Link roundup for 27 October 2012

Five things to share today.

--- A paper on the silent period hypothesis, the method whereby students learn a language through a silent period whereby they focus on exposure and comprehension, and only later begin to produce the language themselves. I usually have a silent period of my own simply because I find it more interesting to delve into the language on my own schedule and using content I prefer, but have no problems switching over to active usage whenever the need arises, and have never found a particularly long or short silent period to affect the speed at which I learn a language.

--- Sword fighting as it was for the Vikings. Interesting not just due to seeing true swordfighting but also because the dad shows us an interesting example of a mostly fluent but slightly halting English. He knows exactly what he wants to say, but it takes a few extra tenths of a second to formulate it.



--- Le PQ veut franciser Montreal (the PQ intends to make Montreal more French / Frenchify it).

--- Iranian character of the Armenian language (pdf). Politically sensitive I'm sure, but from the view of the student this list of similarities is nice to have if one knows the first and wants to learn the second.

--- Afrikaans vs. Zulu in schools. It seems that Afrikaans has two advantages in being chosen as a second language: 1) the perception that it is easy, and 2) the Zulu in exams is apparently set to quite a high standard. But then it continues by saying that 99% of those studying Zulu passed compared to 70% of those who chose Afrikaans, so I don't know what to conclude from this.