How to Improve Memory and Recall

It is the end of another school year. Summer vacation begins. When your students return in the Fall, will they retain what you have worked so hard to help them learn this past few months?

Neuroscience is proving the common wisdom: we remember what has meaning. There is so much clutter in our daily experience, if our brain remembered every single perception we would be overwhelmed. The stress of receiving a "fire hose" of new information is familiar to many of us when attending a conference or gaining initial exposure to a new field of study. There must be a way to help encode meaning, and then being able to recall quickly in the appropriate context.

The mechanics of meaning are no longer mysterious. There is no such thing as a person being "naturally good with languages" or "not able to learn languages." The repetition of meaningful, engaging input will allow the student to produce oral and written output that is comprehensible and expressive. What a great feeling that is! Basically, it is fun. It is amazing. This instant success, repeated many times, builds the positive framework for learning. A student becomes a lifelong learner by learning how to learn, and have fun doing it.

Even for a student who has been struggling all year, your kindness and supportive efforts have added a positive meaning to the experience of learning a new language. Regardless of your teaching method, the interpersonal connection has enormous impact.

When your school administration questions the need for face-to-face instruction versus a video or online program, remind them that students are physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual beings. The online tools available today are extremely powerful. The ability to communicate instantly with anyone in the world, 24/7, on the Internet, is what makes it possible for you to read these very words.
But can a computer or tablet do what a teacher does?

Improving memory and recall begins with the emotional context of learning. When a classroom is welcoming, fun, engaging, and challenging in a positive way, the learning process is enhanced for all students, for all academic subjects. Language learning is especially dependent on the demeanor and response of the teacher as well as the overall classroom environment. The topic that is being learned is the very way we connect with one another.

The visuals that form a foundation of QTalk curriculum, are colorful and engaging. They allow a teacher to remain in the target language, and promote instant comprehension and recall for students who then are primed to spend their time outside of class practicing and sharing what they are learning.

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Teachers can make classroom immersion easy and fun

With group language classes at the beginning level, classroom management is everything. Here are these students - whatever age - and they are asked to make funny noises and listen to a teacher say things that sound like nonsense. Laughter, teasing, embarrassment, or just fear of looking and sounding stupid, can lead to student behavior that distracts the other students who are trying to pay attention and learn something.

Next, you, the teacher, are in disciplinarian mode, instead of fun, engaging dialogue and interactive mode. Now no one wants to talk, and the quiet classroom is under control but the students aren't learning to speak and understand the language.

What happens next? Often, teachers feel they must switch to English (or the students' first language) to explain  or translate. The immersion concept goes out the window, at least for now.

So how do we get to immersion with beginning students, especially when a group of students vary widely in their level of interest in language learning?

Revolutionary new Visually Speaking app will transform language learning worldwide

NEWS UPDATE:  Maurice's new Kickstarter project is for the revolutionary new Visually Speaking app, Maurice has a prototype working for English but now needs help to bring the app to an implementation stage with the proper support and scalability to go worldwide and forever change language learning. Maurice's mission is to increase peace, joy and positive human connections by making it easier for every person to learn a new language. With your help he can do it. Please go to www.MauriceHazan.com for details and the link to the Kickstarter campaign as well as project updates.

Our Teacher-Presentation subscription to the QTalk Online Games now includes secure access to our online QTalk Flipbooks. All current subscribers have immediate access to the flipbooks, and new subscribers will be receiving instructions along with their Online Games user guide.

For Chinese only, we are no offering an expanded subscription, called the Chinese Tutor Subscription.
 This will be our premiere launch platform for the revolutionary QTalk Blocks platform we demonstrated at ACTFL and have been sharing in select preview audiences for the past several weeks.
View the video here. If you like what you see, you can buy a Chinese Tutor Subscription today.

QTalk Blocks for Chinese is now available for purchase as part of the Chinese Tutor Subscription. 

