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LOS ANGELES, Calif., June 12, 2013 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Bright Spanish, an organization comprised of a small group of Spanish teachers, is offering free six-week Spanish courses online. The classes are taught live in a video conference "classroom," where students listen to the teacher and participate in real time. The group hopes to make Spanish learning more accessible by providing interactive, guided classes that anyone can take regardless of their location or budget. Using PowerPoint presentations instead of chalkboards, chat instead of raising hands, and pop-up poll questions instead of quizzes, the teachers at Bright Spanish strive to make their classes feel and function as much like a regular classroom as possible.<br><br><br>Students can even turn on their microphones and repeat words after the teacher to practice their pronunciation. Each class lasts 45 minutes, and meets twice a week for six weeks. That’s nine hours of class time, and the Bright Spanish teachers try to cover a lot of ground. According to Bright Spanish’s teachers, the courses have been going quite well. "We usually have anywhere from twenty-forty people enroll for a class," said Anna Rasshivkina, one of the teachers. "Generally, about ten of them show up regularly to the class. Currently, Bright Spanish is wrapping up its second Beginner’s course, and is about midway through its third. Original Keywords: Bright Spanish, free Spanish courses, free Spanish classes, online Spanish classes, learn to speak Spanish, elearning, video conference classroom, e-learning, distance based learning, Anna Rasshivkina Bright Spanish Los Angeles California LOS ANGELES, Calif.<br><br><br>Surgical area of Noble Hospital in Westfield. WESTFIELD - The Massachusetts Nurses Association, a union that represents about 100 of Nobles 750 employees, is cautiously optimistic on the eve of Noble's purchase by the much larger Springfield-based Baystate Health. Paul Dubin, a 27-year nurse at Noble and co-chair of the nurses local bargaining unit. The Massachusetts Health Policy Commission is expected to approve Baystate's purchase of Westfield's Noble Wednesday at the commission's regular June meeting. It's the last of a long series of regulator hurdles and real changes at Noble which are expected to start at in July. Neither Noble management nor Baystate executives are talking specifics now, but Baystate has promised to keep inpatient care at Noble and to add specialties from its Springfield headquarters to Westfield operation. The purchase price has not been disclosed.<br><br><br>Noble and Baystate announced back in March that their boards were contemplating an "affiliation". The word "acquire" is being used now. Health care providers are consolidating across the state, said David Schildmeier, director of public communications for the Massachusetts Nurses Association/National Nurses United. Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates do not cover the cost of care. New payment systems encourage providing quality health care to populations and preventative care, not payments based on procedures or tasks performed. All this makes it tough for independent hospitals and encourages operators to seek out economies of scale. In September 2014, Baystate took over Wing Memorial Hospital in Palmer from the UMass Memorial System.<br><br><br>Northampton's Cooley Dickinson affiliated with Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital in 2013. Partners HealthCare, of which Mass. General is a part, also has plans to take over Harbor Medical Associates on the South Shore. Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington recently bought hospitals on the north shore. The wave of mergers means that only Holyoke Medical Center will remain as an unaffiliated hospital in Greater Springfield. The union's contract with Noble, which won't expire until March 2016, has a successor clause meaning Baystate must honor it, Schildmeier said. Baystate's relationship with the Nurses Association suffered during contract talks at Baystate Franklin in Greenfield which were settled in 2014. But things are improving in recent years. Dubin said he met with union-member nurses from both Baystate Franklin and Baystate Mary Lane in order to learn more about the current working relationship.<br><br><br>He came away satisfied of a cooperative environment. North Adams Regional Hospital, which had 121 beds, shut down abruptly in March 2014, leaving 40,000 residents in northern Berkshire County without access to a local hospital and 500 people out of work. Westfield is more prosperous than hard-hit North Adams, Schuildmeier, a Westfield State University alum, said. But Westfield has its challenges, the union told the State Department of Health at a recent hearing concerning the purchase. Westfield has 40,000 residnets and there are thousands more in surrounding towns. There are 8,000 people aged 60 or more in Westfield. Westfield also has a growing population of immigrants including Nepali refugees and those of Iraqi, Afghan, Burmese and Ukrainian origins, the union said. There is a growing population of Spanish speakers as well.<br><br><br>More than 25,000 patients visit Noble's emergency department each year, and they average over 4,000 inpatient discharges and 44,000 outpatient visits each year. Documents on file with the Massachusetts Attorney Generals Office show that Noble has been struggling. 12.69 million in 2012, the most recent document available. Baystate Health has a total of 11,500 employees at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Baystate Mary Lane in Ware, Baystate Franklin in Greenfield, Baystate Wing in Palmer and other assorted operations. Of those, 6,100 work in Springfield, the 761-bed hospital that also serves as Western Massachusetts' only Level 1 Trauma Center, and has the second-busiest emergency room in all of Massachusetts.<br><br><br>Learning a new language can be a fun and rewarding experience. How long it takes to learn a foreign language depends on your proficiency level in the language you want to study. There are many choices available as to which foreign language to take. Let your mind explore the many possibilities that a class in Arabic, Portuguese or Chinese can offer. Tampa Language Center offers classes in Italian, German, French, Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish. The center offers private lessons for both adults and children. All foreign language classes provide the vocabulary and speaking skills necessary to communicate with others in the foreign language. Students will learn to read, write and speak in the foreign languages offered at the Center.