NY Times' "The Web Way to Learn a Language" is misleading and incomplete

The New York Times last week ran an article by Eric Taub entitled "The Web Way to Learn a Language". For the most part, the article is an uncontroversial list of some of the better known language-learning resources on the web, followed by a grab bag of a few lesser-known, language-specific resources plus a few iPhone apps.

That the article is an incomplete list of the numerous resources available on the internet is probably the nature of the medium, but it also to some extent reveals Eric's prejudices about language learning: that some kind of structured "class" is needed, along the lines of those found in the offerings of Rosetta Stone, TellMeMore, Livemocha (see my review of it here), Babbel, and BBC Language. Some things that are not really part of a course fall into his grab bag at the end, but he completely misses out on great resources like iTalki, Lang-8, or LingQ, which respectively can be used, among other things, to let language learners freely tackle whatever content they like in speaking, writing, and reading and listening.

However, the article is shockingly misleading in how it characterizes the results of one language learner's experience.

Read more... Here's what the article says:

The young woman … was born in Iran and spoke only Farsi until her arrival [in the U.S.] two years ago. What classes, we wondered, had she attended to learn the language so well?

There's that assumption that a "class" is needed, plain as day.

"I didn't," she said. "I used RosettaStone."

And that's where the article leaves it. And what are you left thinking after that? Naturally you end up thinking that Rosetta Stone is the only thing you need to sound just like a native speaker. But let's rewind and repeat for a second…

…spoke only Farsi until her arrival [in the U.S.] two years ago.

Uh… say again? She's been living in a place where she's getting tons of exposure to her target language for TWO YEARS?

For those of you who are wondering, living in the place where your target language is spoken will generally do wonders for your language abilities. Let's assume she speaks Farsi at home. I would still wager that she's been going to a U.S. school, has native-speaker friends, watches U.S. television, reads U.S. websites, has an English-language Facebook account, etc. To slavishly suggest what the marketers are hoping would be suggested—glory be to the software!—without checking to see what other exposure she might have been getting to her target language is practically negligent.

Indeed, the sole fact that she's been living in the U.S. for two years could be more than enough to explain her native-sounding English. A friend of mine from Belarus moved to the U.S. when she was 15. I met her when she was 18, by which time she was completely indistinguishable from a native-English speaker. After spending about two years in the U.S., my wife began getting asked if she was a native-English speaker. After just a year in Japan, even I was able to briefly fool people on the phone into thinking I was a native-Japanese speaker. And none of us had used any software, while all of us had spent has spent significant time in places where our target language was spoken.

If the article's young woman had just arrived in the airport from Iran speaking native English and said the only exposure she had to English was Rosetta Stone, then I would be very impressed indeed. But to uncritically suggest that exposure to English via Rosetta Stone's software somehow played a more prominent role in her language learning than other avenues of exposure—especially for someone who in all likelihood was getting a lot of exposure to her target language—is doing readers a disservice.

Link: The Web Way to Learn a Language [New York Times]

Learning foreign languages? Why bother?

That's the title of an article by David Behling, a professor at Waldorf College, cunningly designed to pull in people like me looking to shoot down a ridiculous argument. Unfortunately Professor Behling is pulling a fast one on us, because he comes down firmly on the side of learning languages.

I of course agree with that sentiment, but there's a few places where I can't quite agree with what he's saying.

Read more... He writes:

In American schools, we wait until the brain has turned off the ability to easily learn language and then we start drilling our kids and young adults in a new grammar and vocabulary. It’s no wonder so many of them think it is such a drag.

I've argued before that it's more about the method used than the age, but there seems to be some support beyond my little hypothesis as well. I'm also happy proffer myself up as an example; I learned all my languages after the age of 18, and I didn't find it particularly hard. And go ask Steve Kaufmann at what age exactly he decided to pick up Russian.

He then goes on:

Opportunities to study language in school — instead of through private lessons or expensive software like Rosetta Stone — will not appear unless something else changes first.

He then goes on to say that Americans need a change in the way they think about foreign languages. That probably wouldn't hurt, but I'd start with the teaching method: painfully boring classes mean low demand means few students means few classes. And I'd say he should also check out Exhibit A: Drake University.

And I would be remiss to not point out that there are tons of ways to learn languages without school, private lessons, or expensive software. Browsing this blog, the blog roll, or a few quick Google searches should get you plenty of examples.

Link: Learning foreign languages? Why bother? [Albert Lea Tribune]

Why didn't my university teach languages like Drake University does?

We in the language-learning blogosphere are generally not impressed by university-level language programs. Some of us have even gone so far as to envision a brave new world of institutional language learning where entire language departments get the boot and students take advantage of native speakers, study abroad, and the multitude of resources available to them to learn their language of choice.

