LingQ in the classroom and the role of a classroom teacher.

How can LingQ can be used in a classroom? I want to address two questions that I received quite some time ago, one from Albert in Taiwan and one from Milan who studies Cantonese in Hong Kong.

First of all let's realize that the vast majority of language teachers in the world are not native speakers, and are not a model of the spoken language, nor even, necessarily, of the written language that their students are studying. Furthermore, in many situations, students in schools are denied the opportunity to learn a language because there is no qualified teacher available, i.e. someone with at least some knowledge of this other language.

• LingQ, as well as other resources on the Internet, can greatly enhance the power of a teacher, regardless of whether the teacher is a native speaker or not.
  LingQ provides a wide choice of content with audio and text.
  LingQ offers a structured approach to vocabulary acquisition.
  LingQ integrates listening, reading, vocabulary review, speaking and writing.
  LingQ connects learners to a community of learners and native speakers.

A classroom can be an effective place to focus a LingQ program for a variety of reasons.

• The teacher can explain LingQ, how to get started and how to take advantage of all of its features. Most online learners do not use all of LingQs power.
• The teacher can assign content to learners from the LingQ library, or ask them to import content that is more relevant to their curriculum.
• With LingQ, the teacher can have individual learners or groups of learners working on different content (even different languages), that suit their interests and abilities.
• Issues related to the language, or the use of LingQ, can be discussed in class.
• Students can be encouraged to study on their own, in class as well as away from the class.
• The teachers can more easily work with individual learners, and follow their activity and progress.
• Individuals or groups of learners can share Vocabulary lists, discuss content items, or discuss how they use the system.
• Class discussions can be summarized and posted as content to be Imported and studied.
• Writing assignments can be corrected and easily integrated into each learners input activities.

Since there is a wide variety of listening material in the LingQ Library, even a non-native teacher can be effective in encouraging and stimulating learners, and giving assignments. The fluency of the teacher is less of an issue.

If the teacher is native, or a very fluent speaker of the language being taught, that opens up additional opportunities for free discussio  in the class, or even to create new content for use in LingQ.

I addition, there are specific ways in which LingQ is particularly useful in preparing for TOEFL, TOEIC and other similar standard tests, as I have discussed earlier.

See below

I am working to develop a course for people taking these standard English tests. I am interested in hearing ideas on what to put into the course. Here are some of my ideas so far.

1) To me the key to success in these tests is a strong three-legged foundation.
The ability to read quickly and understand
The ability to listen and understand
A large vocabulary of words and phrases

2) If a person has a sound foundation then he/she can work on output.
Writing an answer to a question within a limited time period
Answering an oral question within a limited time period

For 1) what we do at LingQ is ideal. We have content on a wide variety of subjects, and our learners can practice reading, listening and accumulate a wide vocabulary.

We can take it one step further.

There are key lists of words available on the Internet
The Academic Word List
TOEIC lists
TOEFL lists
Previous questions from these tests
Etc.

Here are some examples:

http://language.massey.ac.nz/staff/awl/sublist1.sh tml
http://www2.nict.go.jp/x/x161/members/mutiyama/voc abridge-toeic/
http://supervoca.net/toefllist.cgi


These can be used in the following way.

create a Collection in Import called Lists.
import each list as an item in the Collection
open them as content starting with the one that has the lowest % new words
go through and LingQ the words that you do not know
use "examples" to find appropriate phrases for the LingQ box or wait until the word appears again in another text.
if you want you can Tag these words TOEFL or TOEIC or AWL whatever you want.

This procedure has a number of advantages
1) You can immediately input a long list of words that are necessary for these tests.
2) You get a sense of how many you already know.
3) These words will now appear highlighted in yellow in future texts at LingQ.
4) You will now have the words you need in your database for review in Flash Cards
5) You can track your progress in learning these words.

As for the output portion of standard tests, we will be working to recreate realistic tests of oral and written expression similar to what is on the tests.

I look forward to comments and suggestions.

After I get input here I will post on this subject on my blog. I believe that LingQ is a particularly useful tool for preparing for these tests, better than many of the specialized TOEIC schools etc. that charge a lot of money.

I think the same can be done for other languages and would be interested to know of what lists exists in other languages.

Comments

[Ed Fobes]

I always think the best way to do test practice is to do practice tests with feedback. In other words, test-teach-test.

I would isolate a subtask on the test, writing for example, and identify all the factors. In the case of writing there is time and word limits, possible topics, level(s) of politeness, genre(s) of writing, and perhaps more. Then announce that an assignment will be posted at such and such a time.

Post the assignment, perhaps on a Skype conference chat, and stipulate the time at or before which you will accept the finished assignment.

After correcting the writing, a sense of where some concentrated instruction is needed, if any, can be found. Suggestions as to how to improve can be made in the writing report. Perhaps pre and post writing chats can be arranged. Pre to teach students how the writing is marked and post to clarify the writing report.

I am no longer sure about how the TOEIC/TOEFL tests are marked nowadays.

