Language learning, literacy, advocacy, job protection and what works.

I believe that language learning and literacy learning are closely related. I am sure that I will get criticism over the following but I welcome it. I want to learn.

Here is the podcast

" In the USA at least 30 million, and arguably 93 million, adults would benefit from
additional literacy instruction, and that the system today can only serve
approximately 3 million adults through combined federal, state, and
philanthropic funding.”  according to ProLiteracy, a major US organization devoted to improving literacy.

Their website sets the tone. "We need more funding" " Poor literacy costs the economy money" "Literacy education goes hand in hand with social change" and other slogans and exhortations. It appears there are many organizations committed to literacy learning, and they attract a lot of funding. "Advocacy" would appear to be one of their main activities. (See also the website of the National Coalition for Literacy.)

93 million people out of 300 some odd million or so Americans would benefit from literacy instruction. Wow! You cannot accommodate these people in class rooms. That has to be close to half of all adults in the US!

I suspect that most "literacy programs" do not have much of an impact. Based on my experience with language learning I suspect that literacy teaching is no more effective than language teaching.

I am convinced that LingQ would help, at very little cost. I have not been successful in interesting anyone in the literacy establishment because they are more motivated by advocacy than in finding solutions that can be more effective and less costly. I have asked them to look at LingQ to see if it could be adapted to the needs of the literacy campaign. I have told them that it could be used free of charge. I have been told in no uncertain terms that they are not interested because I am "for profit" and/or because I do not have the requisite academic credentials.

Comments

[Roberta King]

Well, Steve, as usual if there is no money going into their collective pockets, they're not interested. Look at such things as cancer cures that have been suppressed because the pharmaceutical companies couldn't patent the active ingredients.

What sort of credentials are they looking for? If they require someone who has teaching credentials accepted in the U.S., you could see if anyone using LinQ qualifies and if you are comfortable with that person ask him or her to work with you or represent you.

I am certain the LinQ method would work for many people who are interested in improving their literacy skills. However, just as learning another language requires practice, patience, dedication and desire, increasing literacy in a native speaker requires the same.

Good luck toppling some of those windmills, Don Quixote.

[Oldboy]

Do you happen to have a link with info on these hidden cancer cures (not provided by Kevin Trudeau or someone like him)?

This isn't primarily about money. Institutions such as those cited by Steve seek only to gain greater power and influence over the culture. They want presitigous degree titles and government funding (the best way to crowd out the competition) to stifle opposing views. They openly say that literacy education is the root of "social change". What kind of social change and who is driving it? If they were a for-profit individual, like Steve Kaufmann, I would hardly be concerned. Not-for-profits are usually far more harmful, especially when they are seeking government funding.

[faith_in_algebra]

Steve,
Many very good public literacy and basic education programs are available in the USA. The people who need those services just need to use those services. Plenty of literacy and Reading help is available in nearly ALL communities, so nobody really has any excuses.

[Steve Kaufmann]

faith,

How effective are those programs? How many of the 90 million who need help (supposedly) would use them?

[faith_in_algebra]

Certainly some portion of students who need the public and community resources (for language and literacy including Reading) ARE using them. Just as certainly more people should use those resources. I have no idea what proportion "would" use them.

Public school resources for E.S.L.(at least for adults) are usually good, maybe very good, since this instruction is specifically designed to bring students to second language acquisition and includes instruction for all four language skills. One of the problems affecting some citizens in their communities is that they could often use a non-English language almost all the time, throughout their local neighborhood, and therefore do not look for instruction to systematically learn English. As I say, "some" citezens, certainly not "all" of them. In fact those particular people who do not learn English may really spend YEARS going about their daily business, still not learning English (.. reminds me of your blog posting of a few days ago.)

Somehow, a few of those people who live several years in USA but not learn English seem afraid to learn it.

[Kevin Geoghegan]

Hi Steve

There was some comment here in the UK last month on the efficiency of adult literacy programmes. Basically, they claimed that the UK wastes around 1 billion pounds annually on these schemes.

See:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/5094861/Adult-skills-classes-a-waste-of-money-says-academic.html

[Steve Kaufmann]

faith

How do yo know these programs are good? My information is that they are not effective, just like language instruction in school. People who want to learn English learn, and those who are not motivated do not, and classroom instructional hours have little impact.

