inglés por parte de hablantes de español es, precisamente, palabras como Spanish, speaker, sport, study... Normalmente, los hablantes añaden una vocal no existente antes de la primera "s", eso es porque esa combinación de sonidos no existe al principio de palabra en española y eso lo hace más difícil.

LONG WORDS
Por otro lado, los hablantes de inglés también presentan serios problemas con palabras largas en español, tienden a hacerlas más cortas. Eso es porque en inglés, hay una diferencia en duración entre las sílabas con acento y sin acento. Por ejemplo, un hablante de inglés podría presentar  serios problemas en producir la palabra esdrújula adecuadamente así como alienígenas, aeropuerto, fuerzas aéreas, reivindicación, y mi favorita ingeniería.

Uno de los objetivos de ESTE BLOG es ayudarnos unos a otros con estos problemas. Me gustaría que participarais en este hilo y nos contarais los problemas a los que te enfrentas como no nativo de español o inglés a la hora de pronunciar ciertos sonidos.

2º. The difference in rhythm between English and Spanish lies on the fact that they are two different languages in terms of stress. In English, only those syllables that have some stress on them are pronounced in a full form, the rest of the syllables are not important so they are compressed.

Besides, there's always one syllable in every sentence which is the most important, it's always towards the end of the sentence and all the weigh of the sentence lies on it.

On the other hand, in Spanish all the  syllables have got the same duration, of course we put more emphasis on stresses, but we don't compress the unstressed ones. Let me give you an example (I put some stresses to show you which words and syllables are the most important).
English:  Thére's a cát sléeping on the róof - Only those syllables with a stress on them are pronounced in a full form, and the word róof is the most important word, so it's even more stressed.
Spanish: Háy ún gáto én él tejádo. - All the words have got stress, and the unstressed syllables are not compressed.
Aquí os dejo este link para que comprendáis, programéis vuestro trabajo y practiquéis: deletion with connected speech English pronunciation Es la primera vez que entiendo el sonido de la "h". ¡Eureka!

3º. FLUENTLY
In his foreword to the report Mr Worne stresses that it is functional skill rather than fluency that counts.
"'Fluent' is an inhibitor, 'functional' is a liberator". BBC.com news education 20 Novembre  2013.

4º. SPELLING
Me gusta este artículo del profesor de la Universidad de Gales David Crystal, Story English Spelling
The Gardian, 2012 sobre la ortografía inglesa.
"La historia de la ortografía inglesa es la historia de miles de personas unos conocidos y otros desconocidos que dejaron una huella en ella. Es una historia que cubre unos 1.500 años (...)" (libre traducción, free traslation).

 5º. Cost of living in England and Spain.
Here there are a study of Movehub about countries where the reference is New York and their cost of living. Looking for a country to exchange languages. If you are studying Spanish, tell me.  I am Spanish.
This information is published periodically for Numbeo.com cost of living. Rankings by country  and you can comparer Spain and England in 2015.

El Pais. 2015/07/29 in English y en español The average salary in Spain falls 0.2% in 2014, to €22,606

6º. Adult Education in Spain 

7º. Learning Spanish. Warning! El Mundo cultura 2015/04/26 La lengua es comunicación y dinero, mucho dinero.

8º.  ESTUDIOS. En el Reino Unido, al igual que en España, se organizan los títulos universitarios dependiendo el área de estudio que abarquen. Podemos encontrar:

1. BA: Bachelor of Arts (Diplomatura en Humanidades)
2. BSc: Bachelor of Science (Diplomatura en Ciencias)
3. BEd: Bachelor of Education (Diplomatura en Educación)
4. BEng: Bachelor of Engineering (Diplomatura en Ingeniería)
5. LLB: Bachelor of Law (Diplomatura en Leyes)
6. MB o BS: Bachelor of Medicine (Diplomatura en Medicina)

En cuanto al tipo de carrera universitaria, distinguimos varios tipos, dependiendo de su duración, área de estudio o calificaciones obtenidas. Estos son los tipos de carreras o grados que podremos estudiar:

1. Ordinary degree: Estudio de varias asignaturas a un nivel general. Estos grados tienen una duración de tres años.
2. Honours degree: Estudio de un campo a nivel más avanzado. Hemos de realizar más créditos que en un Ordinary degree para la obtención de este título, aunque su duración suele ser también de tres años de duración. Según las calificaciones obtenidas, podremos obtener First Class Honours, Second Class Honours o Third Class Honours.
3. Joint Honours degree: Se trata de un Honours degree pero que combina dos áreas diferentes de estudio.
4. Combined Honours degree: En estos cursos se estudian tres o más áreas a un nivel más general.
5. Grado sándwich: Se trata de un grado que contiene, al menos, un año de prácticas en el mundo laboral, en un sector relacionado con el área de estudio, o bien un año de estudio en el extranjero.

RESOURCES
Michael Tomasello (2010). “Origins of Human Communication”. Massachusetts: MIT Press. Click here for more information. 

Steven Pinker (1994). “The Language Instinct: How the mind creates language”. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Click here for more information. 

Victoria A. Fromkin, Robert Rodman, Nina Hyams (2013). “An Introduction to Language." 10th ed. Wadsworth: Cengage Learning. Click here for more information.

Noam Chomsky (2006). “The Architecture of Language”. Oxford India Paperbacks. Click here for more information. Guy Deutscher (2006). “The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind’s Greatest Invention”. Holt Paperbacks. Click here for more information. 

Joel Davis (1994). "Mother Tongue: How Humans Create Language. Birch Lane Press." Click here for more information. 

LanguageLog. Blogposts on news, new articles and observations by several renowned linguists, among which Mark Liberman and Geoffrey Pullum. Click here to read.

Babel. Language Magazine featuring everything from Chinglish to Shakespeare. Click here for more information.

Bergmann, A., Hall, K.C., & Ross, S.M. (Eds.). (2011). "Language files: Materials for an introduction to language and linguistics". 11th ed. Columbus, OH: Department of Linguistics, The Ohio State University. Click here for more information 

Linguistic Society of America. This organisation publishes the number one scholarly journal for linguistics, appropriately called Language. However, they have also published a plethora of free pamphlets on a wide variety of linguistic topics, written by pre-eminent scholars. Some of these we are allowed to use in this MOOC (for which we are very grateful), and there are many more on their website. Click here for more information.