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#languagepoems

March 13, 2018

I recently attended the first-ever Women in Language Online Conference for language learning enthusiasts. You might call us multilingual or even polyglots, however, there is a lot of discussion about these labels. I prefer to say about myself that I just love other languages and am fascinated by the people who speak them. I’m on a mission to connect with people who are different than I am, mostly to discover and affirm how very much we have in common.

Lindsay Williams from www.lindsaydoeslanguages.com, Shannon Kennedy from http://eurolinguiste.com/, and Kerstin Cable from http://fluentlanguage.co.uk/ were the masterminds behind the conference and pulled together a dazzling list of speakers who presented fascinating talks over a period of four days. Thankfully, I still have time to go back and catch up on talks and rewatch some of my favorites. For $29 USD, this was the biggest bargain of the year, in my opinion. And no off-putting marketing either! Thanks, gals.

So, one of my favorite talks was, as Kerstin put it, “magical.”  All of us watching live were chatting away in the Chatango box, just oozing enthusiasm for Maria Ortega Garcia’s ideas. She told us that pronunciation practice, nuanced word meanings, and cultural awareness are a few of the benefits of using poetry when studying a new language. We decided then and there to use the hashtag #languagepoems to share some of our favorites in either our native language or the ones we are studying.

I’ve offered some of my favorite American poems and poets in the past but am now on a quest to find favorites in each of the languages that I’m studying. I’m posting what I find here. If you have suggestions, please contact me here or via Facebook. I’m also inspired to use some of my favorites in English for new lesson plans for my clients, so please ask and sign-up for a trial or new lesson here.

Listen to Wendell Berry read one of my favorite poems here.

Listen to Naomi Shihab Nye read another one of my favorite poems here. 

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