UK Language Teaching at All Time Low?

An interesting article from this time last year in the Register about the state of language instruction in the UK. Although it isn't recent information, it is a pretty good read.

An interesting quote from the article (regarding recent changes to programs) -

Laws laments: "They reduce foreign language study to a functional skill that teaches the sort of thing you find in a 'get by' phrase book. It is selling young people short and is unlikely to inspire anyone to see languages as anything other than mechanical and boring."

Future of Learning - What Do YOU Think?

It's often the case that the most interesting insights about a topic come not from people building products, but people trying to find innovative ways to solve problems in their own lives.

So this blog post presents an open question - what do YOU think is the most interesting idea, tool, or technique in learning today?

An email from Steve Jobs

I have an iphone. Or I should say, I had an iphone. I was one of those shmucks who waited in line to get one the first day. It was as if the iphone was made just for me...the features the interface...perfect.


Two days ago i dropped it about 2 feet. It hit the ground on it's corner and the screen cracked.
Crushing....
I looked into a repair at the "genius bar" they told me, $250 to repair the glass (I believe they exchange the phone) I asked if I could give them the difference and at least trade up. "Nope..."
So I paid 600 bucks for this thing. I pay 92 bucks a month, I now have to ante up another $250?
So I emailed Steve Jobs...what the hell. I was frustrated and I knew he would never even see the email. (I looked up his email address on a mac forum)

"Mr. Jobs,

I was first in line for this phone. I paid a premium. The screen broke from a short drop. $250 dollars?

I have sold at least 3 of these things for you. I feel dirty."

A bit dramatic, but from the heart.

Imagine my surprise when he replied!

"Imagine this for a car:

I was first in line for this car. I paid a premium. Then I crashed it. $2500.

I have sold at least 3 of these cars for you. I feel dirty.

Sent from my iPhone"

Wow! How cool and how completely unsatisfying all at the same time!

His analogy falls short for me. If I bought one of the most expensive cars there is lets say a Ferrari 599. They retail for about $250,000. Forget the fact that the price went down two months after I bought it. I drive my new 599 around telling everyone who will listen how great it is.
Then I pull into a parking space and bump a curb and the windows all explode.



I call that a design flaw.



I get in touch with the folks at Ferrari and they tell me they can't replace the windows, but they will give me a new car for 100k.
I don't think that works...you have a top of the line car...a halo car that you use to put a wedge in the competitions market share. And you treat an early adopter (a die hard PC guy btw) like that?



I am not sure what to do next. I am thinking I might sell the phone to some DIY type for $175 dollars. That's the price to get out of the ATT contract.



Heart breaking.

Unnecessary buttons.

I bought a coffee grinder today. Actually my wife bought it for me given these instructions:

“Would you pick up one of those little twenty dollar coffee grinders for me?”

My old Krups blade grinder died (after 10 years)

The Krups coffee grinder had a lid, a body and a button that turned it on and off.

The new grinder, a Mr. Coffee Precision, has:

• a lid
• a cover with a door on it,
• a removable cup,
• a mechanism to sweep the inside,
• a button to say how much you are grinding
• a button for a timer.

I have no idea how the buttons work. The timers, the detachable bits...I tried it once and immediately packed it back and returned it. I didn’t read the directions, because I have been spoiled by good design.

As a product designer I live in fear that someone will open the box and decide...”mmmm...no.” and pack it back up. We lean heavily on our users to give us feedback on what works and what doesn’t.

There is really nothing better as a business owner than hearing a legitimate complaint. For every person who complains there are another 10+ who just stop using your product. They will also tell anyone who will listen not to buy it.

If you use 3DLanguage and there is some glaring flaw...tell us! Don’t assume we know. I feel bad for the folks at Mr. Coffee...I think I’ll write them a letter.

Rubbish, Excellence and Saving a Life

Video games and simulations have a bad reputation. They are seen as entirely frivolous by a large segment of the population. I want to change that perception, of course, so I am always interested in story's like this one. Game training helps to save a life. The short version is that a man was driving down the street and saw an accident. He had been train to respond to a crisis by Americas Army, the controversial Army recruiting tool.

"Paxton took him clear of the vehicle, found a towel and kept it pressed against the man's lost fingers, and examined the head injury to determine what he could do to help. He decided the head injury wasn't as serious, so focused on the hand, telling the man to sit down, relax, and lift his hand high above his head. Five minutes later a soldier in plain clothing arrived on the scene and took over, informing Paxton that he had done all the right things and thanks to him the badly injured man wasn't in any immediate danger. With the ambulance on the way, Paxton went back to his car, and continued his drive home." - from Gamernode

Here's another example of a video game teaching:

“Formula 1 racing drivers such as Toyota’s Jarno Trulli and BMW’s Kazuki Nakajima have been seen practicing in front of a console. Whenever a new track comes onto the racing calendar, like Fuji Speedway did last October after a 30-year absence, and drivers cannot get there to practice for real, many fire up “Gran Turismo.” They say it’s the only way to memorize the track layout and braking markers — the points where you must start killing the speed to take an upcoming corner.” - Japan times as quoted in jgadgets

Any airline pilot will tell you that video games (very expensive video games) are indispensables tools for flight training.

I think we will look back at this era and the video game critics will appear very short sighted. Like the folks who undoubtedly came out against film, television, radio...