下面我将为您介绍QTALK BLOCKS。 这是一款专门为智能型交互电子白板设计的革命性教学软件.
它允许你将任何句子以视觉化的形式传递给学生，甚至在他们还不可以阅读汉字的情况下。
您可以点击每张图片获取独立发音，或单击小喇叭符号听取整句发音。每一个词都附有其相

­应发音。
您可以决定在相应图片下显示汉字，或拼音，或隐藏文本。
这一简单系统中所含所有图像都经过特殊设计，非常直观，不仅使学生迅速了解词汇意义，­并且形成深刻记忆。
目前本图库包含各种词性的词汇相应图片1500张，涵盖了QTALK课程设计的1级与­2级课程。该软件与任何教材兼容，辅助教师设计任何主题及教学内容，真正激发学生的学­习热情。另外，根据教师和学生的反馈，本软件会不断添加新词汇，成为您教学设计最有效­的工具。
本图库中分类陈列出您所需要的各种词性，比如名词，代词，形容词，副词等。甚至精确到­附属分类，比如时间标记。当然也包含了中文特有的量词。您可以轻松浏览词库或在搜索栏­中键入您需要找的词汇。
该软件将成为您最理想的课堂教学交流工具。请联系我们获取更多信息并尝在贵校试用！
Introducing QTalk Blocks. A revolutionary software for your smart board.
It allows to you to visualize any sentence to students who cannot yet read Chinese characters.
You can click on each picture to hear each word........ or click to hear the full sentence. .....Each word comes with a sound attached to it.
you can decide to show the Chinese characters.....or show the pinyin.....
or to hide the text and only show the pictures.
This simple system allows you to make students understand the vocabulary very rapidly. All images are very intuitive and specially designed to make everyone memorize new words immediately.
Our library contains 1500 images which reflect any level 1 or level 2 course. You can demonstrate any topic and this program is compatible with all text books and will make all students speak in the classroom.
We have designed images to represent the most abstract aspects of the language, including adverbs, time markers, conjunctions, adjectives and of course measure words.
You can easily search for words by browsing your library or simply type and select which word you are looking for.
Easily save your lessons. You can even create folders to group your pages in categories.
This system is the most ideal tool for all teachers wanting to bring true communication in the classroom. Contact us for more information and find out how you can try it in your school right now.
email info@qtalkpublishing.com
or visit
http://www.qtalkpublishing.com/chinese
Teach Chinese to children or adults with Maurice Hazan's amazing QTalk Method. You can use QTalk Blocks to teach Chinese classes using any Smartboard or other digital whiteboard, or a touch-screen monitor or tablet with a high speed Internet connection.

Storytelling with the QTalk Method

Use a series of scenes to tell a story.

If you are using TPRS or any kind of storytelling in your language classes, you are always looking for new ways to grab students' attention.

Combining food and friends offers a great many story situations that are fun and easy to understand without translating or explaining.

Jumping off from the basic story, you can ask questions, have students ask eachother questions, and for more advanced students ask them to retell the story in a different tense, or write the story in their own words to test their writing proficiency: composition, spelling and punctuation.

For even the beginning students you are able to introduce characters by name then ask, "What is her name? and her name?" then introduce the different foods to make sentences. "What is she eating?"

Lili eats pizza at home with Sophie.

If you can bring different foods to class, that provides a very enticing lesson - but it's not always realistic to do this. With the Sapling Book 1 Q-Card set we have a nice selection of food images on magnetic flashcards that can be arranged with the images for verbs such as "to eat" and "to bring" etc.

Want to try this technique with your students?
Check out our Online Flipbooks right now - you can use the samplers with your students and introduce our QTalk visual scaffolding to prompt them to speak and understand without translation.

Then if you'd like to get more story materials, we suggest our magnetic Story Card product, or try the Short Stories module which is part of  as part of our Digital Language System Conversation Suite (aka Conversation Pack DLS).

Maurice Hazan's QTalk Method - who can use it?

Unique, multi-modal visual tools for teaching language.

 For the past twenty-five years Maurice Hazan has been developing and improving on his visual teaching method.

Symtalk customers are now contacting us to ask how they can begin to migrate to QTalk.

Elementary Spanish and French teachers often tell colleagues about QTalk. We know the middle school and high school teachers are talking about us too.

"Julio drinks orange juice."

How do we know you are talking about QTalk? It's easy: we get a dozen phone calls or emails the day you mention us at a teacher workshop or faculty meeting. "I asked for tips on getting my students more engaged, more interested in learning Spanish, and someone mentioned QTalk," or "I saw my friend's son on his iPad playing Spanish practice games online and he said it was QTalk."

