LingQ Article Writing Contest

Open Forum
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The following writing is a corrected version.

Depuis mon enfance, l’apprentissage de langues m’apporte beaucoup de choses.
Permettez-moi de présenter des exemples.

Connaître des langues permet de s’ouvrir au monde.
En 1975, un ancien sous-lieutenant de l’armée japonaise, Mr. Onoda, a été découvert dans une île de l’Océan Pacifique.Depuis la fin de la seconde guerre mondiale en 1945 jusqu’à 1975, il a vécu pendant 30 ans avec sa radio dans les grottes de cette île. Cet appareil électronique lui permettait de savoir ce qui se passait dans son pays natal. A vrai dire, avant qu’on ne l’ait découvert, il savait déjà que la guerre du Pacifique était terminée. En apprenant cette nouvelle, j’ai tout de suite trouvée que la radio est un outil très efficace afin de savoir ce qui se passe dans le monde entier. Malgré mon âge (entre 13 et 14 ans) j’écoutais à la radio des émissions sur les ondes courtes du monde entier: VOA, BBC, Radio Pékin, etc. Le problème, c’est que je ne comprenais absolument pas toutes ces informations…c’était trop difficile pour moi. Donc, je restais devant la radio sans rien comprendre. Pourtant, j’étais très curieux de savoir les cultures différentes. Malgré la mauvaise qualité de réception, je me suis amusé à écouter plusieurs sortes de musiques étrangères, les informations, etc. Cette expérience m’a familiarisé avec les prononciations de nouvelles langues et, même maintenant, m’encourage à les apprendre.

La maîtrise des langues nous donne la possibilité de communiquer avec plus de personnes. Grâce à la nouvelle technologie; Internet, on peut se parler sans se déplacer. Si on va dans les pays étrangers, on sera confronté non seulement à d’autres langues mais aussi à d’autres cultures.
J’ai quitté mon pays à l’âge de 23 ans dans le but de prendre des leçons de saxophone en France. En y arrivant pour la première fois, je ne savais pas parler le français bien que j’avais suivi un cours intensif pendant trois mois. Mon séjour en France , pendant 3 ans, a été parfois enrichissant, parfois difficile, surtout que la barrière de la langue m’empêchait de comprendre ce que les locuteurs natifs me disaient ainsi que de m’exprimer clairement. Pourtant, mon expérience plutôt douloureuse est maintenant un bon souvenir, toujours très vivant dans mon esprit.

Je voudrais ajouter une chose : en principe, chaque ville ou même chaque langue régionale a une longue histoire. Je vais continuer à apprendre des langues avec un grand plaisir.
(400 words)

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If your work involves regular contact with speakers of foreign languages, being able to talk to them in their own languages will help you to communicate with them. It may also help you to make sales and to negotiate and secure contracts. Knowledge of foreign languages may also increase your chances of finding a new job, getting a promotion or a transfer overseas, or of going on foreign business trips.

Many English-speaking business people don’t bother to learn other languages because they believe that most of the people they do business with in foreign countries can speak English, and if they don’t speak English, interpreters can be used. The lack of foreign language knowledge puts the English speakers at a disadvantage. In meetings, for example, the people on the other side can discuss things amongst themselves in their own language without the English speakers understanding, and using interpreters slows everything down. In any socialising after the meetings, the locals will probably feel more comfortable using their own language rather than English.

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Learning other language enables us to communicate with people in other countries. The most important rewards of learning another language is, through learning and communication, we can learn other culture, tradition, and lifestyle, and then tell our own society better and see it in various aspects. Winning a prize enourage us to learn the language, which is often challenging and needs patience.

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Rewards of learning languages!!

Different languages can be needed at any time. For example if you are a lifeguard and the person you have to save only speaks Russian. Then how would tell him or her to calm down and kick your legs? you wont be able to ! another reward of speaking different languages is that you will have so many friends because you can speak their language. Plus if you know different languages you can have a job as a translator which can be so much fun.
But remember learning a language doesnt take two minutes you have to train for a year or so just to learn the basics. Luckily you can use LingQ a utterly amazing website that helps you learn differnt languages. It helped me learn French “Bonjour Jaimapelle Anika e le couler preffere violet e jai un 9 ans” and it helped me also improve on my russian skills so now i can communicate with relatives perfectly! Everybody i know loves LingQ.

but learning languages isnt just for emergencies and jobs its also fun. Learning a language doesnt mean learning boring grammar of by heart but you can learn a language by games arts and also by using the internet. Thats wat my lovely french teacher Madame Cairns that me she told me about Lingascope and about LingQ.
Thank you LingQ your site isnt just adored by adults and by kids too.

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Learning another language is considered to be worthwhile for professional, emergency, social and cultural purposes. Whilst all these reasons are sound enough, it should also be realised that knowledge of other languages provides the language learner with a greater level of freedom, via access to information that may be vitally enlightening, but is not avalable in their own language.

