The Learn to Speak Series Part 2WindoWatch Magazine Volume 7 No. 4 April 2001 |
Learning to Speak with The Learning Company®
Copyright 2001 by Margaret Werdermann
Welcome back to our three-part series covering The Learning Company®'s Learn to Speak™ language learning software. Last month, we delved into the "gripping" topics of installation, configuration, and troubleshooting. This month, we'll check out the content of the programs. In Part 3, we'll move on to draw some conclusions about the overall value of the software
Well, we're back and actually ready to fire this puppy up after last month's adventures in Installation Land. I have to say, this is the really exciting part of the whole experience. It's birthday party time! Let's open up the attractive package and look inside - and I mean that quite literally. So, what did we get with this kit? Opening up the box, we find a set of three CD-ROMs, a workbook, and an audio tape. Due to space considerations, we'll talk this month about the course content found on the CD-ROMs and leave the workbook and audio tape until next month's article.
The three CDs contain the software and the primary course content. The course is broken up into eleven units, one called "Basics" and ten other numbered units.
OK, this is where I inadvertently reveal my age. Hands up all of you who remember those "Learn to Speak X-language in Y-days" records from years ago. (For those of you a little less ancient than I, "records" were similar to flat, black dinner plates that spun around on an archaic device called a "turn table" and produced sound. You may have seen one on a rerun of the Flintstones.)
When I was a girl, my aunt sent me a set of records that was supposed to teach me to speak German. I was thrilled to death! I pulled out record #1 immediately and set to work repeating sounds, then words, then phrases, convinced that I would be "sprechen-ing" with the best of them in no time at all. Well, my ardent enthusiasm lasted about a week. If you remember from the first article in this series, I don't claim to be able to speak German. So what happened? It was boring! I got fed up and I quit.
In the Learn to Speak™ software, "Basics" is presented as one lesson and covers the alphabet and phonics as well as basic vocabulary such as colors and numbers. This is very important content. However, the approach is simple "hear and repeat," similar to those old records. Yes, you can record yourself saying the sounds or words, and a translation appears at the bottom of the screen for any word you highlight; but, frankly, this is pretty boring.
That's a shame because, as I said before, this is very important content. Remember: The main objectives of this unit are to help students with pronunciation and to give them some essential vocabulary.
One truly bright spot in this unit is the speech recognition meter.
This is
a terrific help towards the pronunciation objective. After hearing the sound
or word you want to practice, you record yourself saying it, and the needle
on the speech recognition meter swings across to show you how well you pronounced
it - rating you from "tourist" to "native." (In
Part 1 of this article, we discussed how to adjust the sensitivity of this
meter.)
Having experimented with this to some extent using different people's voices and skills with pronunciation (including my voice with and without a nasty head cold), I am very impressed with how well this works. Not only is this good feedback, but it's motivating to the point of being addictive. Using this feature, both my son and I have been caught saying things like, "Just five more minutes, Dad…I just want to get it into the yellow!"
My only problem here is that, like the old records, I feel the instructional component is somewhat lacking. You are told how well or poorly you are pronouncing something, but you aren't told how to improve that pronunciation. This can prove quite frustrating to someone who may not have a "good ear" for the language.
Any teacher worth his or her red pen can tell you that students have different learning styles. Just as a person can be musically "tone deaf"; for physical or other reasons, some people find it difficult to differentiate between subtle spoken sounds. Others may hear the difference between the software's sample and what they record, but don't know how to physically create the sound they want. Simply hearing the correct pronunciation is not enough for these people. They need to be shown how to do something.
In fact, this software is uniquely positioned to do this. Having done some basic software programming of my own, I have a decent grasp of programming logic. Combine that with an understanding of phonics, and here are my thoughts (but in plain English, I promise):
OK, enough with my suggestions for improvement, let's move on to the actual
vocabulary taught in this unit. The content chosen, I thought, was very
appropriate - numbers, time, the calendar, and colors. This is the sort
of vocabulary that you simply can't do without in daily life.
The speech recognition meter is used to reinforce pronunciation, and a word picture is used along with an English translation to teach the meaning of the word or phrase. Yes, this is a good basis for learning; but, frankly, it's not quite enough. Remember the records? What was the big problem? Motivation. Hours of repetition of words and phrases is not motivating, and this is why I have to admit that both my son and I ended up skipping through this unit in record time, not giving it the attention it deserved.
I realize that a beginner student wouldn't understand enough vocabulary or grammar to attempt some of the more sophisticated exercises included with the other lessons at this point; but the games, for instance, would still have worked and would have provided a welcome change as well as some mental exercise to help memorize new words.
So what's the bottom line here? The Basics unit covers vital content, the speech recognition meter can be helpful and fun, but I wish a little more thought was devoted to instruction and motivation with this key lesson. This is definitely the weak link in an otherwise terrific package.