[faith_in_algebra]

Steve,

E.S.L., when done right, is absolutely not like typical foreign language classroom learning. Plenty of students attend E.S.L. instruction and learn well. Those who reach even the intermediate level may often give the impression that they are more fluent than they really are; which brings this to one of your main points - that those students who really want to learn the language (in this case, English) do learn; and those who do not really wish to learn, do not do so. Also, when students give the effort to use their new language outside of the classroom, this helps in their language learning efforts very much.

[ed]

Faith

In reality, despite your standard of "ESL, when done right", the vast majority of teachers are considered good or bad based on their interpersonal skills.

I have been an ESL teacher for about 5 years and a ESL/EFL teacher for a combined 10 years. I agree that there is a such a thing as beautiful classroom activity involving the students on a many levels and actually getting them inspired to learn the language on their own. I also agree that a student lucky enough to have such classes will develop very impressively.

However, I have seen many highly skilled instructors (myself included, if I may say so) who are not as valued by school communities as teachers who confidently relate inaccurate grammar explanations, who have never heard of peer correction or portfolios, who distrust collocations as a supplement to "proper grammar", who start most classes with correcting homework followed by "now, turn to page 45 in the text...", who use substantial class time to play board games or watch movies with no discernible teaching objectives, but who are highly skilled interpersonally.

The problem I have with your scenario is that so many conditions have to be fulfilled for it to happen. 1) The money has to be found. Classroom teaching is not cheap with teacher salaries, overhead what have you 2) Enough "good" (by your standard) teachers have to be found. As I mentioned above, there are good and borderline teachers. In teaching this is even more complicated because the standards of what makes a teacher good are so varied and changeable. If by "ESL when done right" you mean ESL grounded in latest theory, action research, etc, it is difficult to find even ten percent of teachers willing and able to reach such a standard since the market dictates that salaries will always be low even compared to other kinds of teachers. 3) Most importantly, even in your scenario, the final motivation has to be from the student. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Learning occurs when something trips off a reaction in the student's mind and they start looking for challenges. At that point the quality of the class can not enhance the learner's experience enough to help him learn substantially more than he would on his own.

This is why LingQ is better. It concerns itself only with the student who is already motivated to learn by themselves, which is when learning really going to occur anyway. It is far, far cheaper. And it largely delegates the teacher roles of choosing and parsing material to the learner who, if motivated should be perfectly capable of doing it and even when wondering how they should do it is arguably getting valuable language input. Moreover this cancels out the many of the problems surrounding what is a good teacher.

LingQ is not perfect. But it is on balance more effective than any school I have been a part of.

[Ana]

Hummmm...
I guess you slipped a little in your discourse this time...
I agree that there is no problem or "shame" in being for-profit and it is a sad thing that these people involved in literacy and language teaching are not willing to give LingQ a chance, because it really works if used the right way.
But... come on... you're not interested in this "only" as a Canadian or world citizen. People from those organizations know that if you're are able to reach a population of, say, 5-10 million people with LingQ, even if a tiny percentage of them eventually become paid members, you're going to make a considerable amount of money from this.
Again, I think that there is nothing wrong with that, but this should be made clear from the beginning, because they won't bite this idea of citizenship.
Maybe as a way of changing their minds, since they are so hungry for funding, you could offer them a small percentage of the profit obtained with members coming from their programs which would become paid members.
Just another of my crazy ideas...

[Steve Kaufmann]

Ana,
The literacy organizations are opposed to me for being "for-profit" purely for ideological reasons. They labour under the delusion that working in the public sector or being non-profit is somehow morally superior to working for a profit. This kind of anti-commercial bias is quite common to many cultures. For some reason the ideologue, the warrior, the intellectual, the landowner even the aristocrat etc. have always been placed on top of the merchant. Marx took it to a new level.I much prefer a person with a commercial objective, to someone with an ideological objective. The former have been the builders of society, demandin and obtaining more freedom. They have been supporters of culture and stimulators of technology and science. The latter have caused wars and destruction and taken away freedom.

The established organizations are interested in protecting their positions and are also motivated by ideology.I really do not see your point.

Also you should not make assumptions about my motivation. If I say that we would offer this free to low income literacy learners, I mean it.Now I may also hope to get PR from this but my motivation does include the desire to help people and society and the desire to know if something like LingQ would work for native speakers' literacy learning.

If I did manage to persuade a government agency to involve LingQ in government funded immigrant language learning, and potentially millions were going to use the site, it is likely that the government would propose a package deal which would limit what we could make on these millions of people.I cannot see LingQ providing direct funding to other forms of language instruction.

