Where is the online ESL market going?

English as a Second Language What do you want to talk about?
1

What do you think of the online ESL market? I mean there are some interesting developments going on. In a few years there will be more active Internet users in China than there are in the US and the EU combined. Now, in my opinion every Chinese Internet user is a potential learner of the English language.

All the large US based Internet companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have a Chinese market strategy in place. Google has even launched a Chinese version of its search engine. (Google.cn) This means Google enters the Chinese market providing their services in Chinese but the US version of the Google search engine is always just a single click away.

Also, by running a Chinese version Google gets instant and massive exposure to its brand thereby also promoting the English language because once Google becomes a household name in China more and more users will want to know more about this company.

To learn more about the driving forces behind Google’s immense growth users will want to access information in English which brings me back to my initial question.

How do you see the prospects of the online ESL market? As with any industry there are a few major players and a multitude of smaller companies. Some of the pioneers of Internet ESL services are probably Englishtown, Cleverlearn and NetLanguages. They might have different business models and products but they all use the Internet as their marketing and distribution channel.

So what could happen if one of the Internet giants like eBay acquired an online ESL company like Cleverlearn? You might have heard that eBay purchased Skype last year and they also own PayPal so they have an excellent infrastructure in place. Or let’s imagine a different scenario: Google acquires an ESL brand and starts delivering English language training services to users worldwide. Would this be good or bad? What would be the ramifications for well established ESL schools that are still using conventional (face-to-face) teaching methods? Would they lose market share or could they benefit from a rising demand for English language tuition?

Let me know what you think,
Torsten[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, question-response: What should I have done differently?[YSaerTTEW443543]

2

Torsten, I think ESL on the web is going to follow the path of other web-based instruction. People will use it when they have no other way to get the instruction (maybe they work odd hours, etc.), or else they will use it as a supplement to live instruction.

There are some problems with computer-based instruction. One is that it’s done on a computer screen, which is not conducive to reading. Active display makes people’s eyes jumpier, and so they are less able to concentrate on large bodies of text and get fatigued sooner.

The second problem is that web-based instruction is generally canned, and there’s no one who can immediately alter it to the questions or needs of the flesh-and-blood learner. If you’re stuck on something, you just have to post to a message board and wait. This means that people won’t pose a lot of their questions, and they don’t get as much information as they need.

A third thing is that there is no human contact. The programs never growl, they never joke with you, they never get funny or sarcastic, or do anything else that instructors can do. This means that the language the students are being taught is drained of human and emotional content. One example: There’s a young woman in one of my classes with whom I maintain ongoing sarcastic banter. Not long ago this involved a phony accusation that she tried to poison my water. Sometimes I challenge her to a boxing match and we decide on the “arrangements”. The class gets a lot of training in English discourse, intonation and other things that they wouldn’t get online. They learn how to challenge people, how to accept or decline a challenge, and many other things that aren’t online and that won’t be online, because the computer does not kid with you.

Another thing that can’t happen online: When students are having trouble with pronunciation, I can often use the orthography of their own language to trick them into pronouncing correctly. Online language courses are one-size-fits-all, and this won’t happen.

This has nothing directly to do with ESL, but a friend of mine took computer programming courses in a classroom, and then was forced to start taking them online. He immediately noticed that he was getting and giving no direct help with classmates, and worst of all, he made no friends or professional contacts. An online message board just isn’t as good as humans right there with you.

If you look into the history of foreign language teaching, you can find all kinds of claims that some technology or other was going to replace the live classroom. At one time many “professionals” even believed that language teachers were going to be made obsolete by phonograph records! In the end, all that technology does is become another tool to supplement live instruction.

3

Clearly there is no substitute for the live human teacher but I’m not anywhere as pessimistic as is Jamie about the future of esl online. Now, I would say that, wouldn’t I having been involved in such an enterprise for the last three years? But I think it’s important to remember that people use the internet more and more to find information/to be informed so why not use it as a learning tool as well? You mustn’t forget that the mind, the face behind the service is also relevant to the way in which people respond. We have enough responses to attest that the service offered on www.english-test.net has a human face. We all know boring teachers. We all know boring esl sevices online. We may not be able to simulate boxing matches online but we still have plenty of punch left in us.