<br><br><br>Prices vary by private, semi-private and group classes. 60. Courses are 16 hours/units long. Longmen Chinese Language Center teaches Mandarin Chinese, Zhuyin or Pinyin language classes. Private classes, in-home tutoring and small group classes of four to 10 students are all offered at the language center. The center offers Mandarin classes for children in kindergarten through eighth grade. Culture lessons are integrated into the classroom curriculum so that students are not just learning to speak and write the language, they are also learning about the culture of the language and the people. Apex Language Center has been in the business of teaching foreign languages for eight years. Classrooms are designed for a maximum of six students per class and each class is offered in a home-like setting.<br><br><br>The center’s instructors have a combined total of over 60 years of teaching foreign languages. Apex Language Center offers placement in private family residences near the school for those who live out of town. Care will be made to place students who require housing into a home with families who speak the language the student is studying, thereby helping the student to get practice speaking the language in real-life situations. The Italian American Society of St. Petersburg offers free Italian classes every Thursday from September through May. The 6 p.m. class covers elementary grammar as well as both intermediate and advanced conversation.<br><br><br>There’s a big difference between leveling up in a language learning app and being able to speak and understand your target language when you arrive in a new country. Rather than wondering which app or approach is "best," consider studying your language from multiple directions. Duolingo is free, has a ton of material, and works well for a lot of people—so it’s a natural first step. Mango takes a more conversational approach, and while it’s a paid product, many publiclibraries can give you access for free. Babbel is another paid app with a conversational focus. When I’m studying a language, I like to dip in and out of the other strategies I’ll mention, but I like to have one approach that I check in with every day.<br><br><br>For me, that’s usually Duolingo. If you only practice the written language, it’s very difficult to understand speech (especially from native speakers who may speak quickly and who may have a regional accent you’re not familiar with). There are tons of podcasts in nearly every language, but the problem is finding ones that you can understand as a beginner. Duolingo’s Spanish podcast bridges the gap in a really nice way: a Spanish speaker tells a story about something that happened in their life, and every few sentences the English-speaking host takes over and provides some context. You can follow the story without getting lost, but the more Spanish you can understand, the more details and flavor you can pick up. Notes in Spanish and SpanishPod101 both do this well.<br><br><br>This might be the scariest option at first, but it’s also probably the most helpful. I found beginner groups where most of the conversation is in English, and intermediate and advanced groups where people just hang out and chat in the target language—sometimes over a meal, or after a foreign-language movie. Since the group is intended for people who are learning the language, it’s fine to show up even if you aren’t confident in your skills. People will help you! I also found my conversation group to be a great place to learn about books and apps that I could practice with at home.<br><br><br>A video chat may, again, be kind of terrifying. But when people who speak your language are literally a Skype call away, all across the world, it would be a shame to miss out on this extremely helpful way of learning. Italki can match you with either a professional language teacher or an informal tutor or partner for an hourly fee. Duolingo also offers a live chat in some languages, where you spend about five minutes going through a semi-scripted encounter with the teacher on the other end. For an even more informal (and less intimidating) option, Tandem lets you connect with other language learners for free. You just open up the app and text a stranger. Video chat and other options are available as well.<br><br><br>Don’t watch any just any TV show in your target language; many will be hard to understand. Seek out shows whose premise you can follow while practicing your listening skills. For example, if you’re familiar with the baking show Nailed It, try Nailed It Mexico, where the structure is exactly the same (people try to bake cakes, and fail) so you never have to worry about losing the plot. I learned from a recent episode of The Fluent Show (an all-English podcast about language learning in general) that some of the best shows for language learners are ones that are extremely formulaic, like reality shows and true crime dossiers.<br><br><br>When we asked for your language learning tips, some commenters mentioned the Extra! American students learning various foreign languages. For practice reading and writing small snippets of your target language, find accounts or hashtags on social media to follow. You’ll get a little dose of that language every time you scroll Instagram, plus you’ll get a tiny window into the culture by seeing what the country looks like, what people are doing, what news they’re discussing. It’s also a fun, easy, low pressure language exercise to leave a comment or reply every now and then, letting you put your new language skills to use in the real world without having to leave home.<br><br><br>The EU-EBM curriculum presented in this paper targets postgraduate training and continuing education, using a clinically integrated e-learning methodology. To our knowledge, clinically integrated teaching of EBM is currently not provided in Europe. The main purpose of the curriculum is to provide doctors with the basic skills needed to practice and implement evidence-based therapy. CD-Rom ensures timely and immediate access to the necessary methodological knowledge and background materials. A distinct feature of the EU-EBM curriculum is the low threshold approach to facilitate integrated EBM teaching and thereby addressing specific problems of the target group. Teaching basic concepts in short learning units and allowing maximum flexibility in the location of the learning takes into account the timeframe and working patterns of busy clinicians.