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Now more than ever, the education industry is focused on “gamification,” or creating learning activities from games. But many of the things that make playing a game fun are the same factors that make language learning hard. Let’s explore several ways game and language application designers can bridge this gap.
16
Jul
Jul
A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to participate in a panel discussion on trends in Education Technology. The panel was comprised of participants from four different companies focused on different aspects of technology-mediated instruction, including one using compression technology to make streaming videos accessible in low-bandwidth areas, one that created a tool to …
03
Jul
Jul
We know from copious amounts of research that instruction works best when it is personal. Yet daunted at the prospect of sorting this out, many language programs revert to the outdated approach of just assigning everyone the same thing. However, maybe incorporating individualized instruction into a group curriculum isn’t as hard as it might seem.
Research, Resources, Video
[Webinar] Building an Effective Workplace Language Program—It’s Easier Than You Think!
26
Jun
Jun
In this webinar, Dr. Katharine Nielson—Chief Education Officer at Voxy—discusses best practices for implementing a corporate language training program.
22
Jun
Jun
There are over 43 million immigrants in the U.S., and more than 20 million are adults who are what’s called “Limited English Proficient,” or LEP. This means that on top of all the struggles they face to provide for themselves and their families, they have a huge and staggering additional barrier–not understanding English. Yet our ESL programs often don’t address the multitude of needs of this population in solving the real-world problems they face in their daily lives.
13
Jun
Jun
Teaching a foreign language to first-time learners is hard. Students wonder how they can possibly language the language when they don’t know anything, and teachers grapple with speaking in the target language even when they know their students don’t fully understand. Ultimately, it comes down to setting expectations.
04
Jun
Jun
Standardized tests have been both vilified and venerated, and despite their well-documented shortcomings, they are widely used in many high-stakes circumstances. But with the introduction of other measures of proficiency, performance, and assessment, we gain a far more robust picture of a learner’s capabilities.
18
May
May
Authentic content gives learners exposure to the kind of language that they ultimately want to understand and create for themselves. If you don’t use authentic content, and teach learners with scripted dialogs or simplified materials written by language teachers, you’re not giving them models for how to produce or understand the language they’ll encounter in the wild. Not only is this ineffective, it’s also inefficient.
04
May
May
Determined to improve outcomes and experiences for international graduate students, the University of Maryland has partnered with Voxy to offer learners admitted to the Bridge Program a combination of live, one-on-one instruction and personalized self-study the summer before they arrive in College Park.
30
Apr
Apr
In the U.S., we force students to sit through mind-numbing grammar lessons and stilted dialogues, leaving them unable to order coffee at a French bistro. But that doesn’t mean we should eliminate language instruction. It’s incredibly important for everyone to speak more than one language in today’s interconnected world.