Alan

4

I can’t say that I’m really pessimistic about online language instruction. In fact, I’m optimistic and excited about its growth and possibilities. However, it’s ultimately a tool with its own strengths and limitations.

The most interesting thing about this tool is how it combines capabilities of other technologies that have been used for decades or centuries. Kids in the Australian outback used to go to school by two-way radio, because they were too far from a human teacher. US diplomatic and military personnel in the 1940s and 1950s used to achieve a good degree of proficiency in unusual languages using programmed textbooks and phonograph records, because they didn’t have access to a native-speaking teacher for that language. The web can combine all the capabilities of methods like these, along with graphics and limited automatic correction. So it’s obvious that there are extreme advantages and huge potential to the technology.

Its weaknesses are the same as that of ordinary software out of a box. A lot of it has to be preprogrammed, and this means it often doesn’t anticipate non-generic situations. For example, at one college they want me to use the absolutely excellent ELLIS program to assist in pronunciation. It’s completely terrific, but the language-specific help it provides is too limited, even though it looks vast. It provides an array of exercises for Mandarin speakers, but my Mandarin speakers usually come from near the Yellow River, and they have a whole different set of problems from those the Beijing speakers have, and those problems are not addressed. Similarly, there is nothing specifically for speakers of Chaldean, Gujarati, Oriya, Telugu or the many non-generic forms of Spanish. Some semesters there’s not much point in using the software, because it doesn’t address any of the students’ problems.

So, I’m optimistic about the Internet tool, but with limitations.

5

I’d like to add a few points to what both of you - Jamie and Alan have said.

Clearly, even the most sophisticated technology can not replace the learning process that takes place between human beings. When it comes to learning a language, the Internet can do things you can’t do in a face-to-face situation. Let’s take a look at the following scenario which might be familar to you, Jamie:

An executive of a German car manufacturer is preparing for their stay in Detroit. It’s their first trip to the US and the in their own opinion the biggest challenge for them is to understand spoken English and interact with their US counterparts on a daily basis. Now, what is the solution?

The executive goes to Detroit where they are placed into a language instruction program conducted by Jamie (K). Our German executive is very happy because they feel that Jamie (K) has a lot of experience under his belt and he even speaks German and knows exactly how language works. Now this German executive talks their training and HR people at headquarters and asks them why the language instruction with Jamie (K) can’t start before a German is sent to Detroit? The HR people are confused. “What are you talking about? Do you mean we should offer Jamie (K) a contract here in Germany?”

No, there is a better solution: Online language instruction conducted on various levels using such technologies as Skype, Chat, Forums, email and blogs. What I’m getting at is this: The conventional ESL programs have a lot of drawbacks the major one being the fact that if you want to learn English with a native speaker in your (non-English speaking) country, your choice is limited to those ESL trainers who live in your country.

Let’s say an ESL trainer from the US has been living in Germany for 10 years. How up to date is their knowledge about the current business situation in the US? I know I might be making a generalization and we really would have to analyze a concrete situation but still it’s a fact that on an executive level it’s important that your language instructor has as much information about your business situation as possible. Other advantages of delivering language instruction through a system like Skype are:

  • you can easily record the lesson and archive it for further use

  • you can simulate telephone conversations (many business executives want to improve their telephone skills)

  • you can form an international team of instructors and offer a wider range of accents and cultural backgrounds

  • you can offer a program that contains a number of short but intensive sessions rather than just one or two face-to-face lessons

  • you can combine activities that involve writing and speaking as well as listening and reading (it’s difficult to work on a person’s writing skills in a face-to-face environment)

  • you can eliminate travel costs

  • you can save time

As Alan says, the Internet is the glue that holds all the various elements of learning together. He publishes an online newsletter as of now has 7459 subscribers and by the time you’ll be reading this message this number will have gone up again.

There is much more to online ESL instruction and maybe we can continue our discussion here.