[faith_in_algebra]

Hey, ed,

When E.S.L. is done right, instruction is given according to a lesson plan with a clear objective. Also, at least ideally, no use of the students' native languages are used. You can forget about all the fancy linguistic & second language acquisition theories when giving E.S.L. instruction. You just show students how the language works for some particular communication purpose, show some permutations of those, and give students exercises to develop those language functionalities. Hey, nobody relied on fancy theories to acquire their first language. It was all just natural. Something like ESL is just an accelerated and more conscious form of that.

Please have no worry about any scenario - the reality is that many students are attending ESL instruction and are progressing well in acquiring English. The effective students are often also using English outside of the classroom. Additionally, these days, technological methods are being incorporated into some of the ESL instruction, both pre-packaged distributible programs and internet-based programs. No doubt several public school ESL teachers would probably be checking into programs such as LingQ, as well as others.

[Ana]

Well, Steve, I guess my point was that I was trying to point out some inconsistencies I've been noticing when you talk about the public sector or non-for-profit organizations.
I've seen you complaining many times that they are not sincere in their discourses of "saving x or y", because they are only struggling to make money and keep their personal privileges. But, as you pointed out, it is not so easy to make accurate assumptions about people's motivations. They are multiple. The same way you want both help people and also the PR that eventually you get from this, they want to "save x" and also survive as a organization.
What's wrong with that? For me, nothing. The fact that someone stress out one motivation in favor of others doesn't mean they are insincere, but that this person is using the argument he or she thinks are more able to convince others. I DO believe you would be glad to help a lot of people with LingQ. And I also believe a lot of people in those organizations would be equally glad to benefit these people. But in the end, everyone has its bills to pay, right?
Actually, what triggered me to that comment is that I frequently see you beating them as they are all the evil in the world. For me, this is just too simplistic and, more important, as ideological as some of their positions against the private sector...
You know what? I guess everybody, everywhere, is just trying to live a meaningful life, although the idea of "meaningful" can be rather different depending on the point of view...

[Steve Kaufmann]

I am risking my own resources. They are living off other people's money and pursing their own agendas. They should feel a responsibility to look at anything that can help achieve their stated goal. I have no such responsibility.

[ed]

faith

I don't doubt that your students working outside the classroom are progressing well. But wouldn't they be better off exclusively creating their own objectives rather than allowing someone else to (unless they were doing test prep, perhaps)? And wouldn't the process of discovering, parsing, and applying the language on their own be more effective than being shown? As for your other students, do you think the progress they are making is worth the money they are paying (or the money being spent) compared to the self motivated students?

Thanks for your outline of lesson planning, but you must agree it is very broad, includes "fancy linguistic & second language acquisition theories" whether you remember them or not when teaching, and doesn't discount what I asserted about the paramount importance of interpersonal skills.

[faith_in_algebra]

What? Ed, an E.S.L. teacher does not need to focus on any linguistic or language learning theories. The main goal of English as a Second Language is to acquire English.

The importance of interpersonal skills is difficult to assess but for teaching ESL, having good interpersonal skills is better than not having them. Still, making and using good lesson plans is necessary (depending on the expertise of the teacher).

[ed]

faith

My main questions are about the cost-effectiveness of classroom teaching. I assume we'll have agree to disagree on that topic.

"What? Ed, an E.S.L. teacher does not need to focus on any linguistic or language learning theories. The main goal of English as a Second Language is to acquire English."

Linguistic or language learning theories play a role whether teachers are aware of them or not. Your recipe for lesson planning (which I generally also follow) is based on a theory of task based learning. It isn't the only way that has existed though.

"The importance of interpersonal skills is difficult to assess but for teaching ESL, having good interpersonal skills is better than not having them. Still, making and using good lesson plans is necessary (depending on the expertise of the teacher)."

So is student progress. So is teacher expertise. I, like you and everyone else, am going by personal observation.

[ed]

(sorry I posted the above at 2 am with a teething baby on my lap so I will clear it up a bit)

faith

My main questions are about the cost-effectiveness of classroom teaching. I assume we'll have agree to disagree on that topic.

"What? Ed, an E.S.L. teacher does not need to focus on any linguistic or language learning theories. The main goal of English as a Second Language is to acquire English."