Italians, Greeks and Spaniards, for example, many of whom have no knowledge of English, cannot access many lines of information that would enlighten them about better economic ideas. Which leaves them held hostage to whatever information is available to them in their own language.

Similarly, those who know English, but have no knowledge of German, are unable to judge the criticism and/or merits of the likes of Thilo Sarrazin or Roland Koch, and must rely too heavily on second hand, and too often, deliberately biased reporting. And, if an English speaker has a sound knowledge of French, they can post a review on amazon.fr, to refute a book that has been written in French, and which sets out to recommend that the French education system must be radically modified/destroyed, so that French students, in the French state school system, can achieve the egalité of spectacular failure that is all too common, for their US and UK counterparts.

For now, English is the international language. But it does not follow that innovation in China, for example, will not disappear behind the Mandarin wall, so that the Chinese and those who have a knowledge of Mandarin, have a comparative advantage.

Therefore, in a globalized, competitive world, it is a good idea to not be monolingual.

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Thank you for all the entries!

Only 2 days remain in the contest, so if you haven’t yet submitted an article be sure to do so right away!

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Space Shuttles and Language Learning

Space Shuttles have allowed fearless astronauts explore alien lands, collect information, and make comparisons to their native soil.

Learning foreign languages has allowed me to do the same. However, my shuttle is not made of the newest space age materials, but simple words. My space shuttles are foreign languages. Nothing else has ever told me more about where I come from and who I am than a new language. To me, this is the greatest benefit language learning can offer.

Languages represent the shuttles we use to motivate ourselves to dive into foreign cultures, and in return, gain perspective on our own. Perhaps it starts with a simple feeling of, “wouldn’t it be cool to speak (fill in the blank)!” For the people that follow through on this proclamation, they will lift off and launch themselves into a life long journey that will hopefully allow them to orbit their own homeland and have a taste of what Neil Armstrong experienced, taking a look back at your environment and marveling at it.

Speaking from personal experience, the facilitating factor that lead me to leave my country was my newly acquired love for the Spanish language. My main goal was to conquer this language by any means possible. Therefore, I decided to head to Europe with a limited amount of fuel (my vocabulary).

After arriving, I started to mingle with not only the locals, but also people from other parts of the continent. I heard their opinions about their own countries, and mine as well. As a result, I began to look into the credibility of their views. These types of encounters along with general experience in the country are what lead to the big changes in my life.

These changes include:

A renewed love for my country and culture
A new love for history
A desire to learn even more languages

These changes would have never occurred if it had not been for language learning and its side effects.
I hope that everyone who desires this type of awakening jumps in their space shuttle and not only enjoys the destination, but also the ride.

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Hi, I’m Tina. My story begins years ago when I went to the cinema with a friend to see a foreign movie. I followed the action, I read the subtitles, I had no idea what language the actors were speaking and I didn’t even wonder. At some point my friend said: “These ones are French.” After the movie was over and we talked about it, she said: “It was an American movie”. I thought: “Wow! How can she know that?” I wished I could be like her. So, I started to do my homework for the English classes at school, writing lists with translated words, conjugations, tenses, irregular verbs. Still, when we were tired or bored, our 5th and 6th grade English teacher said: “Let’s sing!” Back then, it didn’t have any sense for my to sing the middle of the lesson, but after that I felt good. Since then, with all the other teachers, we never sang, we were too old and we couldn’t waste our time with such not serious things, so no songs or cassettes, back to the grammar book and the dictionary.

Since then I searched and I found the best way to learn a language. To speak a language, listen to it as much as possible. Also, to write well, read as much as you can.

Listen, I didn’t know these things from the beginning and I thought that if I did what my teachers required, then I would say if a movie is American, British, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Korean, because that was my goal. I didn’t know other way and I spent so much money on “English without a teacher”, “French in 30 days” and “Learn to speak German” and these are all books. How can you learn to speak a language without hearing it?

I decided to try another way: just enjoy. So, I listened the songs I liked so many times that I learned them by heart, l watched my favorite cartoons, sitcoms, soap operas, movies and TV shows. This way, learning English changed me in so many ways, it gave me courage and power to change my life, because, guess what? I’m coming to Canada this year. As a permanent resident. This is my most important reward.

So, dare to learn languages because this way, you can shape your own destiny!

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What are the most important rewards of learning another language?

I know this contest is over but I just want to toss out my thoughts on the subject.

For me one of the most important rewards of learning another language has been learning about learning. Because before I started this process of really trying to learn another language I had no real understanding of how people learn. And since at the time I was an English teacher in China and had spent many years in school it is very interesting that I knew so little about learning.
It’s almost as though the point of school is not to produce well-rounded individuals but to stuff facts and propaganda into the heads of young impressionable children. But that can’t be true can it? LOL
I have always liked Mark Twain’s idea of not letting schooling get in the way of learning. But it wasn’t until I tried doing it on my own that I realized how little I knew about learning.

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when will a winner be announed?

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There were a surprising amount of entries, totalling around 12,000 words! We are reading through them now and will announce the winners early next week :slight_smile: