Effectiveness, in real world terms, DEMANDS some kind of measurement. Without a measuring device one cannot measure effectiveness. And this measuring device has to go beyond one of popularity. Why? Because popularity while reflecting things like price and convenience does not necessarily reflect on things like learning outcomes. I have seen many popular teachers in my day but based on standards testing I can assure you that popularity alone does not produce learning and in some cases can actually hide a poor but popular teacher from scrutiny.

I am willing to entertain your argument (or any school’s argument of effectiveness) if you can produce statistics related to achievement and of course when you are comparing yourself to other schools, their achievement. Absent this, I find any COMPARATIVE claims of effectiveness to be unsupportable and, how can I say this politely, it indicates that marketing is more in charge of communication than those charged with monitoring education.

Lets get the web dictionary Webster to help us in the definition of “effective”: “producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect”. So, effective in this case would mean reaching the student’s goal in their learning objective. Correct?

Online tutoring can be as convenient or even more convenient then face-to-face, offline education. The price for a lesson can be cheaper, there is no need to commute for the lesson, the variability of programs, quality, and teaching methodologies is huge. With this greater variability and convenience to be found online (at Myngle.com), students are much more likely to find an effective learning program for them.

Egbert

Eh…er…hmm…

I have been in language teaching for a long time and when I see comments like these: “Live online language instruction is at least as effective as ‘ordinary’ language learning or even better. ”

Well, hairs raise on the back of my neck. The only way you could possibly make this kind of statement is by first telling us how you define “effective” and then telling us what “proof” you have. What do you think?

this is Marina, thank you for the nice words and enthusiasm about Myngle.
Yes, our dreams are big and we are very happy to get in contact with teachers like you, who share the same passion.

I remember in one of our mails’ exchanges some months ago that you were seeing our dreams and vision exactly as we saw it: develop a place where we could connect people that otherwise would have never come in contact, give each of us the possibility to learn from very diverse languages and cultures, beyond geographical borders, and why not… making new friends around the world along the way. Learning to appreciate the differences instead of rejecting them, being more tolerant with each others… If the world becomes small, we are all closer neighbours…

As you probably already noticed, we are now like a small baby learning its first steps. Still a lot to learn and improve. It is not perfect yet. But we know we will be strong and able to run one day soon. We just have to be patient to learn each step at a time.

I warmly welcome teachers like you on Myngle, they bring the right spirit to our small but growing community. In fact Myngle is all of you teachers and students who will help us building it.

Marina