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Building SE Asian Courses - Right Track? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4145 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes  Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 25 of 40 16 November 2013 at 12:45am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The link doesn't seem to work for me... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| leroc Senior Member United States Joined 4312 days ago 114 posts - 167 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 26 of 40 16 November 2013 at 1:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The forum put an automatic space in between Mf yELHO on the link. Remove the space when you copy and paste and it should work fine. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4145 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 27 of 40 16 November 2013 at 1:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Thank you! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| snoonan Triglot Newbie United States learningindones Joined 6252 days ago 23 posts - 56 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Indonesian | Message 28 of 40 16 November 2013 at 10:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Whoops! Here it is properly urlified: https://d ocs.google.com/forms/d/1Bn1rEQofUFxEdHaCP14SlNI3sMfyELho77xT aXQOomY/viewform 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6551 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 29 of 40 16 November 2013 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Unfortunately this sounds a lot like the irish polyglot language hacking guide, and other such mediocre guides available for pay or free online. I hope you will actually create some new stuff to make what you're doing more valuable and useful to learners who aren't complete beginners.
You've been working on Indonesian for 6 years, and you plan to do many others, some of which are considerably more difficult for an English speaker. Sorry to be cynical, but this forum has seen a lot of people come in and claim they are going to do some amazing stuff, and never follow through. So why should we believe you? Is your wife Indonesian by any chance? Will you have as much motivation to do the other languages? Do you really have enough time, money and expertise to do this?
This sounds like a great idea, but I reserve the right evaluate it after I see it.
You're going to get a transcript for Pimsleur from Amazon? That would be neat!
Technical guide book? Do you mean a grammar or text book? And why wouldn't you do both implicit and explicit? The amount of time spent going through a grammar takes far less than the time it takes one to assimilate grammar. Avoiding grammars completely is pretty inefficient, imo, so hopefully you won't be suggesting people do that.
Why not recommend people find free language partners on sites like Shared Talk (omg - Rosetta Stone did something right)? You're talking about guiding people and giving them a path. Free language exchange is something they are more likely to stick with. Also suggest some structure for their conversations, and a lot of info about conversation in general.
This is your biggest weakness, imo, but it is the area where you can be of the most use. Rather than paralleI texts, which I think you are describing here, I much prefer mouse-over dictionaries, color coding unknown words, and keeping statistics like LingQ, LWT, etc do. In addition, I recommend creating enough graded material for a beginning reader to get all the way to native material with never having more that 10% unknown words. If you keep statistics, this isn't as hard as it sounds.
Too much attention to SRSs. Imo, your coding skills would be much better used creating the mouse over dictionary stuff I mentioned before. I'd recommend people use an SRS, paper flashcards or lists as a tool if they need that sort of thing. But if they don't need it, they shouldn't use it. Anki is just a tool that some people use to help learn languages. We don't want to waste ridiculous amounts of time on it and become heavily dependent on it.
Aren't you just selling something? Why wouldn't you highly recommend classes, for example, and make this a main point on your list, rather than just an "other resource"? If you aren't mostly trying to make money here, why make all that new SRS stuff you want to design a main point? Edited by leosmith on 16 November 2013 at 5:57pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| snoonan Triglot Newbie United States learningindones Joined 6252 days ago 23 posts - 56 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Indonesian | Message 30 of 40 18 November 2013 at 4:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Thanks Leo! I've been thinking a lot about what you wrote when I read it yesterday. There is some very useful guidance here. I will also answer the skeptical
points as best as I can. I will say I tend not to judge my own work by the failure of others. I believe we're a little different as I'll explain below.
The fact is that most people start out as beginners and with no knowledge of how to learn a language. Our first task is to help teach them to learn how to learn a language while providing beginner material. The number of intermediate -> advanced learners is vanishingly small in comparison. We hate to see people drop off there because they think it's too hard to learn. Isn't it sad to see that gap when it is often because of some bad course materials? It bothers me a lot and I worry about it. That is one problem we're solving for Indonesian and the other SE Asian languages we're working on. Secondly, The comprehensible input (text and audio) and plan for regular production of material beyond beginner level, I think, addresses the concern between beginner and higher intermediate. It can be hard to find this material for SE Asian languages. The main track audio program (pimsleur/MT sort of thing) and audio SRS lessons are more for the beginner to low/mid-intermediate level in my opinion. First 2-3k words. I'm hoping to get feedback here on the high intermediate -> advanced which I think you do well below. Can you expand on why it sounds like Benny's stuff? I tend to think we're very very different in that we focus on an approach for beginners closer to Krashen et al. and on a lot of input vs. "it's easy, just start talking!" or other one trick kinds of things. We ARE incorporating some tactics like Shekhtman's conversational communication tools, but again, that's mostly at the beginner level and part of the advice for new learners. Most people don't know how to learn yet, so should deliver some kind of framework and advice. I'd like to think it's a collection of practices based on what many people do here (though not anyone's in particular).