Well, I hate to spoil our "We know so much better than crusty, old schools" party, but Drake University, "a private, fully accredited, coeducational university on a 120-acre campus in Des Moines, Iowa", seems to be way ahead of the curve on this one. They implemented just such a system. And they did it in 2001. To those of you with short memories, they launched this way back when you couldn't watch foreign-language videos on YouTube or listen to language-learning podcasts on your iPod because, well, when it launched, YouTube, podcasts, and even the iPod didn't exist.

So what exactly has Drake been doing since they jettisoned their language faculty? Read more... Here are the outlines of their approach.

• At the beginning of their language studies at Drake, students take a course on language-learning strategies in English that is not aimed at any particular language (sounds like the book we're working on).


• Students meet three times per week in groups of no more than four with a native speaker of their target language and speak nothing but the target language during that time (sounds like LingQ's group sessions). Some classes are now completely virtual, via Adobe Acrobat Connect and Skype, making it seem even more like LingQ.


• Outside of these meeting times, students "practice using the language, make audio recordings of themselves speaking, and complete a variety of other assignments as part of the required electronic portfolio", which includes a journal in the target language (like Lang-8), the aforementioned recordings (as can be done on Lang-8 or Livemocha), writing samples (as can be done on a bunch of language-learning websites), and other things.


• Over the semester, students meet with a Ph.d.-holding linguist to cover grammar questions in English, go over how they're doing, etc. The linguist's main role seems to be a coordinating one.

Drake's method seems to be spreading slowly, with some schools adding additional advancements. Inside Higher Ed describes the case of Abilene Christian University:

Abilene Christian piloted Mandarin during the 2008-9 academic year using the Drake model of a supervising professor and a native speaker conversation partner. The professor … was in Beijing, and on-campus graduate students fluent in Mandarin led discussions. Arabic is taught by a professor in Tunisia.

Now that technologies like Skype are so commonplace, native-speaker teachers who live in their native countries seems like such a no-brainer to me.

And, most importantly, the model seems to be working. According to Inside Higher Ed:

There has been no comprehensive study of how Drake’s students compare to students who learn languages in a more traditional way. But the anecdotal evidence is there, many times over, said Jan Marston, director of [Drake's program] from its founding until last year.

When students trained at the Des Moines, Iowa, university study abroad, she said, “they’re placed in classes way above where the seat time would indicate they should be.” Students report back that while other students in their programs abroad speak English to each other, “Drake students are speaking Russian to the Russians.”

Marc Cadd, who directs Drake’s [program currently] said students are generally placed two semesters ahead of where they would be at Drake when they study elsewhere. For instance, students who had finished Drake’s Spanish 101 and 102 classes would likely be placed into a third-year language class when studying abroad in a Spanish-speaking country “primarily on the strength of their speaking skills."

I can't say I'm surprised. The approach they're taking jives much more with what I've found in my own experience than any more traditional approach.

So, Drake University, my hat's off to you. Your program is by far closer to how I would have liked to have learned languages in college, and your results certainly do seem to show it. (And someone might want to tell Steve Kaufmann to give these guys a call, given just how similar their system is to LingQ's.)

Links:
Outsourcing Language Learning [Inside Higher Ed]
Languages without Language Faculty [Inside Higher Ed]
World Languages and Cultures [Drake University]

Language-learning schools as a front for crime?

I'm generally a big proponent of using your target language as much as possible. However, I definitely strongly advise against using it to make fraudulent visa documents.

Link: Lawrenceville man sentenced for immigration fraud [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

Reading workshop works for language learners too: Free students to pick their own content

A few days ago I blogged about a certain Professor Fish who argues that, for courses like literature, teachers should be free to pick the materials they deem appropriate, rather than needing to teach to some broad standard. He classified language as something with a specific body of knowledge to learn—and, accordingly, being exempt from his "free the teachers" rule—but I argued that languages are no different than literature in this regard. And, indeed, I said I'd take it one step farther: let's free the students, letting learners pick the material they wanted to learn.

Then today up pops this article on the New York Times, which takes my one further step of letting learners pick whatever they want in languages and applies it back to literature (with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it subtitle of "The Future of Reading").

After the jump, let's strike out references to literature and replace them with references to languages, just to see how well these arguments work in both realms.

Read more...

The approach [Lorrie McNeill, a middle school teacher,] uses, in which students choose their own books materials, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading language learning, is part of a movement to revolutionize the way literature is languages are taught in America’s schools. While there is no clear consensus among English foreign-language teachers, variations on the approach, known as reading language workshop, are catching on.

In New York City many public and private elementary schools and some middle schools already employ versions of reading language workshop. Starting this fall, the school district in Chappaqua, N.Y., is setting aside 40 minutes every other day for all sixth, seventh and eighth graders to read books learn from language materials of their own choosing.

I wish I had had this opportunity when I was learning languages back in high school.

[F]ans of the reading language workshop say that assigning books materials leaves many children bored or unable to understand the texts materials. Letting students choose their own books materials, they say, can help to build a lifelong love of reading language learning.