Even books:
"The introduction of the printing press opened up networks that allowed new knowledge, ideas and creativity from new kinds of authors to emerge. People were no longer restricted to receiving knowledge from the authorities (the church, academia etc), they could publish their own. Academic debates were taking place in coffee houses and people were publishing their conclusions. But the printing press was an agent for rubbish as well as excellence." from Jenny-bee.net

More on the previous post.

Take a look at this matrix. It shows proficiency levels in language learning.


Now feast your eyes on this table:

Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) Levels
Language From S/L/R*- 0 to:	S/L/R 1	S/L/R 2	S/L/R 3	S/L/R 4
I. Romance and Germanic Languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, German, Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish	150	400	650	**
II. Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean	350	1,100	2,200	**
III. All Others *** e.g., East European, African, Asian Languages	250	600	1,100	**
Note: For learner to achieve these goals, classroom study should be supplemented by a minimum of two to three hours of preparation for each five classroom hours. This table is an adaptation of the U.S. State Department Foreign Service Institute’s expected levels of speaking proficiency for various lengths of training. This adaptation is intended to meet the needs of private sector students.
* S : Speaking Proficiency, L: Listening Proficiency, R: Reading Proficiency ** Generally cannot be achieved in classroom. Requires extensive use of language in the native setting.*** Indonesian, Malay approximate classroom hours for S/R-1:200; S/R-2:500; S/R-300;900
Hours approximate. Actual hours required may vary according to student’s language learning aptitude.

This chart assumes classroom study with a couple of hours of prep. So really its 150 x 2-3 or 300 - 450 hours. And that's not a night class at the local community college (nothing against Community college but they don't tend to move to quickly. They move at the pace of the slowest student. I my experience a nice older woman who has no real interest in the language, but would like to get out more.)
I believe that you can do this without a classroom if you have the right study habits and the right tools. It breaks down to about 1 to 1 1/2 years.
at the end of your 1 to 1 1/2 years you should be at a solid 0+ to 1-
Here are the definitions(speaking/listening):

0+
Survival Proficiency
Speaking:
Able to satisfy immediate needs such as for lodging,
meals and transportation, using memorized or
rehearsed speech only. No fluency.
Listening
Some isolated words and phrases such as
personal and place names and street or
store signs but not connected prose.

1
Minimal Functional Proficiency
Speaking:
Able to satisfy minimum courtesy requirements and
maintain very simple conversations on familiar or
rehearsed topics. Experiences frequent
misunderstandings. Examples: can exchange
greetings, elicit predictable information and explain
routine procedures in a restricted way.
Listening:
Able to understand very simple connected printed
material. Able to get a main idea of short, frequently
encountered materials, such as invoices, and charts.

Being a level 1 satisfies most peoples goals as language speakers. You go to Italy once a year and have a short dialog with the waiter at a restaurant. It's a huge accomplishment.

I hope this doesn't discourage you. I am probably a bad businessman for say this but I would rather you didn't buy 3DLanguage if you had illusions of fluency after a few hours. But if you want to work at it, and really achieve something, we're here for you!

Dave

Speak in Mandarin 10 days!

Just a quick word on any product that says they will teach you a language 10 days! ...or 5 days or 15 days. Bullshit. Learning a new language takes a really long time. There are no short cuts. Sorry. I imagine there are some freaks out there who can do it quickly, but I’ve never met one. Our Arabic project lead, Jeff, learned Arabic at the famous Department of Defense Language School in Monterey California. He became semi-fluent after 18 months. 18 months of intensive language training with one on one tutoring from the best teachers in the world. He studied for a minimum of 9 hours a day.

Now...lets think about what you can do in 10 days. You could probably teach yourself how to say Hello How are you Where’s the bathroom...and a few more phrases. You won’t really understand the new language, you’ll just be able to bark out memorized utterances. And you certainly won’t understand what is said back to you. You would recognize the answer, but it would have no real meaning for you.

It will put you off language learning. You’ have your dream of speaking Spanish or French and you are shown just enough of the language to convince you that you have no chance.

La Passione!

I made a decision this week to get back to Italian. It’s been 5 years now and my Italian has withered. Ironically, I started Coccinella in 2001 because I was looking for a virtual world for language learning and it didn’t exist. I actually thought I might be able to do it myself. How hard could it be? Pretty hard it turns out.

We did a very thorough round of market validation – testing prototypes with likely users and recording their thoughts. (And I mean all their thoughts...we tested 60+ people and wrote down every word they said...I’ll write about that at a later date.) We also did a market size analysis (remember guys, marry an MBA) The biggest markets for language learning are English and Spanish. We decided to do Spanish first because we are closer to the customers. Get the technology right and then go onto English, Italian, French etc.

So I put the Italian aside and started learning Spanish. It’s good for everyone on the team to be learning a language all the time. My experience as a flight instructor showed me how quickly you can take your expertise for granted. Stay humble and you’ll be a better teacher. So I’ve learned quite a bit of Spanish a bit of Mandarin, and a bit of Arabic. (We have language experts for the heavy lifting) Now finally, we are working on an Italian version! Turns out, for the investment in 3DLanguage I could have bought a nice place in Tuscany, but where’s the sport in that?

What a difference it makes to be passionate about your second language! Not that I didn’t enjoy Spanish...I lived in Spain with my wife and kids to gather reference material and I really loved it. I hope to go back to Sevilla soon. But Italian...Something about Italian...I love the place, I love the people and I love the language. It feels good to utter Italian. I think that is the key factor in language learning. Are you doing it because you want to or because you have to?

We are trying to make software that helps in both situations...but I hope for your sake you have fallen in love with French or Spanish or Mandarin.