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Go to languagesfromadistance.com

Join in the discussion!

Go to languagesfromadistance.com

Join in the discussion!

Go to languagesfromadistance.com

Join in the discussion!

I was flipping through cable channels the other night and suddenly hit upon something that immediately made me stop. Pink Floyd’s “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” was resonating out of my TV speakers. What was this? I sat dumbfounded for a moment before I realized what I was watching. A music video? MTV? No, it was the Weather Channel. Just a routine forecast for the week. Only this time instead of the usual generic, soulless elevator music, David Gilmore’s haunting four note riff : tum – tum – tum – tum” of “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” was the accompaniment. I was mesmerized and watched the remainder of the forecast segment–probably with my mouth open. A commercial came on and snapped me out of my trance but I waited patiently to see what would come on afterwards. The forecast returned. But this time we were back to the weather channel of old. The dream was over.

I remember scoffing back when André Agassi made the famous statement: Image is everything but I finally have to give him credit for recognizing how the human psyche works. Packaging counts.

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If you haven’t checked out Chinesepod.com, do so. A friend pointed it out to me. I have recently been exploring it in the last couple of weeks and have been impressed for several reasons. For one, it’s got a lot of appeal. The overall look is hip and fun and the moderators conduct lessons with pleasant voices full of warmth and humor. Hey, no distance here in this distance learning site! Chinesepod is an inviting place that makes one feel encouraged to give learning Chinese a try.

Another big plus for me is the organization of the content. I know, I know…..it’s old-hat knowledge by now that subject material can be organized by tags (”meta-tags” is the correct term as I have been told) which make everything easily accessible for the user. But for some of us older non digital natives (am I that old?) these things aren’t so obvious. I had an “aha” moment when I realized that this was what we needed for our distance learning program. Course material is tagged by level, theme, and function and is very easy to navigate through. A friend of mine pointed out to me that such a tagging system allows the student more control to self direct learning. Yep. Exactly. Of course. I knew that. It’s all so obvious now.

Another big moment for me with Chinesepod (less of an “aha,” more of an “u huh”) was when I noticed a feature on their site called “the Fix.” The Fix is a short audiocast that helps students practice and retain vocabulary. The approach it uses is much like the Pimsleur method which has the student anticipate the translation for something stated in English before the speaker gives the answer. This causes the learner to quickly access memory and retrieve the word that has just been learned and to say it before the speaker gives it away. You have to think quickly to keep up! After a time through with the new vocabulary, the process is then repeated at a faster pace which further solidifies the learned words in long-term memory.

Having tried out the Pimsleur method last year while trying to learn Russian— Да, я говорю немного по-русски!— I was familiar with this approach and have been thinking about it for a while. Actually methods using translation have been a faux pas in the high school classroom for years (the exception here is TPRS ) because of the fundamentalist zeal of immersionist teachers. (Don’t get me wrong….I love immersion, but most high school classrooms do not offer immersive environments.)

My idea was to have some sort of rapid fire translation practice at the end of each lesson. Now that I see that they are using such a technique on Chinesepod, I am encouraged. The question is, will high school age learners buy into it and actually make use of such practice.

The answer? Yes!…that is, if it works. We have to let them self direct learning, remember? They’ll figure it out what works for them.

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Last month’s report by the NSBA (National School Boards Association) which found that the dangers of social networking are overrated and that schools should allow students to use such networks was a big step forward. In the weeks following there was molto discussion on assorted edu blogs…like here and here. The recommendation of the NSBA has been weighing heavily on my thoughts because at the moment I am trying to decide on which technologies and networks we will build our distance learning program on for the coming years. Since our students are all over the country, and many of them attend regular high schools, we cannot be sure of the kind of access they will be permitted at their school site—-many schools do not allow YouTube or Yahoo, some schools do not even permit wikis or blogs.

Just a month ago that fact alone probably would have caused me to decide for a very secure, protected environment for our curriculum–one that would be acceptable to all. But now I find that that voice of realism in me which up to now has remained hesitant and reluctant in regard to utilizing real-life web sites–unedited and unfiltered– for resources and tools is beginning to change. Instead of getting bogged down on what’s NOT possible everywhere now…wouldn’t it be more realistic to recognize that in a matter of a few years students will be using these sites all the time –actually they already are!— for all sorts of routine communicative tasks. (To be continued.)

 

 

Foreign language instruction from a distance? The idea may arouse some skepticism…and perhaps rightly so. After all even in a traditional environment like the high school classroom, teaching a second language is a challenging endeavor to say the least.

Nevertheless, distance learning will most certainly experience rapid growth in the decades to come as educational goals become more individualized and focused. How can foreign languages be taught in this new instructional context? Learning (and teaching) a second language is tricky business and there are many parts of the puzzle to consider. These pages we will explore both the possibilities and challenges that distance learning presents students and educators alike