I love to travel and I like learning the language of the places I travel to. You mentioned that you help create a better way to learn different languages, could you please give us more information about this.
Literally though...if you have a young sister or know a young woman who may not know what to do career wise encourage them, or just bring forth awareness that the STEM fields are awesome, have tons of opportunities, and have a infinite amount of things to learn because it is always changing! There is no such thing as boredom in these fields. The challenges they present are fulfilling and rewarding. Seriously...though I've been like one of sometimes less than 3 women in my computer sciences classes since sophomore year. We need more women in these fields. I don't know why girls are so daunted when they hear "engineering", "computer science" and god forbid "math". Starting at an early age is so essential. I only wish I was more aware and introduced to STEM much more earlier than I had been. But in the end, no matter how old you are, you're never too old to learn something new! Anyone woman reading this, whatever you do in your life don't be afraid to challenge yourself! Learn what you think you can't and you'll be really surprised at what you can do. -End Rant-
I was told by a female science teacher in grade 4 to stop reading ahead when I was passionately interested in the ecology lessons. Oh the damage, Ms. K. >p BUT my interest turned to art; now I work in video games and TV.
S.T.E.M is honestly an amazing program and I am on my schools stem team and it literally means the world to me I love it and engineering is awesome and I love science I am a girl and I am going to major in engineering and math.
Excellent! I have a young daughter, and like you I love language. I speak French and I am currently trying to learn Portuguese. I saw your segment on MSN about Fluenz today! Everything you said about your approach makes perfect sense. I hope my daughter will appreciate different languages, as we have just traveled to Paris and the Algarve in Portugal. However, I also want her to explore the field of Science more too! Her brother is a natural at Science, and very bright, but I will encourage her to pursue these avenues just as much! Thanks for looking out for us girls! Also, I used your travel videos to give me help, ideas, and inspiration before we took our big trip to Europe. Keep the good stuff coming!
I really want to learn spanish.. I tried few CD software , unfortunately weren't that helpful. I never knew you had your own software! Plz share the link or where to purchase it. Thanks
off topic; Being from the Netherlands, I've noticed that the way we learn languages over here seems to be different from how my UK and US friends learn languages. Although generally, we all took languages like French and German (and for us English as well), I am often far more fluent in them than my friends. Even though I'm no pro at those languages either. I wonder what is diffent about the school methods.
I think it's about the mentality. I used to live in the Netherlands but am American, and the big difference in the way languages are learned is the dutch see what they can do with languages and the opportunities it gives them while anglophones expect people to just learn english. Most Americans don't see the use in learning languages and don't have an opportunity to go out and actually use the language like Europeans do, because we're such a big country and travel is expensive. Plus in both the UK and the US we have to learn languages at an older age. That's just my opinion though :)
For us Indians, learning languages comes easily because any average Indian probably knows at least two or three languages growing up. There's your mother tongue that you speak at home, then there's Hindi which you learn in school (although in some states, Hindi IS the mother tongue) and then there's English, which is the primary mode of teaching. I'm learning French and German now and I can find a lot of similarities in grammar and structure between them and Indian languages. I can't say that we like learning languages, though. Most of my friends think it's a waste of time. :(
Swati Hegde Very well put Swati . I learnt 5 different languages growing up , not even realizing how beneficial they were going to be later in life. Today I am working in my company as a back up language assistant on top of regular job roll. Adds onto my pay check.
Swati Hegde Very well put Swati . I learnt 5 different languages growing up , not even realizing how beneficial they were going to be later in life. Today I am working in my company as a back up language assistant on top of regular job roll. Adds onto my pay check.
You are correct... In my own education, there were four years in total of Spanish. The first two were in Grades 7 and 8 and the last two were Freshman and sophomore years in High School. Every year we had to learn to conjugate verbs, and to memorize list after list of words. However, the conversational part was left out every single year. So, while I know the spanish word for table and kitchen, I cannot say whole sentences in Spanish..unless I have memorized it ahead of time. Interesting point... the French class at my high school taught converesation as well as grammer, but they also went to France at least once every couple of years, so that practice with native speakers was included in their curriculum.
Sonia, that's such an important topic to talk about and I love that you join it. I actually study Molecular Biology and we are lucky enough to have a lot of girls at my university, but most of the time that's not the case ;) Really want to start your french program, I learned french for 6 years, but since I am out of school I never practiced again and I forgot so much, such a shame, really want to catch up again :D Best wishes, Sarah
Anastasia Semina yes Anastasia i was in Russia a few weeks ago and loved it and can't wait to go back but i want to learn the language first i know hello, good bye, thank you, no, but thats it
This is off topic to the video.Sonia !!! Please help I'm going on a cruise to Mexico for 4 days I have no idea what to pack or to expect please help !!!
you are truly amazing your life is so great and you have a great personality and an amazing open mind. i love you, you are so awesome, you have helped me allot and you have inspired me the most. with love, rose.
I know this might sound weird, but I am quite annoyed by those "girls need to study science" commercials sometimes. I'm a girl and I just dislike science; I don't like subjects like maths, science and physics, not because I have to because I'm girl, but just because I'm not interested in them. I like history and languages, but it is incredibly annoying when all teachers are like: "No, you should do science! You're a girl, we need more girls in science, do science!" I didn't want to do science, and I was almost forced to do it! I don't think you should encourage girls to do science, I think you should encourage everyone, boys and girls, to do what they love. Andd then, maybe, more girls will do science, because they love it, not because they are forced by their teachers.
Boys are already encouraged to do science. The problem is that women and girls are actively discouraged from pursuing an education or career within STEM fields, if they have an interest in science they're told that it's for boys and that they should do something else, or they never even develop the interest that they potentially could, because they're treated as if they're naturally less inclined to do science. If you're annoyed by it, fine, but that doesn't mean it's not an important initiative.
I'm also a bit annoyed by these "girls should do jobs that are stereotypically associated with men" things. Why isn't it the other way around? Why is no one encouraging boys to become nurses or kindergarten teachers? I guess because a girl doing a typical "men's job" comes with prestige, whereas a guy doing a typical "women's job" is scoffed at.
sweetandsourapple Women in male dominated fields are met with skepticism, discrimination, physical and verbal harassment and blatant misogyny from men. Men in female dominated fields are scoffed at by _other men_, for being perceived as effeminate.
I'm sorry but I found that video to be one giant advertisement that wasn't really informative about the underlying "inspire her mind" program. An obvious commercial is a turn off, just my opinion
We should be encouraging young women to pursue whichever career they desire, not what we think they should become. This is still encouraging societal expectations of women. I guess an ad like this would be okay if we were also encouraging boys to delve into female-dominated fields such as fashion and cooking (because I'm sure there must be some guys out there who need the encouragement if girls must need it too), but we're not. Ironically unfeminist...
If girls are doing fine in their dominated fields (e.g. teaching, nursing, social work), then why is it necessary to break their competitive advantage? For instance, China's good at making shoes, and the US is good at making medical equipment. If you switch them, then the society will just end up with very expensive shoes, and faulty medical equipment!
