It's the second day of 2015, and if we are talking about how my new year starts, I would say, 'Positive'.
Apart from spending my day with my favorite buddies at Tibetan Coffee House in our regular Tea House Adventure, (which was indeed really enjoyable) what makes me so much excited is the finding of the Online Course called Cultural Studies and Modern Languages: An Introduction from FutureLearn.
I have been looking for online courses for a while, there were a number of courses that caught my attention but didn't bring real motivation for me to get started. And today, I must say it was a luck of the draw when I found this.
Although I can't say that I put my heart into languages and cultures, the idea of tackling the foreign languages and getting to know a new culture is fresh and stimulating to me. Imagine how we get the insights to alien cultures, simply via languages, it will tell us a lot of fascinating stories. That's just cool, right?
If you watch the trailer video, you will listen to Ms. Gloria Visintini (Lead Educator of the course) speaking English with Italian accent (I guess). This alone is amazing. Personally, it recalls the so-called 'Lingua Franca' where a language is used as a medium for people around the world to communicate with each other and the notion 'World Englishes' to describe different versions of English created by different nations; these two terms happen to be my favourite in my Applied Linguistics course back then in 2011.
Back to the present, I already signed up for the course, and I just can't wait, I'm bouncing off the walls now. How about you? It's just a 4 - week course, which requires 3 hours per week.
Let me know if you are going to join me, then we can take the journey together.
It will start on Feb 16, 2015, just so you know :)
DT