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The Language Show is being held on 9th-11th October in London. It targets itself towards a wide audience of people learning, teaching, using languages professionally or who simply love languages.
There are exhibitors, seminars, language taster classes and cultural performances.
The best part? It's free!
LangFest takes place on August 21-26 in Montreal. LangFest describes itself as a magnet for "polyglots". So if you're made from some kind of metal then you presumably can't resist. In their own words:
LangFest attendees learn from and gain access to world-class language gurus, entrepreneurs, educators and industry professionals. You will be introduced to cutting edge tools, techniques and technologies to inform and inspire how you learn and use languages or teach them to others.
Find out more here.
Love a Conference? The Polyglot Conference has been running since 2013 and takes place in Ljubljana, Slovenia this year (we presume that if you can't pronounce it then you can't go!). It takes place on October 26th to October 28th. Of particular interest is that Friday 26th is dedicated to language learning techniques, so you can find out how to be a more effective language learner.
Beyond that, it's also a great chance to practice your language skills with your fellow polyglots.
More information is available on their site here.
Kickstarter is rocking one interesting language learning project at the moment: Speasi. Speasi is a conversation exam learning app that appears to be targeted mainly at GCSE students.
Speasi makes a bold claim in the blurb:
By combining the latest web, app and AI technology with teaching expertise, SPEASI will help students of languages shine in their speaking exams, and inspire an enduring love of language learning that will enrich their lives well beyond the classroom.
Nothing else in the description implies actual use of AI, so it's difficult to tell if this claim is true. But I suspect it's just there for effect - everybody like AI right?
Does the market need such an product?
A good UK GCSE result approximates an A2 level CEFR level. So we're talking a relatively basic l...
One of the things we try to do with this site is to highlight interesting language related discussions from around the web. In this case we're taking a quick look at language forums and blogs.
Duolingo
The old owl has a couple of interesting threads going on over on his forums.
Firstly there is the question of what an intermediate level is to you. Even though things such as the CEFR levels define these as specifically as they can, if you actually think about it then they're still pretty vague. This means everybody can, and probably does, have a slightly different perspective on this. For example, for me it's the stage where you begin to understand everything around you on a conceptual level, but probably not word for word.
Also on the Duolingo forums we see that the crowns ...
