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BRAVE Blog

Moving On: Post-traumatic Language Learning

“We’re going to take your questions to people. Go out there and ask them, and note down the answers.”

We got the pens, paper and umbrellas (Wales!). We walked slowly to the Tourist Information Centre.
Ms Y walked up to me. She was a young Saudi lady, dressed traditionally and covered up. We walked together for a while.
“I have bad experiences with these kinds of lessons,” she said in her intermediate English. She told me of the last time she went out to speak to people as part of her English lesson. One of the local teenagers she spoke to took her worksheet and scribbled his answer – a string of abuse that she couldn’t understand until somebody explained this to her.
“I couldn’t come to school for a week, I was so depressed,” she said.
And yet she was with the rest of the class, walking out there, ready to speak to strangers in a strange language. Ready to be at risk, out of line. Smiling and looking forward to it.
Moving on.
This post is inspired by people like her.

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BRAVE Blog

1000 True Fans: Why You Need Tribes to Learn Languages

The inspiration for this post was a brilliant thing that happened to me – right here on the bravelearning project! I’m sharing this with you, along with a few ideas and tips for making the most of an invaluable learning resource: other people (especially friendly people).

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BRAVE Blog

#ELTchat Summary – 16 May 2012: “How to analyse and restage activities to make them more learner centred”

 This post is a summary of an #ELTchat that took place on the 16th of May, 2012. If you want to know what and #ELTchat is, head over to eltchat.com – and if you’re a language teacher, joining one of the chats is strongly recommended!

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BRAVE Blog

Podcasts in Language Learning: 3 Secrets of Success

When it comes to multimedia, performance and agility, you can do more with your mobile phone today than with your computer 15 years ago. Unfortunately, our philosophy and practice of using this technology still lags behind. It’s impossible to fix it all at once – but today, I want to focus on one aspect of modern tech which could really enhance your language learning: podcasts.

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BRAVE Blog

Learn a New Language With Diablo 3: Tips, Strategies and Resources

Tomorrow, many of my friends will become much less sociable, and I’m about to hear a lot more rumours about problems in relationships. Diablo 3 is coming out!

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BRAVE Blog

Three Unlikely Applications to Supercharge Your Language Learning

Here at bravelearning.com, my inner geek is permanently at war with my inner technophobe. And this post is definitely going to be geeky: it’s tech and software through and through, although with a twist this time.