What is she thinking?

Often the teacher doesn't even know the name of the person who mentioned QTalk - so we don't even know how to contact you and say thank you. But believe us, the gratitude is enormous.

Unlike major publishers we don't have a big advertising budget. Our marketing department is YOU.

So how does QTalk work? Who can use it?

How does QTalk work?

The QTalk Method begins with the most simple of concepts: a picture is truly worth a thousand words. A QTalk Method teacher uses visual prompts - whether individual images, a sequence of images, a scene or a sequence of scenes - to engage students interactively - remaining in the target language 90% of the time. 

For more details, visit www.QTalkPublishing.com, but in a nutshell, that's what it's about. The students are speaking 90% of the time, and the teacher is NOT lecturing or explaining.

 The teacher is asking questions, directing attention, providing encouragement, and expressing joy and support whenever a student makes even the smallest attempt to express himself or herself in the target language. Corrections are provided in the form of echoing and sandwiching - you'll learn those techniques as part of the process.

As a teacher using the QTalk Method, you'll LOVE your classes when you see the students lighting up like stars, filled with confidence and pleasantly amazed at themselves.

Who can use QTalk?

Anyone. Our main customer base remains the K-8 Spanish and French language classes in private and public schools here in the United States.


Today, with an expanded set of original publications and online subscriptions along with Maurice Hazan's QTalk student printed books and online flipbooks, as well as magnetized flashcards, classroom games and many other manipulatives and innovative teaching tools, there is actually no  limit to the situations where QTalk can help you achieve success as a language teacher or tutor.

Middle schools, high schools and summer language camps are adopting QTalk for their Level 1 Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and ESL classes. Dozens of tutors are using QTalk Tree books and materials in small group or one on one instruction with college students and adults. An increasing number of homeschool families have adopted QTalk to make the home into a language lab - fun for the whole family!

What's next?

K-8 Spanish and French is where we began. Our Tribeca Language school in Lower Manhattan is teaching toddlers as young as two and seniors in their 80's and beyond. For the QTalk Publishing company, we remain focused on the K-12 schools in the United States, and we are expanding to offer tools for tutors and homeschool families, as well as online solutions for those who are teaching remotely. QTalk Publishing is a sole source provider. Even as we expand and extend the QTalk products and subscriptions, we remain committed to promoting world language education from PreK all the way through high school, for every student.

Call us at 1-877-549-1841, option 1. If we don't answer live, please leave a voice mail. We'll be back in touch within a very short while - a few minutes most days, or on a busy day it could be a few hours. Visit our website, register to get free samples and access our Online Games sampler free of charge. Watch our videos on YouTube. Consider supporting our next fundraiser: we will need additional support to complete the Smartphone app and the innovative new QTalk Blocks platforms already in development. Schedule a webinar for our QTalk Education Specialist to present how QTalk as a replacement or supplement can help your school solve any problems you are experiencing with existing curriculum or methods . Engage Maurice Hazan to present a workshop at your next conference or teacher training session. Tell your friends and neighbors about QTalk. We are so grateful for all you are doing, and look forward to continuing our journey together.

To all our friends who are celebrating the New Year today:

שנה טובה!

For the past few months we have been making a lot of progress developing new curriculum for Arabic.
The initial question was this: Which Arabic to teach?
The decision, after much discussion with many teachers and students: our QTalk curriculum materials will be in  Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). 
 With MSA, you can gain proficiency in a form of the language that will be understood (for the most part) wherever you go. MSA is used in writing and in formal speaking. You will be able to read the Arabic alphabet, and you will build a foundation for expanding your Arabic language proficiency in any direction.
MSA is somewhat simpler than Classical Arabic (CA) or Quranic Arabic used for prayers and sacred texts, but the structure of MSA and CA are the same.
So with this perspective, QTalk offers MSA curriculum. Please consider MSA as a place to begin. Then, when you meet Arabic speakers from different regions, as you engage in conversation, we suggest you listen and learn from each native speaker, and don't be surprised if someon corrects you and tells you to use a different word, than the one you learned in your QTalk Arabic class. 

Our goal is to help everyone learn to think speak, read and write in Arabic. using our amazing QTalk visual teaching method.
Please, we want to know what you think!

