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Attrition rates in language learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6471 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 1 of 25 30 January 2012 at 10:20am | IP Logged | |||||
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An interesting (and discouraging!) summary of studies:
http://backseatlinguist.com/blog/?p=135 What do you think is the attrition rate among HTLAL users? 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6553 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes 1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 2 of 25 30 January 2012 at 11:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for the link, that is a great blog.
Learning languages is hard and 99% attrition rates on people that follow one computer based program is not surprising - I've tried both RS (German, Arabic) and TMM (German) and my personal attrition rate with these programs is 100%. Why? In a word: They suck. Not because they are boring or repetitive. They are, but the editors that developed these programs actually have done a rather good job in improving the interface and getting the material right. They suck in the sense that they promise to teach a language as a stand-alone system. And of course, when they don't everyone is disappointed. Can anyone really spend 1000 hours in front of a computer repeating words?
Just a program. No one would think of promising word-lists or SRS or R/L as THE only solution to learning. Without real-world engagement, dare I say, EXCITEMENT, about languages and what they bring - learning isn't going to work. The school my girls go to - in which 95%+ of students are bilingual and over half master 3 or more languages only makes this work because the kids are having a great time at it and understand the intrinsic utility of all these languages. English for the music, German for the city, French for flirting with friends seems to be the motto of these Third Culture Kids. And if you look at how they learn and what they fail at it is often related to not only "fun" (Latin sucks, Latin gets dropped) but "utility" (oh, Latin might be useful for my exam and med school afterward, lets look at it again) and "method" (every single teacher mixes movies, culture, class work, novels, etc.) The kids are taught *how* to learn on top of the language material - that isn't the case with these programs. And when I look at the dismal results of the traditional French education system that taught students formal translation but very little living language use until this generation - the same issues and solutions hold. Rant over. On HTLAL? Given that in the Activity: Participation tab HTLAL about 1% of members only post more than 100 times I would not be surprised to see that the attrition rates are not significantly lower here. But I also imagine this group might be a little bit more self-selective. Perhaps someone wants to do an analysis of TAC logs from previous years and track drop out rates on the log? It is probably quite a bit better than this, from the source article.  Edited by zenmonkey on 30 January 2012 at 11:47am 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6551 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 3 of 25 30 January 2012 at 12:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
Zero. Never say die! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 4 of 25 31 January 2012 at 7:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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About HTLAL, I think zenmonkey said it all...
From my (long) experience as a student, I don't see languages as intrinsically different from any other subject. You just sit, study in a logical fashion, and you are ready to start using it in real life. Practice a bit, and you become reasonably proficient. Piece of cake. Has worked so far for me for sciences, ballroom dances, martial arts and, you guessed it, languages. I have studied languages using very different methods, so I know what does and does not work for me and most reasonable people. If you had asked me how to learn languages 15 years ago, you'd have got the same answers as today, except for corrections that I deem minor. But if failure rates are effectively higher then there must be a difference between languages and everything else. As a language teacher, I've acquired some extra perspective that I'd like to share. Over the last few years I've come to think that it's all because languages give the false impression that they are 'easy' and can be learnt without effort (because all children do?). This rather atypical feature and promotes magical thinking, which in turn develops into two evils that are almost omnipresent and exclusive of language teaching/learning: -Study methods are subject to ~20 years sweeping change cycles, because they're not taken seriously enough. This happened once in mathematics, and it proved to be a demonstrably terrible idea. When a new 'method' arrives, it never builds on the previous one to compensate whatever defects it may have, but replaces it, so dominant methods in any time and age are very likely rather immature. -Teachers are not really allowed to teach. This is bad enough when it is because you work for an academy with a particular teaching gospel (the nowadays omnipresent communicative method or similar bull), but it gets really hairy when it is the students who tell you how to teach them, because languages are so easy. I get this all the time. No matter how you approach the class, students always come up with alternatives that basically boil down to not doing much work, or drop out. No wonder the ones who remain take ages to learn anything, if at all. So, failure in the classroom is mostly due to lack of effort (like in any other fields), and then the magical thinking that you can set goals and specific methods at the same time only makes it worse. For independent learners, it's not essentially different. Most start thinking that it's easy, does not require much commitment, etc. and stop as soon as they realize that it is not possible for adults to go like that any more. The ones who persevere tend to run around in circles if they haven't studied anything previously because they lack discipline and stick to 'no toil' methods, or lack the knowledge to effectively organize their own self-study. Edit: Last but not least, most people are incredibly stubborn and cling to their own beliefs ("it's gotta work this way", "it's because of the teacher/materials", "such an expensive program must be good", etc.) against all evidence, and are very resilient to admit their mistakes, even to themselves. This doesn't help either. Studying successful learners offers similar conclusions. People who effectively learn a language have developed habits that let them learn with moderate effort, or with greater effort if they take a more 'brute force'-like approach. OTOH those who do learn well and do it without effort take bloody ages to get there, or come from an advantageous position, typically having a mother tongue that's similar enough to their TL. Edited by mrwarper on 31 January 2012 at 7:28am 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6553 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes 1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 5 of 25 31 January 2012 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
This "no-magic bullet" point of view is insightful. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5309 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 6 of 25 31 January 2012 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Often I feel that I am no better than anyone else at learning languages.
I seem better only because I didn't drop out. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 25 31 January 2012 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I had written a long post and then, as I was also reading the article, I realized that out of the 1-2% who don't give up and who actually learn the language, 85% studied the language abroad.
How depressing. That leaves about 1 in 500 students. We definitely need to look at how and why that one student succeeds. EDIT: That number refers to people who study will self-study methods alone right? A lot of people also take classes, or watch TV, listen to music, have language partners, etc. I'm guessing few people use the study method alone anyway... Edited by Arekkusu on 31 January 2012 at 5:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 8 of 25 31 January 2012 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
In my opinion persistence and interaction are the key. Treating a language as a "thing" to be "studied" without engaging the language on multiple fronts leaves someone feeling that it is ok to "blow off studying for a while and come back to it later". "Later" often never happens. The initial enthusiasm and momentum is lost as a result. Lack of persistence kills language learning. Perhaps lack of persistence is affected by lack of interaction. Take the example of math. In my opinion, the reason why many people do not like mathematics is because they see it as an abstract concept instead of having a genuine practicality in their lives. I was never taught about interest rates or mortgages in my high school math class nor did I make spreadsheets about expenses nor did I learn about investments and financial instruments. I was taught abstract concepts and word problems about trains traveling at different speeds across the continent arriving in Chicago. Hence, I didn't like math. Edited by iguanamon on 31 January 2012 at 6:54pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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