Diaper change for Eric.
09/28/2008
09/13/2008
LingQ - The future of language learning
I am a teacher by profession. I have spent 3 years in Japan and 6 years in Canada teaching English as a second language. It was a good time. I met interesting people and learned some Japanese. And I learned a lot about the Teaching of English as a Second Language industry.
One day I found myself completely at odds with the way my career was going. It became clear to me that my students didn't really learn anything other than how to pass exams, if that was their goal. If not, 80% of them were happy to adopt a studious pose in class, which they immediately left behind at the door.
I tied myself into knots trying to make lessons that were more motivating. It was like hitting my head against a wall. Teachers that had a good rapport with students were generally not better at teaching than I was. They were much more willing to do what I sometimes call "hand-holding" in order smooth classes along, but with the same result: 20%... the driven students... would succeed under any circumstances.
In a classroom of 10 to 15 people, only 3 or 4 are ready to make the effort required to learn. The rest are satisfied to be passive learners at best. LingQ gives those 3 to 4 learners a chance to succeed at a much cheaper price (there is a free version and a very useful version starts at $10 US/month) and with a much more sensible methodology. I invite everyone to read this lens and find out more.
It is ok to feel like this LingQ is going to be about the same old stuff. For example:"This is a perfect method for learning languages!!". Or, "We have finally found the answer to all the laziness, boredom, and general blah that surrounds the learning of languages!" I assure you, LingQ does not offer paradise in 10 minutes. The first and most important thing you must understand, and I am a language teacher/administrator with 9 years' experience, is that language learning is not for those who aren't ready to dedicate time and effort to it.
The following is a more in depth description of one of my favourite web spaces. It is the best language learning website I have come across for its marriage of principles, methodology, and execution. It could be the next great Web 2.0 phenomena.
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On the face of it,LingQ, operated by Mark Kaufmann,is just a cluster of on-line audio-text libraries in 10 different languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, German, Russian, Chinese,and Japanese. These just happen to be the ten languages that the creative force behind LingQ, CEO Steve Kaufmann, speaks. When you look a little deeper you can see that after you choose one text, the audio can be downloaded to your MP3 player. Further along, you can see that there is a flashcard widget, the actual "LingQ" in LingQ, which gathers a database of all the words you chose to study from the text. Finally, you see that anyone can import texts with audio to the libraries.
When you start using LingQ you see it is made up of 5 main aspects.
1. LingQ-ing
The first one, and perhaps the one that stands out the most, is LingQ-ing itself. This is using flashcards to study problem words. After you choose a text, all you do is read, highlight problem words, click the "LingQ" widget, and you have a flashcard that contains the target word, the surrounding phrase, and a potential hint. The flashcard is networked with a series of dictionaries to easily retrieve definitions. The completed flashcards are stockpiled for further review according to a system similar to Leitner's.
2. Wordcount Measures Progress
The second aspect is the idea that the number of words that you know is the criteria for how well you know the language. There is a little button next to each text that lets your LingQ account know that you are "all done" with that text. LingQ counts all the individual words in that text (that you haven't LingQ-ed) and assumes that you know them. LingQ then ranks the remaining texts in the library according to how many "known" words they contain. Accumulating known words motivates LingQers when they are feeling bored with a text but they want to complete it for a given reason--- at low levels there is often limited amount of content that truly appeals to adults.
3. Repetition
The third aspect is the simple concept of repetition. Not only do you learn the problem words through repeated flashcard study, but the method emphasises repeated reading and especially listening of the same text. The idea is to repeat as much as you can to allow the flow of the language to become familiar. This is what I would call the grammar component of LingQ. Traditional grammar gives people problems because the appropriate forms are often based on patterns that stretch across many words, many sentences, or even paragraphs of text. The neat, phrase-level, explanations in traditional grammar books are usually full of exceptions. Accurate explanations are difficult for non-grammarians to understand. But repeated listening allows these stretched-out patterns to become accessible to anyone since they are embedded in the familiar context of stories, descriptions, or dialogs.
At lower levels, when you everything is quite new, you may listen to a thirty second dialog 40 times over the course of a couple of weeks. You can put it down and pick up where you left off in a week, Or you can just start new stuff. This brings me to the fourth aspect of LingQ.
4. Enjoyment
The fourth aspect is enjoyment. Learning languages should be a pleasure, otherwise you will never spend the amount of time required to truly master a language. The vast majority of your time you are reading and listening to enjoyable material. Speaking and writing formulaic phrases at a beginner stage is effortful, awkward and is usually not going to help you in a real situation. So is trying to understand decontextualised and sometimes quite contrived grammar rules. Large amounts of listening and reading will eventually get you to the point that you can somewhat spontaneously express yourself because you are actually moved by the topic or situation. It is possible to speak and write to tutors on LingQ but the discussions flow naturally and corrections are given via a text box so as not to interrupt the flow. Both of these activities lead back to the creation of LingQs.
5. Community
Finally, perhaps the most important aspect of LingQ is the community. Much of the content is contributed by the learners themselves, making LingQ a clearing house of ideas, information. attitudes, and accents at the grass roots level. Each account at LingQ can be tagged with a picture, a bio, blog links, and activity scores ("known" words etc). You can make 'LingQ friends' and see their profiles. There are lively discussions on the dozens of forums in 10 languages and counting. In the coming weeks, friends of different cultures will be able to tutor each other in a cash-structured language exchange format. Ultimately, the community is what will keep the learner coming back to the site and doing the work necessary to learn.
