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Too many people selling language courses? | ||
Tags: Business | Language Program | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| etracher Triglot Groupie Italy Joined 5336 days ago 92 posts - 180 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: Modern Hebrew, Russian, Latvian | Message 9 of 61 16 June 2011 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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[QUOTE=unzum]
If people are wondering where to get all this information for free, start off by looking at 'language learning articles and tips' section on the 'General language' page on my website. [QUOTE] Excellent post, unzum. I'd just like to add that your website is great and has been very useful to me. Excellent work. Edited by etracher on 16 June 2011 at 5:54pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6528 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu | Message 10 of 61 16 June 2011 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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To me it seems the gap in the market is for graded/programmed mass comprehensible
input. For most common languages you have a choice of dozens of different manuals with basic dialogues and grammar explanations, but, for the most part, this isn't enough to learn a language to any meaningful level. Now that we have high-speed internet and blue-ray discs (that can store 100 hours of DVD quality video each), there are new possibilities. Think of the 'French in Action' series.. it's primary benefit is the quantity of material, that provides extensive listening comprehension, and allows you to see the language used in many contexts. I'm sure this series had a high budget, but others need not. It would be enough to put a camera and mics in the room of an intensive language class with other students for the length of the course, and include all the material unedited on disc, with a copy of all the handouts as a book. A little like 'Michael Thomas,' but potentially up to 1000 hours long. That would have real value. Podcasts for learners potentially provide lots of 'input' at the right level, but the speakers/producers often don't understand that the value of their material lies mostly in them speaking and providing 'input' in the target language, not their lengthy explanations/translations/discussions in English. Another approach to providing 'mass input' is bilingual books with audio, which is something I've been putting some work into for oriental languages. I think there four basic activities you can ingage in to study languages by yourself. (1.) Listening/Reading in your target language, possibly with the support of a translation or other guide to aid comprehension. Listening is always preferable, in my opinion. (2.) Drills (3.) Grammer study (4.) Producing output (by writing/speaking to yourself). Materials for (2.)/(3.) are well covered for most languages. I would think it's beneficial to spend at least 50% of your time of (1.), but I think the materials are lacking here, even for more commonly studied langugaes. Edited by DavidW on 16 June 2011 at 7:13pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Faraday Senior Member United States Joined 6120 days ago 129 posts - 256 votes Speaks: German* | Message 11 of 61 16 June 2011 at 6:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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What is the issue here? That there are too many products on language learning? Or that they mostly copy other
people's ideas? The latter might be a viable criticism, but I don't see how the former is a true problem. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| starrye Senior Member United States Joined 5096 days ago 172 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 13 of 61 16 June 2011 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's not just language learning. It's due to living in the internet age, I think. Everybody and their dog can set a up blog about any subject, or a facebook page, or youtube account, and start selling things (ebooks, videos, ad space, etc). There are a lot of people trying to make money off their blogs, in general.
But yea, I've also noticed there's a lot of this going on with language learning too. It's starting to feel like everyone who learns a foreign language has to set up a blog about it, and eventually starts selling something once their blog gains a following. There are some very good bloggers, don't get me wrong. There's a wealth of information out there, and it's a great time to be learning a language, thanks in part to knowledgeable people who contribute. For example, there are people with programing skills putting out useful apps, and other handy tools.
This is actually a pretty common type of internet scam these days, and it done with a wide variety of common topics. Weight loss, anti-aging, career guides, the list goes on and on. There is a pretty well known scam involving Google Adsense. It's an ebook claiming to teach you how to make money off of your blogs. Beware of this type of thing. Edited by starrye on 16 June 2011 at 7:03pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 14 of 61 16 June 2011 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | ||
I'd say the former has something to do with the inversion in the general principle that competition lowers prices. I reckon people like Aaron and Moses have started off on the premise that they're not going to sell a high volume, and therefore need to charge higher prices. If they only sell a dozen copies each, their prices are perhaps justified against script preparation and post-production time. So a small audience base with high competition drives costs up. But when volumes reach such a low level, I just don't see the point in using mass media, because mass media is less effective than individual instruction -- the purpose of mass media is to offer a low price, widely available alternative to individual instruction. So yes, maybe the problem is that too many people are writing courses and guidebooks.... 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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