Yes. Here's why... As I said above, we may be different in that we have the money and the experience parts in our favor. I'll address a little of this with what I can say from a factual standpoint. First, we do have money -- we have been serving the beginner/conversational Indonesian community for 6 years and have amassed a "war chest" of money specifically for this. We believe based on our experience in doing this that it's sufficient to develop 2 languages. Our first two languages are related -- Malay and Tagalog, and so make the work easier for us to scope. Delivering these two makes the money question less important. Second, we are not assuming to be experts in those languages -- we are hiring teachers and course editors in those languages and showing them how to write for English learners. I'm an overall editor and can do well to read what makes sense and what doesn't for an English speaker. We will have a small group of test learners for each. Anything that doesn't work or is confusing, we'll rinse and repeat. I personally expect to learn these languages as they're produced, so I will also have my own experience to feed back into the process. The relative difficulty in going from English -> X, especially in other asian languages is a valid problem. We believe it can be overcome in this context because there is outside evidence to support it. Materials do exist and English speaking people do learn those languages. Research into specific teaching tactics for them, good native writers, good native teachers and sharp bi-lingual native editing work for getting over steep curve of beginner -> intermediate. Beyond this, we don't know what we don't know about the intermediate -> advanced, but hope to learn more from here and from learners that reach that stage. Finally, as to time and motivation, it's not a side project -- We have 2 full-time employees working exclusively on it (myself and a researcher/editor). I also have an part-time expert in Vietnam working on some problems related to Vietnamese in particular (I want to know what I do not know). I think the motivation part has more to do with individuals working on side projects or perhaps new startups without any income. I am not sure it applies for us since it is my job and that of a few other people working with us. I would tend to agree with this if you had brought it up on the post I made 6 years ago about our Indonesian course! Since then, we've grown in a (very) small company and perhaps don't suffer from some of those symptoms. It's a fair question, though.
Thanks! Devil IS in the details on this. We will have a large testbed with our Indonesian learners, so we think we can become good at knowing how to do it. We don't know the mix yet, but we do have a good handle of how it could be done from a technical perspective.
Yes, to clarify, the main audio track is intended to contains all of the implicit grammar necessary. The technical guide book is explicit grammar for those that feel they want to know the rules on a more conscious level. From a pedagogy standpoint, I believe implicit is better, BUT as a language learner, I personally want read the grammar and then work through material that uses it implicitly. I FEEL I learn better that way. I don't have empirical evidence that I do learn to speak and understand better from explicit knowledge of grammar, but I do know I want it to be a part of my own learning experience. I wouldn't pretend to know which is better, but I can imagine a case where conscious knowledge of rules does filter down to the ability to write and other more complex production tasks. I don't know of research that proves one way or the other. If someone wants to avoid the grammar guide, I believe they won't be at a loss as the implicit material will be as good as we can make it. There will be some exceptions when we hit points where implicit teaching becomes way too cumbersome to do right. We even saw this in parts of our original Indonesian course. Mostly, though, we'll follow that implicit principle in the main audio track. Explaining grammar in audio induces listener suicide anyway! But, back to your point, it will be presented as a choice for the learner. If they would like to read the grammar, it's explained simply and carefully in this guide. Skip it if you don't believe you need it. Read it if you do.
Right! we're asking about it here to know if it's valid. I am not sure that language exchanges vs. experienced tutor sessions are an either/or choice. All you can eat wouldn't be an option for most people paid sessions because of cost. I would agree free language exchange is a very good way to go. Good idea about the topic guidance -- I can see this working together. I feel like the option of dedicated sessions is still a more focused, effective option. Do you think guided trained tutors once or twice a week is of little value? To emphasize a point, I would very VERY much like not to have a monthly subscription fee for any part of what we're doing. I HATE them personally with great zeal and passion. This is one of two parts that demand we have one (or at least charge for time in a somewhat structured way). If there is some way to get out of it and still get the same quality result, I'm all ears. I worry that many people don't have the personality to drive or direct a language exchange sessions to get the result. Having someone own it for them may be better. I have an option, but not a firm stance. What do you think?
