The London Language Show, some initial reactions.

I visited the London Language Show on Saturday. Here are some initial reactions, with more to follow once I get home. ( I fly home from London to Vancouver tomorrow)

First of all there was not the rush of eager young language learners that I had seen at similar shows in Prague and Berlin. This show was not as well attended.

Second of all, Chinese, Spanish and English dominated other languages to a greater extent than the two previous shows I visited.

My third observation was that the world of language learning still consists largely of grammar based instruction. There are various twists and variations on this theme, like computer systems, or a special emphasis on making languages fun or cool or otherwise worth doing, but the core method of instruction represented here was more towards traditional approaches than to an input based learning model.

There were a few interesting booths and interesting discussions and I will get to them later.

Comments

[Max]

I had planned to go to the language show yesterday, but couldn't make it in the end. Last year I went and I have to agree with you that the show is more aimed at language "teachers" than language learners. Most of the products there are indeed based on the grammar-first approach.

One strange experience I had last year was when I went to one of their language taster sessions for "Taiwanese" only to find out that this was simply an introduction to Mandarin and not one of the minority languages. When I asked the teacher about this he simply claimed that "the situation is complicated"...

[Dale]

All the language learners I asked in my classes didn't know it was happening. There didn't seem to be any advertisement for it (unless they advertised in London only).

[Valina]

I cant wait to hear how people there thought of LingQ
Have a safe trip home

[skyblueteapot]

It's one of my frequent grumbles that language learning is considered a timewasting, perverse and treacherous pastime in Britain. Language learning is encouraged neither in schools nor out of them. I was surprised to hear of the existence of a language show in England at all, and not at all surprised that I had to hear about it from someone living in Canada!

The only people who are encouraged to take language learning seriously here are young people preparing for a diplomatic career, and they have the resources to go to Cambridge University and study full-time with competent tutors. For the rest of us, foreign languages exist in a different world that we are excluded from. That is, unless we are smart, very motivated and dangerously unconventional. Then we join LingQ and meet foreigners and learn about different countries and stuff.

I could go on (and on and on) about this, but it would be more constructive to log on to my LingQ account and do some language learning.