Linguistic or language learning theories play a role whether teachers are aware of them or not. Your recipe for lesson planning (which I generally also follow) is based on a theory of task based learning. Whether you use a Present Practice Produce or a Test Teach Test or another configuration is theory based. Whether you play games is theory based. Whether you present language as collocations, whether you present grammar explicitly.. the frequency you do all of the above...in fact any deliberate choice in the classroom is theory based. The teacher need not be aware of theory although a thoughtful teacher should.

"The importance of interpersonal skills is difficult to assess"

So is student progress. So is teacher expertise. I, like you and everyone else, am going by personal observation.

"Still, making and using good lesson plans is necessary (depending on the expertise of the teacher)."

Agreed, but what specifically are we agreeing on? A "good" lesson plan and teacher "expertise" are all highly subjective evaluations. In the end, my claim is that the admin will decide which teachers get hired or promoted based more on positive student reactions to the teacher on a personal level than any received idea about expertise.

[Ana]

Steve.
this is how I can see it: you've got your resources because you've been competent to convince your customers to buy your products, and they get the resources because they are competent to convince people that their causes are worth the cost. It is just another kind of "product" that they sell.
Whether the "product" which is being sold is worth the price or not, this is another matter, and each particular case can be subjected to unending discussions.
But I still can't see that much difference between people working in the private sector or in the public one. Fundamentally, everybody is grinding their own axes, aren't we??
;)
Hey, I never meant to offend you, ok? I'm very glad you are risking your resources at LingQ!! Keep going, please!!

[ed]

Ana

I have been following your discussion with Steve. I just want to emphasise something. The National Coalition for Literacy and other such organisations are not (supposed to be) for profit organisations. The are not supposed to be selling a product. They don't exist to make money. They exist, ostensibly anyway, to further the cause of literacy.

You would think they would rigorously try any means necessary to resolve the literacy issue. So why wouldn't they try LingQ or a similar platform?

Because humans are lazy, only 1 in a billion are truly ideological to the core. Those who populate organisations like the NCL make a good show for political reasons, but other than that they are happy to produce reports justifying how much more money they need from the government and simultaneously reject a platform like lingQ from which they would not personally benefit and (gasp!) might actually alleviate their cause!

Call me cynical... :) But I have some personal experience to draw on as well, which I won't go into on line for privacy reasons.

[ed]

Just to encapsulate my above post:

Actually solving the problem of literacy would make the National Coalition of Literacy redundant.

Actually solving the problem of literacy would make the owner of a private enterprise rich.

I think I know which of these 2 will sincerely try to solve this problem.

[Ana]

Hi, Ed,
Of course they don't exist to make profit for anybody, but they need money if they are meant to do their job. And therefore, they need to convince some people to provide them with such money. In this sense that I told that they are kind of selling their "product".
Whether specific people in those places believe in the "cause" or not is another matter. Does McDonald's owners and directors believe their food is healthy or at least innocuous? Or they simply don't care, because they only want to keep their profits and jobs? Well, I suppose there is a different (and not so simple) answer to each one of those people.
I don't know specifically this Canadian association in particular, but I'm well aware that there are a lot of serious problems of efficiency in the public sector.
Only I think that this position against all kind of public or non-for-profit organizations is as ideological as they are.
For me, just saying that all people in those places are lazy, or stupid or only want to make a lot of money and have fun, is just too simplistic. And the point I was trying to make from the beginning is that this discourse seems too me, very similar to theirs, in a sense that it is oversimplified and full of prejudice.
In case of LingQ, for example, have it occurred to you that those people who Steve has approached could be too busy to pay attention to every guy who comes saying that he has the ultimate solution to their problems? Or maybe that they sincerely believe that they know the solution, and the only thing that it is missing is the money to put it to work? Of course, the possibilities of laziness, or stupidity or lack of genuine interest by their stated objectives are also real, but not the only ones.
In the end, everybody is bashing the other side because the other side wants and needs to make money. Well, from a certain point of view, that's really, really funny.

[ed]

I understand we are all generalising. But to some extent we have to in order to discuss anything.

LingQ markets a solution to a problem. Organisations like NCL market the existence of problems. If there is a product they are selling it is misery of those they claim they are trying to help.

"Does McDonald's owners and directors believe their food is healthy or at least innocuous? Or they simply don't care, because
they only want to keep their profits and jobs?"

To question whether McDonald's admin REALLY think their food is in line with the cause of public health is beside the point because McD's is not publicly funded.

