4 Choices in “Disruptive” Language Learning

"Disruption" by Jean-Marie Dru was published in 1996 and is therefore not a new concept. In educational circles, however, it's a new trend and Kirsten Winkler illuminates it well in her blog: Disrupt Education! It's no surprise that language learners are also being impacted by - and by in large are benefiting from - the ever snowballing movement for "disruptive innovation in education." It's affecting even those of us who are no longer in school or college. In order to engage with other cultures, to travel, to live or work abroad, many people are eagerly learning a second or third language. Until a few years ago, our options were mostly limited to slugging through a textbook on our own, attending Continuing Education evening classes, hiring a private tutor, or buying expensive language learning CDs and DVDs. Now with the Internet as a disruptive force, our choices have mushroomed.

INNOVATIVE WAYS TO START OUT

It means, that we can put the large cookie-cutter style language programs aside and have fun with an array of fresh products created by innovative language learning companies. Anyone learning a new language has to make a start. One way is to learn a series of relevant words or phrases that will be useful forever. And if you want to stick with it, you have to find a way to really engage.

LEARNING BY LABELING

One starting point is to learn the words for items that surround you in daily life. You can do this, for example, with an iPhone app from lingibli.com. With the app, you can label things around your home and office (or on the go, when you're traveling), scan the labels and hear the translation. At this time, lingibli.com offers 21 languages, including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, and others. 

NEWS BASED LEARNING

Another approach is to practice with content that is time- and place relevant - such as daily news articles that interest you. For example, Voxy.com is a platform that uses daily news to create short lessons that you can access from mobile devices any time during the day. At the moment Voxy only offers English for Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese speakers, but more languages are in the works.

CROWD-SOURCED LEARNING

Because it provides easy access to native speakers, this approach has gained popularity quickly. Ideally, with such a program you can pace yourself, learn from live feed-back, and start creating social contacts in your new language. For example, besides providing free language-learning, Duolingo.com is also a crowd-sourced text translation platform where members can vote on which translations are best. At the moment Duolingo offers 5 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese.

LIVE CONVERSATIONS

Skype and Apple's video chat app called "FaceTime" provide the tools to have live, face to face conversations with foreign friends and language exchange partners. Various companies provide language services using these technologies, but you can also set up conversations on your own!

Go for it!

Not everybody will feel comfortable with these new approaches. And for others, these programs are great additions to more traditional learning materials. Users of Internet-based language programs seem to be mostly a younger crowd (which includes the thirty-somethings). Is that because they have grown up using computers for learning and like trying out things on the Internet? Whatever the reason, new approaches can take the “chore” out of language learning. That’s a good thing. So go for it: Try one way of learning, or try them all. You can’t lose.

Learning English as a Second Language (ESL) in Spain

Last week, I read an article on the difficulties that the majority of Spanish high school students are facing in understanding spoken English. According to data taken from the latest European Survey on Language Competences (ESLC), only 12% actually understand simple expressions about everyday topics.

Given such data, a simple question arises: What is wrong with ESL programs in the current educational system in Spain? From my own experience, two main reasons immediately occur to me:

• Firstly, the quantity of English input that a student receives in class is extremely low. On average, the amount of time spent engaging in listening activities is 30 minutes per week.
• Secondly, and as importantly, the quality of the English that students hear is quite poor because: (a) Portable stereo systems have inadequate sound quality and can hardly be heard in the back of classrooms.         (b) Exceptions aside, the pronunciation of non-native teachers is sometimes not quite up to standard. This fact, together with not hearing native speakers often enough, makes it hard for students to improve their listening skills.

Consequences of Dubbing

In addition, there are a few extra-academic factors, which definitely have an influence on the listening skills of high school students. One mentioned in the article is the dubbing into Spanish of movies and television shows. This alone represents an additional obstacle to ESL students because, as a result, they are not being exposed to the English language as much as it would be desirable outside of class.

Benefits of digitalization

However, I'm convinced that with the advent of media digitalization, the option to choose between Spanish and English audio tracks on multimedia content is giving students the chance to improve their language competence. It might actually be interesting to research a bit further: Will those students, who regularly watch content in English, do better than the 12% percent of students who understand simple expressions?

Pablo Montoya is both the writer and a speaker of our Spanish 1 course; he is also assisting us in developing our ESL course for Spanish speakers. For a description of our Spanish 1 course, click here