Remember the old quote “The internet is just a fad”? Bill Gates supposedly said that.* Time will tell whether that was the most incorrect thing anybody has ever said. Here’s a quote that is more likely to prove true in the future: “The textbook is a fad.”
When learning a language, there is nothing more valuable than authentic language production. The internet has revolutionised the way we access information and opened up new and more effective ways to learn. It continues to become a bigger part of our everyday lives and the traditional teaching methods and tools are becoming increasingly irrelevant.
Languagelab counts students' blog posts in their Academic Record
A person living anywhere in the world is just a few clicks away from engaging others in debate and discussion of his or her interests. It is both engaging and immersive. If this is done in the target language it can be extremely valuable to the student. Much of this goes on but it cannot be recognised in their course, as their teachers do not know about it, which is where our Language Production Tracker comes in.
The Language Production Tracker allows us to record all relevant work that students create and contribute to online and include it in their academic record. Students will be able to submit work they’ve done outside of the course and have it checked by teachers and, if it meets the required standard in terms of quantity and quality, it will be added to the Student Record. The work can be in any form; video, audio, text, blogs, social media or anything on a publicly accessible website.
Advantages of this system are many. The level of engagement and effort when producing writing for leisure or work often exceeds that made in the classrooms. This takes personalisation to a far greater level and encourages students to engage in activities they enjoy in a way that will benefit their learning. Students no longer have to stick to the rigid, approved topic structure of the traditional classroom; they can now fully incorporate their own interests into their learning experience. Their Student Record will also provide a much more detailed picture of their skills. Every student leaves with a unique body of work on subjects that they care about, which will dramatically improve acquisition and retention rates. Not too shabby for a fad.
*But as Abraham Lincoln once said “The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you can never know if they are genuine.”