Laura our director at Tribeca Language is now blogging about how to reinforce language learning at home, and other topics that would probably be interesting to readers of this blog. We think that homeschool parents, private tutors, and even social groups of language learners who are assisting one another, can benefit from many of Laura's tips.

http://laurastipsforlanguagelearners.blogspot.com/

Laura is writing mainly about things the parents can do with their children, but if you read the techniques you can easily adapt to any age group. Also she provides examples in Spanish but you can apply to any language you happen to be teaching or helping another person with.

In our daily lives we can become isolated, the term is called "cocooning" with our media and electronic devices. As always we just want to encourage you to jump in and start talking, talking, talking - but not in a vacuum, not just repeating after a computer. Please, find some real, live person to talk with. It's really the only way you will be able to attain fluency in your new language and by the way, it's good for your overall health and well-being, too!

The K12 global language education conference season has been a whirlwind so far: WNYFLEC, CSCTFL, TESOL, NCLC, and NECTFL are the key events we were able to participate in.

We loved getting out of the classroom and out of the product development lab, talking with hundreds of educators from different geographical regions, different kinds of schools and across multiple different global languages including English (ESL and EFL).

Every member of our QTalk leadership team was able to attend at least one of the conferences. We came back and put our heads together and said, "Okay, we are doing the right things and we just need to keep doing them better and faster, to put the right tools into the teachers' and students' hands."

Thank you to all who talked with us, and if you completed a registration form or left your card with us, please know we will be following up in the next day or so, if we have not already emailed and/or called.

Pictures speak so much louder than words. 

We are fascinated by the news stories about teenage polyglots such as Tim Doner at Dalton School.
One of the commenters to the recent New York Times story about Tim surmises that "polyglot brains are different" in some way.

We could not disagree more, except to say that just as athletic experience makes one a better athlete, there's no doubt that exposure to more language-learning opportunities can make one a better language-learner.

To awaken the inner language learner within, it's essential to bypass the "translation impulse" and instead begin thinking and speaking right away in the target language. That's what all the QTalk books and teaching tools enable - and that's why our Student Books look like comic books, with very few words and lots of pictures!

While we know that technology and online learning tools can assist, we think they are best as practice tools; to really activate your skills, you need to be speaking with others, ideally without any use of English or your first language. Self-study has its role, but we believe you can only reach a certain level through self-study. Because language is interpersonal, it's really important to learn language through interaction with real, live people.

Polyglots and would-be polyglots --  one and all: if you want to try the QTalk Online Games, post a comment to this blog or visit our website to post an inquiry with your contact information and a link to your blog or website. Let us know why you want to learn French, Spanish, Chinese, or English, and we'll set you up with a FREE 90-day subscription to QTalk Online Games for your target language. Please make sure to refer to this blog post and the "Polyglot offer" in your comment or inquiry.

(Games in Japanese, Korean, Italian, German, Arabic, and Hindi are on the development list, so if you'd like one of those languages let us know -- you'll need to wait for a while, but when those games are ready, we'll contact you and ask you to help us out by testing the games and letting us know what you think.)

In his New York Times opinion piece earlier this year, What You (Really) Need to Know, Larry Summers suggests that foreign language acquisition is not essential for U.S. students, because English is becoming the lingua franca for business and the Internet, and idea that seems to be growing in popularity.

Is this a trend? Are business and government leaders really comfortable with the position that our 21st century educated American workforce has little requirement for knowledge of languages other than English?

We hear a lot from educators and researchers about language learning's cognitive benefits. Dan Fost wrote a nice summary a couple of years ago, How Global Language Learning Gives Students The Edge.

Anecdotally, we are hearing from students in computer programming and web design classes, that their world language learning experiences have given them a cognitive head start doing the complex cognitive work of learning and using a programming language. Similar comments are heard from musicians, especially working in jazz or other improvisational genres.

Yesterday a teacher described some students of hers, who had been learning in a QTalk classroom the prior year. Compared to other students, the QTalk students were "more confident speaking, and more eager to learn," and "they seemed to consider language learning as a fun activity." For schools struggling to improve test scores and reduce high school dropout rates, shouldn't there be a high value placed on classes that build a student's self-confidence and sense of achievement? Can we place a return on investment percentage on the fact that world language classes can be fun and keep students engaged, even those students who may struggle to succeed in other subjects?

Facebook promotion: Describe your favorite language-learning activity - post it to our QTalk Facebook page. We'll select one entry each month to receive a FREE 1-year subscription to our Online Games.

While it's true that a child's mind is able to build many more new neural connections more quickly, it is NEVER too late to acquire a new language, and reap the benefits described in this opinion piece from the New York Times

At Tribeca Language we have helped students in their sixties and seventies speak for the first time in a language other than English - to their own delight and amazement!

What do you think it will take, to persuade the school committees and budget-balancers, that world language education needs to be part of the core elementary school curriculum, not just in magnet schools, charter schools and private schools but in EVERY elementary school?

Education Specialist Catherine Waldron enjoyed the opportunity to meet face-to-face with some of you at the Western New York Foreign Language Educator's Conference annual meeting on Saturday, March 3 at West Middle School in West Seneca, New York, just outside of Buffalo.

The QTalk Publishing team would like to thank JoAnn, Eileen, Kim, Mark, Amanda and everyone else who helped to put together Saturday's wonderful event.

QTalk Education Specialist Catherine Waldron represented us this time. She had so much fun, she hopes to be able to do more of these conferences in the coming weeks. Usually Catherine's is the voice you hear when you call our toll-free number and have a product question or need a proposal, free product samplers, or get some vendor paperwork completed in order to process a purchase.

Catherine would like to shout out special thanks to three wonderful teens -- Patrick, Gordon and Krysta -- for their help during exhibitor setup and breakdown. Thank you to all the vendors and participants who attended, including the many teachers, student teachers, and college faculty who stopped by to visit and learn about our QTalk method and products, "Visual "cues" to talk" enabling rapid oral production with engaging, fun classroom activities.

One more note about this event: the winds were gusting up to seventy miles per hour throughout the day, adding to the sense of excitement and adventure!

Reading the New Media Consortium's 2010 Horizon Report, especially the chapter on game-based learning and how it is being applied in K12 schools.

You can actually read this report onine: http://wp.nmc.org/horizon-k12-2010/chapters/game-based-learning/

Educators today are in a situation where the "skill-building, turn-based games" are being used more and more to help children learn and have fun at the same time. The Horizon Report presents very clearly the reason such games are so successful: "Their engaging nature makes them excellent learning aids, as kids will often willingly play them much longer than they would otherwise study the material in question."

Maybe it's more than just "the engaging nature" of games - maybe it's really a joy of learning through doing, that thrills the students, similar to the action philosophy of martial arts training. You learn to kick by kicking, not by watching someone else kick or having someone explain to you how to kick.

Our QTalk developers are having so much fun developing our latest online games, moving away from Adobe Flash to a more standards-based approach, and also adding a teacher dashboard that will be available to those schools with the new "Universal License" subscription (something like a site licence). As the schools begin to implement iPad-based curriculum, we see the eBook products will have an especially powerful way to integrate with online learning games as well as online assessments (which are really just games, where getting the highest score is the objective of game play).

Teachers have told us they are absolutely amazed at what we are doing with our Online Games as well as our classroom games with Smartboard or magnetic flashcard delivery models. This month we have a special Valentine to present to all our teachers: it is our February 2012 "two for one" language games promotion.

Of course in the future the students will continue to expect more collaboration and sophistication in their learning games, as well as the ability to access their games as apps on their mobile phones, tablets, and who knows what electronic superstars are waiting in the wings to take our game-playing experiences to the next level?

We'd love to know: How are you using games in your teaching? Do you spend time to create your own games, or do you prefer to evaluate and purchase games that are "ready to go"? How is the availability of classroom technology affecting the way you use Online Games or multimedia digital games, for your specific teaching situation each year?

QTalk Language product videos (playlist)

('http://www.youtube.com/p/-a9O76J1Wly1I5UHuiCAvw?version=3&hl=en_US',)

Quite an interesting week. Time to schedule a webinar to show off this fantastic Teacher Dashboard for all the teachers using our Online Games. We're also delighted that some very well-known people are getting interested in what we are doing. More about that in a few weeks.

Happy New Year! Lots of GREAT stuff happening....

Well, NOW we think we have the new website looking great. You will be amazed at how easily you can find every one of over 200 products in five different categories and now seven different languages! What started small is growing bigger every day -- and we are excited! We decided to extend the "Solve the Mystery!" promo through January so if you've been planning to try out our Digital Language System (DLS) you have a limited time to get "two for one" conversation supplements - WOW -- check it out! This week there are more news stories about technology in the classroom; the teachers in Idaho are pushing back, because technology purchases are increasing, even as teaching jobs are being eliminated. What do you think? What do you find to be the proper role of education technology in your classroom?

Well, the QTalk book printing costs have been increasing - and now we find they are really going up - by a significant amount. We cannot pass along the entire increase to our customers. Some of the school districts have already set their budgets for the 2012-2013 academic year, and they will not have enough money allocated to purchase a Student Book for each student if we were to try to pass along the entire increase. So we've been trying to look at the big picture. I hope you will help us -- we need to understand whether it makes sense to keep offering these printed Student Books, when schools are looking for ways to get more bang for their bucks across every category of spending.

As it happens, QTalk really does not make any profit from our books; after the costs of development, printing, inventory management, and shipping are taken into account, the books require a great many resources, and we have so many different books, that even with overall high volume, there is no single edition that we sell in high enough volumes to make the bestseller lists in the newspapers (that other dying breed of publication).

We can always keep improving and enhancing a subscription type of product, and we do keep tweaking and adding to our Digital Language System (DLS) products for Smart Board, and we keep adding more and more activities for our Online Games subscribers. But sadly, once the book has been shipped to a school and assigned to a student, it's difficult to make updates. Even when we post errata lists - the inevitable typos, inconsistencies and other gremlins that somehow manage to sneak between the covers of our books from time to time, despite the proofreaders' most attentive efforts - we wonder whether any student is every informed of the corrections which are made to the next edition.

Now, this is interesting because there is a huge buzz going on, about eBooks. Can we imagine a future where reading is really done entirely with these electronic gadgets we must recharge, avoid dropping or spilling onto, and generally take better care of, than most students can be expected to take care of anything, even their most meaningful toys or favorite items of clothing. Perhaps there is a market for a "Tough eBook" similar to those wonderful (and expensive) Toshiba "tough laptops' that can be dropped, stepped on, spilled on, and still work properly. But even these "tough books" could be lost or left at home, or left on the bus, or left behind in a classroom... and then what? Will the school or the parents need to keep buying replacements?

And can it really be, that the experience of leafing through the pages of a cheerful, colorfully illustrated and thoughtfully presented Student workbook, is quickly to become a thing of the past? Has the printed Student Workbook gone into the dustbin of history, along with other charming artifacts of the pre-digital classroom, such as the handwritten essay, or the teacher's olive-green attendance book (why were the covers always that shade of green)?

How rapidly will schools transition fully to eBooks? What are you seeing?

And what should QTalk Publishing do about the increased cost of printing our beautiful, colorful student books? For the short term, we need to swallow the bitter pill and raise prices to avoid losing money on our books, but even so we shall not be passing along the full increased cost of printing, so our profits on the books will be even slimmer. But as a component of our curriculum, and as a support to the QTalk method of language instruction, the Student Book, intended as a consumable, is an important and highly effective tool.

Should every student have their own Student Book? We'd like very much for this to be the case. But in fact, we know many schools are working with budgets that simply are not sufficient, so they stretch and squeeze wherever they can, and indeed are often getting by using the QTalk language instruction tools without the Student Books, and we at QTalk are not so inflexible as to insist that these amazingly wonderful, and increasingly costly books be purchased by every one of our school customers.

Check out our online games "FREE TRIAL" , so now anyone can play the sampler games as many times as they like, as long as their Internet-connected device has a browser with Adobe Flash support (meaning all the major browsers for Windows and Mac, but not iPad or iPhone).

The games use Maurice's deeply intuitive visual mnemonics, so anyone can enjoy them and practice vocabulary, even if you are not using the QTalk method in your classroom.

http://www.qtalkpublishing.com/component/content/article/241.html

QTalk Free sampler - online language learning games for Spanish, French and Chinese

Is this too sales-y?

Feel free to share this.... When the new games platform launches, we'll add another set of free sampler games that will run on iPads and iPhones.

We know it's repeating content from the prior post but someone said it should have its own topic, so now it does!!