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.
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.
Are you searching for the best way to provide English instruction to employees? If so, then you’re probably considering two options: self-study online courses or teacher-led live classes. But did you consider a mixture of both?
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.
We know that using authentic content is important in English language instruction, and there are dozens of ways to do it, from having students write Yelp reviews to watching YouTube videos. However, the bigger question is how to use authentic content in a way that is needs-based, personalized, and relevant.
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.
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.
While translation is a core element of language learning, translation is itself an art, not a means to an end. So where does translation fit into a language learning process which requires personalized, relevant, and meaningful instruction?
Workforce development is the ideal place to implement a task-based language training program as learners have clear, real-world goals and because language instruction can be incorporated into training for other skills. In this post, an in-depth webinar on developing a strategy, designing effective language instruction, and measuring learner and course outcomes.
Let’s talk about offering personalized instruction in a classroom environment. At first glance, the two topics seem at odds. How on earth do you teach a class of people while they all do different, personalized tasks?