The Linguist On Language

I have read a survey of outcomes of immigrant ESL learners at government funded schools in BC which was done by an outside consultant hired by the ministry to justify the expenditure of government money. The results were something to the effect that over 50% felt they had improved after six months ful time study.

My questions are:

1. Why is 50% a good result? Al of our surveys at The Linguist show over 90%

improvement and satisfaction.

2. Why waste money on consultants? Why not ask the immigrants during their studies and immediately upon completion of their studies. This was not done in Humberto's case. Just another example of the wastefulness of government-funded ESL.

Money for language learning should go directly to the immigrants. At a system like The Linguist we know right away when the learner has stopped studying. When that happens any third-party subsidy should be suspended.

The US Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL)

Here is an exchange of letters between the US Center for Applied Linguistics and yours truly. I had asked them to look at LingQ as a possible free resource. I just wanted some feedback, some "professional opinion" on what we are doing. First their evaluation and then my response.

Dear Mr. Kaufman:

At the suggestion of our Web site staff, I took a look at your site and its resources to see if and how wel it might fit the needs of our audience.

CAELA's aim is to build the capacity of states to educate literacy-level ESL adults. As with al the work done here, our approach rests solidly on research findings and proven methods. Our materials and resources draw on coherent, wel -researched methods that deal with adult-level learners and adult-level learning; that have comprehensive methodologies informing the entire approach; that use the many years of wel -grounded, real-world experience in teaching and teacher training that our staff bring to their work.

My final point deals with the area between our not-for-profit work and that of the commercial sector. You would not know it, but we field many requests from publishers, consultants, merchandising efforts, advertising concerns, and so forth for the—putting it simply—"CAL stamp of approval." It has never been CAL's policy in all its nearly 50 years of existence to cross the line into approval of others' work. ...

Al of which brings me to a quick summary of the point of the message. Much though you may value your efforts and your resources, we find there is a lack of any overarching, guiding language-learning psychology or methodology. You may have done a fabulous job of borrowing a pedagogical tool here, combining a good teaching idea from there with some nice computer graphics, but not tying them together. You may think you have adapted these tools to electronic media: flash cards, vocabulary building, comparing bilingual texts side by side, simple compositions. We think these are neither rigorously planned, integrated nor particularly useful to the population we serve that deals with ESL literacy issues. That is our opinion. Feel free to disagree with it.

Center for Applied Linguistics

Dear Dr. ......

I never asked for CAL's stamp of approval for LingQ. I asked CAL to look at LingQ and offer some feedback about it as a possible resource for literacy-level language learners. After three months of inaction I get your long-winded letter. You no doubt spent more time on your letter than you did reviewing LingQ, which you describe as "flash cards, vocabulary building, comparing bilingual texts side by side, simple compositions."

What I was hoping for was a practical opinion of whether LingQ could be a useful tool for your learner group. I guess the answer from you is a resounding "no," but I suspect this comes more from a professional fit of pique, rather than from an honest look at the system.

You seem to take great pride in being publicly funded and "not for profit.‖ Al that means is that you have successful y lobbied government to divert tax-payers' money (i.e. money generated in the private sector) to pay your salaries. We, at LingQ, do not have that luxury. We need to rely on creating value for our users in order to pay the salaries of our employees. I might add, the bulk of our learners use the site for free, i.e. we pay for them, not some unwitting tax-payer.

Immigrant language learning in the USA

More hours of classroom language instruction, and more intense instruction, should lead to better results, otherwise why bother? The real question is how much improvement is required to justify the time and money expended by learners, teachers and tax-payers.

In a recent survey by the US Center for Applied Linguistics cal ed "The Effects of Instructional Hours and Intensity on NRS Level Gain in Listening and Speaking,‖ we have some indication of the return on time and money invested in classroom language instruction.