A tangentially related question I have is: can you filter a library item search according to percentage of known words?

Once for a possible course, I wanted to isolate some texts with a high percentage of TOEIC vocabulary. So I imported the TOEIC list from the vocabridge website to my English library as a vocabulary list. However, it was quite difficult because it seemed impossible to filter a search of the LingQ libraries according to percentage of known words. This means you have to browse quite a while to find a group of thematically linked courses with a high percentage to TOEIC vocabulary which also are of higher than average sound quality and intrinsic interest.

[Steve Kaufmann]

These are good suggestions Ed, and maybe one day you can create a TOEIC course for us at LingQ.

On our long list of things to do at LingQ we have
1) times writing and time oral expose
2) the ability to sort and search our content in the Library and in the Lessons area, for frequency of different lists,
the learners known words,
the learners saved words
TOEFL words
the Academic word list
or any list that the learner adds.

When we will get there is another question. There is lots to do.

[Mr Teacher]

Steve,

I teach French and Spanish at a challenging school on the outskirts of London. Textbook is a bad word in my class as, in recent years, I have moved more towards the use of technology in the classroom. It makes obvious sense to me because it engages my stdents and goes some way, at least, to debunking the myth that language learning in schools is boring and too difficult to access. Interactive exercises on interactive boards are the norm, www.polleverywhere.com allows me to use mobile 'phones in the lesson and most of my classes update their own blog on a regular basis as a way to record the learning process.

My next objective is to encourage more independent learning, particularly among the more able students. Our kids are very bad at this as they are used to being spoon fed. I realised that the trick would be to make it different and engaging enough so that they would have a genuine desire to go away and learn langauges on their own, away from the school environment. At the very beginning of the current academic year, therefore, I encouraged a significant percentage of my students to sign up for an account at Lingq. This has proved to be very useful. Sometimes I set homework from it, sometimes I make suggestions about which exercises they should access and sometimes I use the resources in lesson. But most of the time I simply let them get on with it away from school and I have found that a pleasing number of them choose to do this as a supplement to what I teach them. I know that they often have language tracks on their i-pods and they are allowed to listen to these in class, depending on what the lesson involves.

PBwiki is next. Wish me luck!

[Steve Kaufmann]

Mr. Teacher,

Just what is PB Wiki?

Is there something we at LingQ could do to work with you? Eventually we would like to have programs with classroom teachers such as you.

[Daniel]

I teach Online and I am always looking for new platforms to build up a good network to interact with my students, I hope lingQ will helps me.

Auf wiedersehen
Daniel

[Ed Fobes]

Steve

There is a good explanation of what a wiki is here:

http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english

I feel there is a lot of potential for LingQ.

[Mr Teacher]

Steve,

To my mind, a wiki - such as those that people are able to create at pb.wiki.com - have the same potential as VLE (Visual Learning Environment) programs such as Fronter. My long-term intention is to create an IT learning environment for all of my students where they can access an almost limitless amount of resources and materials- not to replace but to supplement and enhance the classroom experience - as yet another way to encourage independent learning outside of school. To my mind, engaging the students in this way is vital. It is the key to equipping them with the necessary tools AND THE DESIRE! to seek out opportunities for life-long learning.

Let's say that I teach part of a language lesson using various slides of a power point presentation that I have created. In addition to some speaking practice and perhaps a reading or listening exercise, it is inevitable that at some point the students will be required to take written notes. This is mundane and of course they switch off. Yet it is necessary because they need to have notes to revise and to complete homework tasks etc. I want to set up a wiki that the students can access from home which contains the resources - such as power points- that I, as the teacher, am using in class. This way, I can cut down on or even eliminate the time spent taking notes and focus more on genuine interaction. I can see no reason why all of my resources should not be made available to the students and this seems like a reasonably advanced yet readily accessible way to take this next step.

Finally, I would love to work with yourself and the people at Lingq in some way as it would surely be mutually beneficial. I am certainly open to suggestions as to how we could move forward with such an idea.

Mr teacher.

[Steve Kaufmann]

Mr. Teacher,

You are the teacher, let me know what you need to make Lingq work for you and your students.

[Mr Teacher]

Ok Steve- will come up with some ideas and get back to you.

[Sarah]

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[treblekickeresq]

You might want to read about the suspiciously for-profit origins of the TOEIC and the current corrupt practices its Japanese "non-profit" currently engage in. The Japan Times recently published a two part series into the TOEIC.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090811zg.html
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090818zg.html

[Steve Kaufmann]

It really does not matter to me whether TOEIC is for profit or not. The question is does it do the job? Is the time, money and effort put into TOEIC by Japanese learner worth it?

I think TOIEC is not bad, for the simple reason that it is less expensive than most other tests. I think that no one should take the test who does not think they can get at least 600 or even 750. The vast majority of Japanese people taking the test get 400 or so and just confirm that they cannot speak English.

People should learn at LingQ, get their known words total up to 8,000 at least before taking TOEIC.