Those are features we can definitely add. We have some great code already that scores any given text against your SRS stats and knows what should be comprehensible. This is an "automatic graded reader", so we're perhaps talking about the same thing here. This wouldn't help you choose texts as easily in the printed version, but perhaps we can have some kind of adaptive index that says "ok, this list of passages are probably comprehensible now according to your stats." and it would change as your vocabulary grows. Again, we're not necessarily talking about different things -- adaptive scoring of the comprehensive input material is something we'll be able to do. I think this is better than graded readers. Fair? You're right that it's not that hard, but we do need input into the model of what you know well, so hence SRS. I'm calling it SRS, but the hit/miss stats are likely quite similar behind the scenes to some of the other tools you mention. Did that miss the point?
I am not suggesting the majority of time be spent in SRS for the learner, but that it's a background source of stats for other things. Some of what you do will touch your SRS stats without actively studying flash cards. For example, if you read text with the words and score yourself at the end, that touches the SRS database in the background (though not as strongly as a "wrong" or "correct" hit in flashcards). Sorting of the recommended readings or audio material COULD be driven by SRS in the background, or at least made a sorting choice. The SRS is teaching the database to know what you know so it can know what readings/audio passages are comprehensible, generate adaptive audio lessons and other aspects. It also feeds back in, so just listening to the adaptive audio lessons goes on to update the SRS database, letting it know that you consumed that audio and adjusts your SRS stats accordingly. Again, the flash cards will be the best way for the SRS to learn about you and for you to confirm your knowledge, but it doesn't have to be the only way to study. You can use the interactive flash card SRS part very lightly if you prefer, but we'd want to at least have some strong stats from it to feed the adaptive parts. There could be a light interactive SRS path if people prefer. Since the stats are extremely good for feeding adaptive stuff elsewhere, I think it's important and we may find it necessary to make other parts more effective. In the end, optimizing for total time spent learning and reducing anxiety with too much unintelligible input. Again, it's all a choice for the learner as to how much they want to use it. If they prefer, they can go full-on with the SRS at the expense of other choices. We wouldn't recommend it, but we'd provide the tools and it would be their choice. We'd tend to guide them to a middle road or one geared towards more audio/text input as a rule, however. One point -- the mouseover dictionary - done. It's a small feature for us to implement for online reading and is not hard. I thought we had mentioned it elsewhere. It's the large library of very good texts/audio that is hard to do, not the reading and dictionary features.
The "Actively encourage" part means exactly what you're talking about. People find your site because you have what they are looking for. For most people wanting to learn a language, that is a course. We make sure we are there when they go looking for that. If we are just a site with links to other great resources, no one will ever find it. They will find Rosetta Stone instead. I want to put something better in front of them and guide them into becoming a speaker of the language, and not using my views alone. In the end, people will recommend us further as the a resource IF we taught them well and they like the experience. The ones that didn't find value in our material may or may not recommend us, but at least they found a way to get what they were looking for (and didn't buy Rosetta Stone in the process!). This is why we want to build good language material for underserved SE Asian languages and actively direct them to other resources to find works best for them. Here's the truth: If we achieve a position of being relatively popular destination for SE Asian languages, we will do fine as a family and be able to pay a few employees in the process. We can re-invest profits into building and maintaining a few languages each year. We already do this with Indonesian, but it took us 5 years to amass the war chest to do more. If we can get to doing a few languages a year in this way, we will serve both goals just fine without charging much for the paid parts of our material. So... I imagine most of this isn't very convincing if you have read a lot of ambitious posts before, so perhaps we can call it a thought experiment! If you could imagine there is a benevolent well-funded language loving person with tech skills and a small team behind them, how do the ideas presented (as well as your own ideas) evolve to best support beginner -> intermediate, intermediate -> advanced paths for SE Asian languages. Feel free to have no confidence in our execution, but that perhaps someone better than us might read this thread someday and be capable of it :) Edited by snoonan on 18 November 2013 at 7:25am 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5866 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 31 of 40 18 November 2013 at 4:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I just wanted to thank Leo for their criticism and ideas and snoonan for their response. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this course/these courses develop.
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| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6551 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 32 of 40 18 November 2013 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Excellent post snoonan. I need to confess - I tried to be as harsh as possible, since you asked for criticism, and only
got praise from most members. That's the sad thing about this forum now - there has been so much censorship it's hard to solicit an honest opinion out of someone. Also, I didn't understand a lot of your first post, and just guessed instead of looking at your link. The main points I didn't (and still don't) understand 1) I couldn't tell when you were going to create stuff, and when you were going to recommend stuff 2) I don't know how everything is tying into a big SRS; have no idea how that will be structured. Feel free to pm me with any specific questions. Unfortunately, I'm a paranoid kind of guy, and I fear that I will be censored if I write a long response to your post. This will be my last post on HTLAL, unless the admins agree to inform people when they have been censored. Thanks everyone for tolerating my particular brand of BS. Good luck to you snoonan, you really seem to be on the right track. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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