So, You Need to Learn Swahili?

Online options, from free to pricey, abound

(NEWSER) - The days of chanting vocabulary words in a classroom and dozing off in the language lab are fading from memory as language instruction becomes increasingly available on the Internet. Freestanding smartphone apps are one option, and more structured instruction comes at a price—and sometimes no price at all. The New York Times looks at some of the numerous options. More»

No one wants to teach grammar because it's not fun: Kim Brooks

(NEWSER) - Sometimes, while Kim Brooks is grading essays by her college composition students, she cries. "Not real tears, exactly—more a spontaneous, guttural sob, often loud and unpleasant enough to startle my husband or children," she writes in Salon . Why? Because many of these students "simply ... cannot write." They don't have basic skills, like knowing how to organize paragraphs, how to write a thesis statement, how to outline, how to proofread or edit, or even "how to make sure their sentences contain a subject and a verb." Is this the fault of the traditional high-school English class, full of class discussion but little writing and almost no grammar education? More»

... if it hears them over and over and over

(NEWSER) - It takes the brain just 15 minutes to learn a new word, new research suggests. The trick is hearing it, oh, say 160 times in 15 minutes, the Telegraph reports. If that happens, the brain creates a neural network that is "virtually indistinguishable" from those surrounding familiar words, Cambridge scientists found. (They used electrodes attached to subjects' brains to measure activity.) More»

I am so above all the drama. Literally.

(NEWSER) - If you haven't said at least one of these, oh, at least 128 times in casual conversation, you should check that you still have a pulse. Because most of us can't avoid uttering them time and time again, and it just needs to stop, writes Alida Nugent on her Frenemy blog.

• “If there wasn’t (insert person or obstacle here) I would have kicked her ass.” Seriously? When was the last time you got in a fistfight? What's that? Never? Thought so. Furthermore, "I don’t believe you because you are wearing pink and the only thing on your record is a big smiley face stamp."

Harvard is right: They don't help students learn

(NEWSER) - Harvard made exactly the right move when it declared it would no longer require final exams, writes Jonathan Zimmerman. Critics immediately pounced, calling it yet another example of coddled students and weakened standards. (One example here .) Nope, writes NYU history professor Zimmerman in the Christian Science Monitor . That's an outdated view of education, one that focuses on memorization and the simple regurgitation of facts. Students learn better when they're required to think, and most final exams fall short on that front. More»