The hop fields in the countryside outside historic Aurora, OR. (Image copyright Ian Shane)

Coming up this March 30th we’ll be holding a whole weekend of Language Hunting in Aurora, OR, just outside Portland. These immersion training opportunities are unfortunately rare nowadays, due to other projects, so if you’ve been wanting to learn the craft of language hunting, sign up now!

You can register here.

CC Jason Holmberg on Flickr

In the world of second language education, there is a mainstream approach that you could call “factory-based” learning. Essentially, you are told all the answers (all the “parts”) – the grammar, the vocabulary definitions, etc., and it’s up to you to put them together, to assemble intelligible language through speech and writing. You require an authority who has designed the system to do your work.

Whereas Language Hunting offers you another approach – “experiment-based” learning. You make observations, you hypothesize, you experiment, and then you have your “aha!” moment when you get results. You never finish experimenting – you hold all your “answers” lightly – but in this way you become self-sufficient at this process of absorbing fluency in new areas.

In the end, it comes down to this. Do you want dependent learners, who need you to progress? Or do you want self-sufficient learners, who can also teach you a thing or two?

Here it is! The slides are a bit muddy; here is a link to the original slides I used, which are much clearer.

Willem Larsen on the stage of the Baghdad Theater at Ignite Portland 10 (image CC Aaron Hockley, hockleyphoto.com)

On February 9th, in Portland, OR, I had the chance to give a talk on the Language Hunter’s perspective on how we can support the revitalization of endangered languages.

Here’s a link to photos from the event – there were lots of great talks that night.

Check out the Ignite Portland homepage for more information on the event.