“I feel like almost every kid in my classroom is engaged in a novel language that they’re actually interacting with,” Ms. McNeill said, several months into her experiment. “Whereas when I do ‘To Kill a Mockingbird' 'Don Quixote', I know that I have some kids that just don’t get into it.”

. . .

Ms. McNeill … wondered if forcing some students through a book a foreign-language textbook had dampened their interest in reading foreign languages altogether.

. . .

“There is nothing that we are doing here that can’t be done in any public school,” [Nancie Atwell, the author of popular guidebooks that promote giving students widespread choice] said. “The question is, how do you tweak these hidebound traditions of the institutions?”

Ha! That last paragraph didn't need a single edit.

[G]iving children limited choices from a classroom collection of books on a topic materials on a langauge helped improve performance on standardized reading comprehension foreign-language tests.

“The main thing is feeling in charge,” he said. Most experts say that teachers do not have to choose between one approach or the other and that they can incorporate the best of both methods: reading covering some novels materials as a group while also giving students opportunities to select their own books materials.

But literacy language specialists also say that instilling a habit is as important as creating a shared canon language base. “If what we’re trying to get to is, everybody has read ‘Ethan Frome’ and Henry James and Shakespeare can conjugate 500 verbs and knows the declension of 1000 nouns, then the challenge for the teacher is how do you make that stuff accessible and interesting enough that kids will stick with it,” said Catherine E. Snow, a professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. “But if the goal is, how do you make kids lifelong readers language learners, then it seems to me that there’s a lot to be said for the choice approach. As adults, as good readers language learners, we don’t all read get exposed to the same thing, and we revel in our idiosyncrasies as adult readers language learners, so kids should have some of the same freedom.”

Now of course the facts I arbitrarily changed above may or may not be true (I'd bet that they are), but in any case the entire argument stands pretty darn well in the language-learning field as well.

Links: A New Assignment: Pick Books You Like [New York Times]

For languages, it's not about what colleges should teach, but how

Stanley Fish's recent post in the New York Times, entitled What Should Colleges Teach?, asks just that. The article is in reaction to a report by a right-wing group, founded by Lynne Cheney, called the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, or ACTA.

Professor Fish found himself surprised that he was nodding along with many of the conclusions of this right-wing group.

I think they all missed the boat on language learning.

Read more... Here are Professor Fish's highlights from the report as they relate to language learning:

In [ACTA's report], the 100 colleges and universities are ranked on a scale from A to F based on whether students are required to take courses in seven key areas — composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics and natural or physical science.

OK, I'm with you this far on the language-learning bit; let's learn some foreign languages.

But ACTA falls into the water when they get to their scoring method:

Credit for requiring instruction in a foreign language will not be given for fewer than three semesters of study because it takes that long to acquire “competency at the intermediate level.”

Intermediate competency—as measured by U.S. colleges, no less—is utterly worthless. Applying the same standard elsewhere, why shouldn't college students only need intermediate competency in English as well? Because it's bloody damn stupid, that's why.

And here's where Professor Fish make his splash overboard:

The rationale behind these exclusions is compelling: mathematics, the natural sciences, foreign languages and composition are disciplines with a specific content and a repertoire of essential skills. Courses that center on another content and fail to provide concentrated training in those skills are really courses in another subject.

He's just off the wall with this one; in languages, you can focus on whatever content you feel like and it doesn't make a difference—as long as you're getting exposure to the target language.

You can tell when you are being taught a mathematical function or a scientific procedure or a foreign language or the uses of the subjunctive and when you are being taught something else.

He's right, here, but it's something of an unfortunate fact as far as language learning goes; that, in most language-learning programs, you can always tell that you're learning a language is something I'd identify as a problem, rather than merely stating it as a fact.

Here's how Professor Fish sums up ACTA's suggestions in respect of language learning:

With respect to … foreign language instruction …, ACTA is simply saying, Don’t slight the core of the discipline.

Uh, not really. With respect to foreign-language instruction, ACTA is saying "Let's do a half-assed job". In what other subject is it OK to aim at intermediate proficiency and have that scored as an A? I've give it a D, or maybe a C-.

Professor Fish's ultimate argument is that, in a course like literature, professors should be able to pick the material they think is relevant, rather than being forced to teach some set body of material. The same holds true for languages, but how many Spanish teachers feel compelled to throw in some Don Quijote somewhere along the line, and how many students don't care to bother with the Spanish of a few hundred years ago? (My hand is up.) Indeed, I'd take it one farther than Professor Fish; why should the teacher even be picking content for students in a language course at all? Let the students pick whatever content they want in the target language, and let the teacher help them find and comprehend it.

Links:
What Should Colleges Teach? [New York Times]
What will they learn? [Scribd]
American Council for Trustees and Alumni