Here’s a nice survey post by Curt Bonk of a variety of online language learning solutions out there, with short explanations and reviews. There’s a bit of buzz right now prompted by the NY Times article that came out Sunday (reg required).
Via Seth Godin, some interesting statistics on second language attitudes in the US. Although it’s dangerous to make inferences or draw conclusions from these data, there are some interesting results.
For example, when asked to assess the importance of learning a second language for someone in business, 52% of the lowest income respondents answered “very important”, compared to 28% for the highest income respondents.
Via this month’s Harper’s magazine (print only), some examples from the online English language learning phrasebook “Military English Learning” from the website of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Daily:
The principles of war can never be changed.
A powerful navy must have smaller ships.
Special Forces can penetrate into an enemy’s rear to gather information.
This places the enemy on the horns of a dilemma.“Look, there is so much ammunition.”
“Oh, so many weapons. Great!”“These are tanks, aren’t they?”
“Yes. But this one is an armored vehicle.”Mass-destruction weapons bring more difficulties to the first aid.
Counterterrorism is a topical subject.
Every country should fight terrorists.
Do you know the most terrorist event?
It was the September 11 attack in New York.
Thousands of people died unnatural deaths.
The World Trade Center can never be mended.
Bin Laden immediately became the most famous person of the world.
Has he been dead or still alive?
No one knows, I’m afraid, except himself.
Via Global Voices, an interesting post from Macam-Macam. CNN reports that
Indonesia will require overseas people seeking work permits to master the local language if their jobs involve regular interaction with Indonesians, an official has said.
I had a client in Buenos Aires, an enormous US multinational, and several of the senior managers for the Argentine branch were from the States. One of these expat managers didn’t speak a word of Spanish, despite having lived in Argentina for over 10 years. He lived in a English language bubble of family, work, and mostly expat friends. I always felt bad for him and the poverty of his self-imposed internal exile.
Always-worth-reading George Siemens bucks the trend and makes the case that most learning is not social.
Now it’s pretty clear that language learning is a special subset of “learning” in general, and that the communicative essence of language learning pushes it way over towards the social end of the learning spectrum. Given.
But as language teachers we limit our effectiveness by overplaying the “social learning” card. This can happen in two ways:
1) Just because an activity is somehow “social” doesn’t mean it’s automatically good. “Let’s get our students in a chat room and they can communicate across borders!” is not necessarily going to be a productive use of our learners’ time because it’s social in nature. Activities such as this require careful preparation and set-up. Cultural factors may undermine effectiveness, as may student expectations (Paige Ware offers a fascinating diagnosis of what can go wrong, and why).
2) And if an activity is not “social”, then it’s not automatically inferior. AJ Hoge has some nice stuff on extensive reading and its value to acquisition (here’s the first one I could dig up). Self-directed solo activities can be immensely rewarding; reading, browsing the web, watching movies, listening to music…all provide rich input and are a wonderful component of any course.
This is not an argument against the social nature of language learning. The point is that we should select, design and deploy activities carefully, based on their intrinsic value, not on an easy fit into a over-generalized social learning paradigm.
This may have been kicked around already, but if you haven’t read Most classroom learning sucks, please do. Sample quote:
The best learning occurs in a stimulating, active, challenging, interesting, engaging environment. It’s how the brain works. The best learning occurs when you move at least some part of your body. The best learning occurs when you’re actively involved in co-constructing knowledge in your own head, not passively reading or listening. (Taking notes doesn’t really count as being actively involved.)
People complain that their kids can’t pay attention in school, then their kid comes home and spends two hours studying the elaborate world of Halo 2. Reading, absorbing, problem solving, using sophisticated mental maps, and on it goes.
When learning is “presented” in a push model, your brain says, “This is SO not important.” You’re in for the battle of your life when you try to compete against the brain’s natural instinct to scan for unusual, novel, possibly life-threatening or life-enhancing things.