Regards
Torsten[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, question-response: You haven’t registered for the conference yet, have you?[YSaerTTEW443543]

6

Forget it, Torsten! I refuse to get up that early! :smiley:

Actually, I was thinking of those live teaching capabilities that you mentioned at the same time I was writing about that pre-programmed stuff.

About 10 years ago, I did some instruction to a class of kids in another state using ICQ. At that time, the big roadblock was the lack of cross-platform compatibility, since I generally don’t use Windows, and at the time, Microsoft did everything to make things as incompatible of possible. Now Microsoft is behaving a little better, but the most important thing is that other companies have come out with popular cross-platform solutions for all this live communication. However, I still occasionally do see ESL sites that won’t work unless you’re using Internet Explorer, which doesn’t exist for my machine. I’ve got five other browsers that have all the capabilities of Internet Explorer, and more, but some poorly programmed sites don’t check for browser capability but only for the name of the browser.

Not only can you put an international team of instructors together, I could actually get people in the areas near the German executive’s US plants, so he won’t be so disoriented when he goes down to Kentucky or Tennessee. Typical ESL materials in the US don’t include regional accents, so the type of arrangement you mention could help make up for this deficiency.

7

Aside from the techie side which quite frankly is beyond me anyhow, I’d like to return to the topic of online or in class. Accepting that technology cannot replace the human teacher there is another point: what about the teacher? We have all had experience in our own school days with the awful and the fantastic teacher. I always remember my German teacher who was the most unprepossessing person you’d ever come across in a month of Sundays and yet peerless as a teacher. And whenever I’ve stood up in front of a bunch of students and have felt that I was teaching well, it has always been as if my old teacher was showing me how to do it. Then there are the disasters - those teachers who make everything sound boring. We carry a picture of them also for the rest of our lives because they have often blighted the discipline that they struggled to teach. I know the characters who attempted to explain (well that’s flattering them) Shakespeare to me. It took me a long time before I realised his genius. Now you don’t have these problems with online teaching - if you do, you can metaphorically leave the classroom, which requires considerable nerve in a real situation. And then what about the student? Learning a foreign language is a problem for the shy, the nervous and the bashful if they have to participate with others in the classroom rather than going at their own pace online. A lot of teachers are performers - well they all are really - who may get great satisfaction out of the act of teaching but who knows how much is being ingested by their students?

A prime example of open learning was the creation by the British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, of the Open University where courses are conducted via television and radio and is now the UK’s largest university. To quote from its history:

[i]The Open University was the world’s first successful distance teaching university.

Born in the 1960s, the ‘White Heat of Technology’ era, the Open University was founded on the belief that communications technology could bring high quality degree-level learning to people who had not had the opportunity to attend campus universities.[/i]

Just some thoughts in an endeavour to create a balance.

Alan

8

Alan, you and I must have had the same experience with Shakespeare teachers.

To add to Alan’s point about the teacher, there is a further advantage to good online instruction, which is that you can guarantee yourself a teacher or recording with something close to a native accent. My high school German teacher was Dutch. She didn’t know she had a bad accent when she spoke, but if YOU spoke German with HER accent, she could hear that YOUR accent was bad. She would insist we imitate her precisely, but those people who were good at imitating her accent had to stay after school in the language lab. The longer you followed her instructions and imitated her accent, the longer you got detention. This could go on for weeks until you realized, “Hey! She doesn’t sound like these recordings!” Then you could end your detention by imitating the recordings.

One problem today is that language labs and audio-lingual drills have undeservedly earned a bad reputation among pedagogues, and many schools don’t have them anymore. Fifteen years ago, a high school kid would have had fewer resources to help him deal with a deluded teacher like this, but resources online are making up for this. Now no kid has to speak like Peggy Hill, the proud substitute Spanish teacher from the cartoons (who speaks comical Spanish), if he doesn’t want to.

