Learn a foreign language -over the web
Hi all,
On the web I found this interesting reading about the fact that more and more students in universities start making use of the web to learn a language. The title is:
Internet phone programs and webcams give students daily practice with native speakers.
Actually, the article is one big explanation of why we are creating Myngle.com. Two topics are central in the article, ‘practice’ and ‘learning from native speakers’.
“On average in any class of 20-plus students, a student will get two minutes of contact with that language,” says Barbara Sawhill, director of the Cooper International Learning Center and lecturer in the Hispanic Studies department at Oberlin College in Ohio.
Language exchange through Skype solves this problem, as it offers you the possibility to practice the language relatively much more than in any classroom with fellow students, and you can very easily find a native speaker 3,000 miles away from you and communicate with him.
The article ends by saying that language exchanges via Skype “have the potential to fling wide OPEN the doors of cross cultural communication. This will be at the forefront of all of our methodologies.†Please read the article and you can see why we are creating Myngle for you.
Now, I am sure you will want to know more about the Myngle system and what it actually looks like and how it works. Be back often because soon we will inform you about this, right here on our blog.
In the meantime, register for beta testing on our homepage and you will be the first to see it. Not only that, you can say you helped build it ïŠ))). Take care now!
Explore posts in the same categories: Myngle News, Tech
September 19th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
It seems that the most immediate advantage which the web community sees in online language learning today is the “natives” advantage. As long as you get hold of a native speaker over the phone and on your desktop, you will gain a benefit of learning the “proper” original language. But is it so and will it go beyond getting up to speed with daily conversations?
From my experience, I found communicating with non-natives teaching a language often more rewarding and efficient in my learning process (if there is such a thing as efficiency here…).
One reason being their ability in several languages and, thus, possibility to offer more parallel structures, examples, etc. in several languages. If you don’t get it in French, you might get it in Italian or Portuguese. This especially becomes obvious when you are familiar with several languages in the same language family.
Another reason is that such a teacher himself went through the trouble of learning and perfecting a new language and from his experience remembers what worked well and what didn’t. Have you ever tried understanding a grammatical or lexical logic in some fixed expression and couldn’t get any help from native speakers? “It just sounds right,” – that’s what you often hear. While a non-native speaker would have some logical skeleton in his head which helps remembering why this expression has such a structure or meaning.
It is exciting to see a “language laissez-faire” about to unfold in the vast web space. There are so many brains out there and just as much (or more) demand for absorbing that knowledge, whether with a native or non-native speaker.
September 19th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Hi tetyana,
Thank you for your interesting comment. Very learnful. Your last sentence is what Myngle is all about.
“There are so many brains out there and just as much (or more) demand for absorbing that knowledge, whether with a native or non-native speaker.”
On Myngle you will be able to find any kind of teacher you want. Native or, if you prefer, a non native speaker. The public profiles of the teachers will enable you to find that teacher that meets your wishes. Exactly as you want it.
Do we see you soon as a betatester? I look forward to it.
Egbert
September 20th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Oh yeah, Egbert, you’ve go me onboard in both Student and Teacher roles – will be interesting to try it from both perspectives. Looking forward to witness the roll-out of the disruptive technology!