McDonald's (like LingQ's) only manifest "cause" is making money. They may claim they are healthy but all I know for sure is that I dislike Mcdonald's and I only have coffee there if I go at all. Similarly LingQ will claim it is the best thing for learning languages but all I know for sure is that I like LingQ, and I willingly give them my money for what they give me.

"Of course they (NCL) don't exist to make profit for anybody, but they need money if they are meant to do their job."

I am questioning if their "job" is really serving a need, or just a creation of the money they are asking for.

The NCL demonstrates a societal ill, claims to be above the motivation of personal interest and purely committed to the cause of ending this problem. They ask governments to trust that they know better how to solve the problem if only they could get some of my tax money.

Do I believe they will work rigorously to actually solve the problem and therefore make themselves redundant.... not take vacations, take pay cuts so they are getting less than market value salaries, work unpaid overtime and weekends...? No.

If they did those things my guess is that it would be because they are worried about convincing a bureaucrat that they need funding for next year's budget, not because they are fixated on the cause they say they support. If that money is flowing I am sure they are taking it much more easy vis-a-vis their supposed cause.

These are just my beliefs based on my observations of human nature.

[Steve Kaufmann]

Ana, You do not offend me. I always enjoy our discussions and hope that I also do not offend you.

To me the issue is along the lines of what Ed said. I use public services, and I would happily work with the public sector. I am annoyed that they would decline to work with me because I am "for profit'. This is just hypocrisy of course, because , as you point out, if LingQ were large, like Rosetta Stone and could offer them a "bribe" or funding, they would happily swallow their ideology and work with us.

[pointyr]

Cost effectiveness of language programs in the public sector is local governments' problems. One would assume that those who teach in the public systems meet some exact official standards of qualification.

Most of our parents were not language teaching experts. They had no theories of how to teach us our first language. Maybe this means that most of us have no first language.

[Tas]

Hi, I haven't read the comments above, I just wanted to say that this question about literacy might be different en different languages. For example, I think it is well known that American children became literate later than kids of other countries who speak other languages. In Spanish, my native language, it is reading which makes your vocabulary bigger. Spanish is a very phonetic language, so you hear the words in your mind as you read, even if you hadn't encountered them before. The way a see it, English spelling makes literacy and educated speech a bit elitist.

[Steve Kaufmann]

Literacy problems are quite common throughout the world, and the numbers of people who have trouble reading sre remarkably similar, although there are differences.

Leaving aside dyslxia and other reading problems, literacy has more to do with the importance placed on education in a society and the economic level of the people, and less to do with how complicated their writing system is. China has high literacy despite a writing system much more complicated than English.

I would be surpised if literacy was higher in Spanish speaking countries than in English speaking countries, because of the generally lower standard of living. I would also assume that Cuba, despite other problems has higher average literacy than Mexico.

[Ana]

Steve,
I'm not offended at all. I admire your willingness to discuss practically anything so openly. By the way, I would never have started this discussion if I didn't know this disposition of yours.
Anyway, I think we are locked in a circle here... I surrender...
;)

[Ninia]

Thanks to the nice post! Does anybody here have any idea where it's best to take cursos de inglés en extranjero? I'm making a write up about English courses and I'd like to tackle English courses abroad. I need your individual ideas, especially for those who have had experiences. Several countries that have schools offering the said areas seem to prove itself best, but I need opinions based on independent personal assessment. Thank you.

[algebra_is_also_Language]

Someone who has been in the country a while who still did not yet learn the language, superficially at least, seems to not have done enough to learn it. How is the quality of language instruction at public resources in Canada? Are there private language teachers in Canada as alternatives to public sources? Do any meet-up type groups gather in Canada for the interest of persuing the languages of the land?

[Steve Kaufmann]

The issues is not the availability of teachers, public or private, nor of meet-up groups, all of which abound, and are not really necessary when one is surrounded by the language. The problem is the attitude of the learner.

[Karen]

Steve,

I agree with you that the attitude of the learner is the most important element of learning but I think that good instruction or lack of it can speed up or retard learning a great deal. For example, I have a friend who works for a mission in Africa. To work in that area she needed to learn French and then Fulani. She spent one year learning French full time and by the end was able to function in the language. She has now been working on Fulani for a few years but it is still not where her French is. Her explanation - With French she was not only immersed in the language but also taught by expert teachers. There are no teachers for Fulani, she has to learn it on her own so her understanding of the structures of the language is taking a lot longer.

I have to agree with you though that there have been many times where I have questioned whether gov't funded schools exist primarily to teach students or to employ teachers.

Karen