There is also an administrative, somewhat cynical reason why some instructors like online classes. In the US, we have a lot of problems with (usually failing or crusading) students filing complaints and grievances against an instructor. They will accuse the prof of everything imaginable, and it can be hard for the prof to defend himself or herself against some of the accusations. Other professors I know say they love online classes that are text based, because every interaction between student and teacher is completely documented. Administrators need only call up the files to demonstrate that the student is lying.

9

Hello to Torsten, Jamie (K) and Alan! :smiley:

I am still new to english-test.net and I have read some of the posts here and they are really great! They are very informative, thanks to intellectual posters like you! :smiley:

I agree that the computers and other modern technologies cannot replace the human teacher and these ‘materials’ cannot give a ‘human touch’ to the learners. However, these gadgets will always be excellent supplement to the real classroom teacher. While it is true that sometimes some teachers seem to feel insecure with the emerging ‘competitors’, teachers must also continue to update themselves with the use of these technologies to aid them in the classroom instruction. New generation of students are adept at computers and the media – teachers must utilize their interest in these things in order to motivate them and to make the teaching-learning process more effective. Teachers can also teach values in addition to the cooperative learning strategies that are used to implement the lesson. Computers hardly do this. Considering these, the real classroom teacher is really far better than the virtual online teacher.

As regards to online ESL instruction, they should always be there for those who are very interested to learn English but don’t have the fixed time to learn them in the classroom. It is one of the avenues that must be considered in learning. Learning is an ongoing process, it involves communication, this is one thing that is limited in online instruction. Also, I believe that online instruction is best for the adults because of its nature. Basic instruction is best done in schools.

I hope my contributions to your posts are relevant.

Thanks and more power to all of you! :smiley:

10

Hello to you all!

In the opposite to you am i a real bloody beginner in English and like avant wrote in his introduction: if you want to communicate in a foreign language you have to think in this language. That is what i think i can learn here. I hope i had a little success till now.
In my opinion you can not consider every dialekt in every language. To do that there might be a special place, perhaps one that is called “Learning English for M?nsterl?nder”.
But i can?t find any reason why you might not make a joke or sometimes shouldn?t be kidding. Or would you like to be the top of intellectuals?
So i think it?s everyone?s own duty to make this site interesting.
In this conclusion this site is worthy to kept remaining!
Looking at the preview of my post i?ve learned something new again.

greetings

Michael

11

What about people who don’t think in any language? I usually don’t think in a language – not my native language, not any language at all.

12

Hi Jamie!

Probably people like you havn?t been sitting on rests of pillars or rocks with interlaced legs waiting till achieving the nirwana and sitting now in a wheel chair answering questions with another, have you? :roll:
Now, you didn?t write you don?t think! But anyhow you communicate with the world around you and that doesn?t work without thinking. What is your way of thinking? Binary or hexadecimal codes or perhaps logarithms? Please teach me anytime!
Whatever you use, communication uses a principle that i know as the EVA principle. Let me translate it here straight into English IWO (Input- Work up-Output). However your work up (i.e.save information-add information) system works you used to have in- and outputs and between your in-/output systems and your work up system there must be a translator.
For correct turn of your inputs into code of your work up system and back into code of your output system your translator must have been taught or conditioned. To improve the condition i.e. to update your translator… you can use this site i think.
Sorry, when i wrote you i meant of course: people like you.
Now i?ll go on trying to think English by thinking analog. Yesterday it helped me to solve a problem because i was used to think that problem through more intensive! :?

greetings

Michael

13

Hello everyone,

So how do you think has the ESL market changed since I started this post? At least here in Germany it seems that more people have started using the resources they have at their disposal to interact with native speakers rather than waiting for a teacher to ‘teach them’. This development has resulted in a fragmentation of the ESL industry in Germany creating more job opportunities with trainers and coaches who concentrate on showing their clients how they can learn themselves. In a few years traditional language schools where ‘students’ spend most of their time with other ‘students’ completing exercises from textbooks, worksheets or other printed material will become obsolete. The internet has been democratizing the English school/English teaching market in Germany tremendously.

What is the situation in your country? Are people spending less or more money on English language courses/classes?

Many thanks,
Torsten[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC short conversations: A favor while traveling[YSaerTTEW443543]