KATE'S VIRTUAL MALL
FOR NODAK FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHERS AND LANGUAGE LEARNERS ANYWHERE
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You
have just arrived at a link of the Homepage of FLAND,
the Foreign Language Association of
North Dakota.
Introduction
and Disclaimer for Kate's FL Mall
This is a new site in progress containing annotated links to sources for FL materials
that I have gotten to know at various conferences. Please submit your own favorite sources
for FL materials to me and I will include them here.
This is not a commercial site, but an informational one listing commercial sources for
materials useful to foreign language teachers. NoDaks in general love catalogs because we
often live far from shopping centers; this source is a huge virtual catalog of sites that
produce materials for Foreign Language teachers -- one NoDak FL teacher's flight of fancy.
As a first stop, I always
recommend checking out the publications and materials produced by national FL
organizations. They are often more inexpensive than those from commercial vendors and they
are often field-tested by their teacher-authors.
Please note: The vendors included
herein are recommended and listed solely by my own choosing and do not reflect official
endorsement either by FLAND or by Jamestown College. I have not received any perks or
freebies for inclusion of vendors in the list, though if I could, I would be really happy!
----- Kate
National Organizations that Publish FL Materials
- ACTFL
-- The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages publishes a journal and many
monographs on FL pedagogy and FL teaching standards.
- MLA
-- The Modern Language Association publishes a journal, their famous style book and many
guides for the teaching of key works of world literature.
- NNELL -- The
National Network for Early Language Learning publishes a journal with articles on teaching
FL K-8 as well as a great brochure on the advantages of early language acquisition that
they will send out on request.
- CALICO
-- the Computer-Assisted Language Instruction COnsortium publishes a journal on the use of
technology in language teaching and language learning.
- IALL
-- the International Association for Language Learning Technology publishes a journal on
the promotion of language learning with technology.
- ACL - The American Classical League for teachers of
Latin and Greek
- Hispania - the official
publication of the American Association of the Teachers of Spanish, it contains many
resources for teaching materials
- AATF
- The American Association of Teachers of French publishes a journal and offers many
teaching materials to members and non-members.
- AATG
-- The American Association of Teachers of German offers two journals and a huge selection
of German-teaching materials at very reasonable prices, including materials from the
Goethe Institutes and from InterNationes.
- AATR
--Homepage of the American Council of Teachers of Russian and ACCELS, the division of the
American Council for International Education that administers exchange activities with the
countries of eastern Europe and Eurasia.
- AATI -- The American Association of
Teachers of Italian -- until they have a web site, please contact Christopher Kleinhenz for details about the
organization and its publications.
- NCSTJ -- the National Council of
Secondary Teachers of Japanese, for which I have not yet found a URL. Until then, contact
Kyle Ennis (503) 693-9777 for more information on the organization and its publications.
- CLTA -- The Chinese Language
Teachers Association promotes the study of Chinese at all levels and provides a wide
variety of publications for the teaching of Chinese. There was a link for this, but it has
changed without leaving a forwarding address. Please give me the new URL if you stop by
and see this message.
Return
to the categories at the top of this page, please.
General Realia and FL Books
- The
Agora Language Marketplace -- The undisputed Queen Mother of All Commercial Foreign
Language Sites. A good number of the links I've included here are also there somewhere,
but of course, these links have my own pithy comments, which Agora doesn't. But then,
Agora has nice visuals, which this page lacks.
- Multi-Cultural
Books and Videos, Inc Rakesh Kumar, the company president, personally sold me one of
his last copies of La Belle et la bête, for which I am grateful. This company has
the standard French/German/Spanish offerings plus many less-commonly taught languages as
well.
- Amsco
School Publications, Inc. -- their foundation books in French, German and Spanish are
classics for FL teachers throughout the US.
- World
of Reading has good books and multi-media materials. Cindy of Atlanta and her crew
really know their product line well and are especially well-versed in the running of the
software they sell.
- Gessler Publishing Inc. has been around for
over sixty years and still offers a wonderfully wide variety of books and materials of all
kinds.
- Schoenhof's
Foreign Books is THE name in ordering FL books of all levels, from children's books to
original-language literature. The Schoenhof's guy at their ACTFL exhibit told me that
amazon.com orders most of their foreign language books from them, so why not visit the
source rather than running through the amazon people? Visiting their real store in
Cambridge MA is a religious experience for multi-lingual bibliophiles.
- Rhyme
Time -- this link will let you send email to NoDak native (in exile in Palm Beach
Gardens, Florida, the poor thing) Marilyn Simundson-Olson, who has developed her own line
of highly entertaining and educationally effective rhymes and activities for teaching
beginning-level French and Spanish. Teachers Discovery also handles her products. She
hopes to come to NoDak for a conference one of these days!
- Carlex Inc. has materials in French and Spanish of
all kinds. I got magnetic poetry in French and Spanish from their ACTFL exhibit -- and
lots of praise stickers for my students as well.