The remaining ten units are each broken down into a set of three chapters and one "cultural movie." The chapters are themed to cover common situations such as "Asking Directions" or "At the Doctor's Office." I thought the themes were very well chosen. They move from basic tourist-type situations to common daily life situations that you might experience during a longer stay.
Each chapter in a unit includes Goals, Vocabulary, Story, Action, Exercises, Grammar, Conversation, and Games. This is terrific! Basically, what we're getting here is an educationally sound progression that would be logical to any learner:
I won't go into detail about each component of the lessons, but I would like to point out a few interesting features. One of the things I like best about this software is how very flexible it is. Learners can customize their learning experience to be as challenging as is comfortable and change that customization quickly and easily as they progress. Take a look at the screen shot below as an example:
In this exercise, you can decide whether or not you want to see the text of
the words you hear; if you do want to see the text, you can choose between
seeing it in German or in English; and you can choose to respond by speaking
or by typing - all by simply dragging the little markers you see on the screen
with your mouse. Wunderbar! Not only that, but if you choose to
type your answers, a little button bar appears at the bottom of the screen
so that you can use the correct forms of letters not found on a standard keyboard
without resorting to the Character Map or memorizing ASCII key combinations. How
easy is that!?
All of the components within the chapters have flexibility features like the
one shown in the exercise above. But it doesn't stop there. You
not only have the flexibility within the different components of a
chapter that we just discussed, but you also have flexibility among them. Specifically,
I'm talking about the order in which you attempt them. It isn't necessary
to follow the standard progression of components in a chapter.
If you simply aren't in the mood for Grammar today, skip it and come back to it another day. Or, perhaps you have been working on your Exercises, but are getting frustrated. Leave them for a while and play a game instead. "But how," you ask, "will I remember what I have done and what I still need to do?" That's where the Progress screen comes in. A Progress Meter records how far you've progressed in the whole course, and you can display a chart for each chapter that shows what you have completed and what you haven't. C'est magnifique! (Oops! Wrong language.)
Another thing that impressed me was the variety of voices used. This may seem like an insignificant point, but it isn't. Remember the records? One of the things that made them boring was the fact that they used the same person's voice for the entire two record set. More importantly, however, if you learn a language hearing only one person's inflections, tempo, and accent, you may find that you can only understand what you hear from that one person. By using a variety of voices - male, female, quick speakers, slow speakers, etc. - you become more accustomed to the words themselves as opposed to one person's speech patterns.
And there's more…Another excellent feature of this package is the Conversation
portion of each chapter. Conversation is about as close to real life
as you're going to get without actually being there. It uses a video
to simulate a conversation partner and "branching-conversation" technology
which chooses your partner's responses based on what you say (within limits,
of course - If you decide to get creative and try, "This is a stick-up. Give
me all your money." on the bank teller, for instance, she will respond
with a very polite "excuse me?" in the target language and you'll
have to get serious or get lost. We won't ask how I know this, will we?). When
you have completed your conversation, you are graded as to how well you did.
So we have well-chosen vocabulary and grammar; an educationally sound progression of learning; opportunity for practice with speaking, hearing, reading, and writing; enough flexibility and variety to make the units motivating and to grow with the learner; and what else? Well, we get some culture, too.
I thought this was a great finishing touch. Each unit contains a Cultural Movie narrated in the language you are learning. In the German package, each movie covers a different German city; in the Spanish package, they are more situationally-based. True to form, the student has the flexibility to change the text that appears along with the narration from the target language to English if he or she desires.
Not only that but, sprinkled throughout the lessons, you'll find little gems
like this one:
This came, logically enough, from the "Asking About Transportation" chapter. Someone
at The Learning Company® was thinking the day that feature was included. They're
interesting, they're practical, and they give you a short brain break in the
middle of a lesson if you need it. On the other hand, if you're "on
a roll" and don't want to be interrupted, they're also silent and can
be ignored without detracting from the lesson (another one of those "annoyance
reducers" we spoke about in Part 1 of this article).
Well, that's the content of the courses in a nutshell. Next month, we'll talk about the supplementary sources of content - the audio tape, the workbook, and the web site - and take a step back to draw some conclusions about the courses in general. See you then!
In this, the second of three articles on the Learn to Speak™ language learning software series, we explored the primary course content. We'll finish the series next month with Part 3 - in which we'll take a look at the additional course content sources and answer the questions: Is this software educationally sound? Good value for the price? And what about that “fun for the WHOLE family” claim?
| Product Contact: | The Learning Company® |
| Foreign Language Division | |
| One Athenaeum Street | |
| Cambridge, MA 02142 | |
| USA | |
| www.learningco.com |
When she’s not accosting people on trains, Margaret Werdermann leads the training department of a software company in Canada.