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Hundreds of educational interactives, games, quizzes, videos and podcasts, plus 1000s of articles written by academic experts and guest contributors.
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Languages
"That's so gay!" Homophobic language and school
How is the word 'gay' used in your school? What negative impact can it have on the pupils' views about homosexuality? Find out with the founder of Inclusion for All, Shaun Dellenty.
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Education & Development
How do we learn language?
Children seem equally able to acquire any one of the 7000 or so languages they could be born into – how do they do it and what makes our species uniquely prepared to learn language? Paul lbbotson talks about this remarkable part of our human nature
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Languages
"I was so depressed yesterday..." - or were you?
Using phrases relating to mental health to add drama to your conversation can have unintended consequences, warns Zsofia Demjen.
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Languages
The future of emojis
It's World Emoji Day on 17 July, but with communications technology developing so rapidly, what’s likely to be the future for this colourful cast of characters? Philip Seargeant – Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics – explores the possibilities.
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Education & Development
An introduction to artificial intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) represents great opportunity, but also significant disruption for modern societies and cultures. This free online short course investigates the historical, ethical and social issues surrounding this technology. It is aimed at people interested in understanding where this technology has come from, the kinds of ...
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Languages
The Goldlist method: Learning vocabulary by writing it down
Are you struggling with a foreign language? Tired of flashcards and memorising glossaries? If so, the Goldlist method may help, all you need is a notebook and a pen!
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Languages
Describing language
This free course introduces you to the basics of describing language. Using examples from English, you’ll learn how words are built, how they fit together to make sentences, and what labels like noun, verb and adjective mean. You’ll see how language patterns in regular ways and how the meaning of a sentence is more than the sum of its parts. ...
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Languages
How emoji are changing the shape of everyday English
What influence are emoji having on the way we communicate? Is the common use of the eggplant or facepalm emoji something to worry about? Philip Seargeant explores this online visual language...
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Languages
Year of the Tiger: Chinese New Year
虎年快乐！Hǔ nián kuàilè! Happy Year of the Tiger. Why not learn some Chinese New Year’s greetings to celebrate Chinese New Year?
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History & The Arts
What's creative about creative writing?
Can creativity be taught? How far can you be creative when translating other people's work? Listen to translators, authors and creative writing teachers as they explore these and other questions of creativity.
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History & The Arts
Getting started on ancient Greek
This free course, Getting started on ancient Greek, offers a taster of the ancient Greek world through the study of one of its most distinctive and enduring features: its language.The course approaches the language methodically, starting with the alphabet and effective ways to memorise it, before building up to complete Greek words and sentences...
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Languages
About The Open Centre for Languages and Cultures
Welcome to the OpenLearn Hub of the Open Centre for Languages and Cultures, a collection of free taster courses in a range of languages and communication-related subjects.