Return
to the categories at the top of this page, please.
CD-ROM
and Disk-Based Computer Programs
- World
of Reading has a good selection of multi-media materials in a variety of languages.
Cindy of Atlanta and her crew really know their product line well and are especially
well-versed in using the software they sell.
- MUZZY on CD-ROM! -- for those of you who know
Muzzy, this is wonderful news. The CD-ROM can be set to give instructions and to play in
any combination of the following languages: Spanish (both Castillian and Latin American
versions), German, French, and English (both American and standard British). The games are
fun, the speech recognitiion feature works well and the whole Muzzy story is charming. I
wax on about Muzzy in the following category. Anyone who already has the Muzzy videos can
inquire with Early Advantage about getting an upgrade with the vocabulary builder video
and the CD-ROM for a reduced price.
- "Tell Me More" is a CD-ROM
series with speech-recognition technology. It's not as cute as Muzzy, but it is a good
basic simulated conversation program for language learning with sophisticated language
analysis that helps the student use visual cues and bio-feedback to improve pronunciation.
The company that produces the software, Auralog, also packages a classroom version with
network licensing and student CD-ROM packages available in English (good for ESL
students), French, German, Italian and Spanish.
- Idiom
Software Company is the original producer of a handful of very good and very
affordable disk-based software programs in English, French, German, Italian, Nihongo and
Spanish. If you contact James, the owner and software developer, he will gladly send you
demo disks of his programs. I especially like his Grammar Tutor program because it drills
all levels of grammar in the target language using the same 450-word vocabulary so
students can concentrate on the forms, not on looking up loads of new words.
- sixth
floor media is a division of Houghton Mifflin that develops authoring software for
German, French and Spanish students. They are sending me the software for a free trial, so
stay tuned for my non-expert opinion. Actually, I'm not THAT special; anyone can contact
them and get a free 90-day trial of the software!
Return
to the categories at the top of this page, please.
Video-Based Programs
- MUZZY is the elementary-level foreign language
learning course that the BBC has been marketing for years for children and their families.
It is now available in a classroom edition with flash cards, a vocabulary tape and a
multi-lingual CD-ROM that is a stitch. Kids of all ages fall in love with this program,
which is available in French, German, Italian and Spanish. It is appropriate for any
beginning-level classroom.
- Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company custom-publishes the
multi-media "Live from Moskow" series for beginning learners of Russian as well
as a number of other video-based books.
- The
Annenberg/CPB Multimedia Collection -- they produce French In ActionandDestinosand
have just released new video series in Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish and English as a
Second Language. Contact them for sample videos. They have not issued the new materials in
laser or in DVD format. My guess is that they will only produce in videotape format
because they will eventually deliver the whole series via internet downloads and they do
not want to second guess which of the competing technologies will hold the market for a
short while. As for me, I much prefer using FIA on laserdisc because of the random access
feature.
Return
to the categories at the top of this page, please.
Web-based
FL Products
- Amazon
Books and More -- I know that this is a source for much more than Foreign Language
materials, but I was surprised at the large amount of books in other languages that they
stock. I was also able to order some rather obscure music from Germany as part of their
music offerings. They also have an all-German site at Amazon.de
-- they have encrypted (https) secure sites at both locations for protecting credit card
information sent online.
- nonce
publishing consultants, ltd publishes a fine book for foreign language teachers who
would like to understand more about the world wide web. Ask them for the book entitled Untangling
the Web. A number of colleges and universities use it for teaching web-use and
web-design courses to future FL teachers.
- CDlive
is a new weekly subscription service for French (and soon also for Spanish) teachers who
receive regular WWW downloads of video from the countries where the target language is
spoken through their web browsers. It is already used in the United Kingdom and is new to
the north American market as of fall, 1998. Free two-week subscriptions are available to
anyone who would like to try the service. The producers of the materials also produce
supplementary vocabulary lists and cultural explanations which are included in the
downloaded materials.
Return
to the categories at the top of this page, please.
Textbook Companies for Standard FL Texts
Most FL teachers receive regular updates on books from these sources, so I am not going
to attempt the Sisyphus-like task of staying abreast of which company is producing what
texts. I am offering this list so that teachers have quick access to publishers if they
want. Actually, most of these URLs are so obvious as to be no-brainers, but my compulsive
need to be exhaustive drives me to list the major players here. Please submit names of
publishers I have neglected to add!
Return
to the categories at the top of this page, please.
Other Resources for FL Teaching
AKA I didn't know where else to list this...
- Sony Electronics Inc. -- their new
software-based language lab is quite amazing. Now all I need is the money to finance my
dreams. Maybe they'll see this link and give me a prize!
Return
to the categories at the top of this page, please.
RETURN TO THE FLAND PAGE
Copyright ©1998 by Kate Stevenson
This site is maintained by Kate Stevenson of Jamestown College. Please direct any comments to me.
Last modified 20 September 1999
Kate's FL Teachers' Mall/stevenso@jc.edu