Ellen Jovin - Language Utopia! One Polyglot’s Product Fantasies

In a world flooded with language materials, polyglots tend towards omnivorousness — and long-time product reviewer Ellen Jovin is no exception. In this presentation Ellen will describe instructional shortcomings as well as strengths in learning materials she has tested over the years, drawing on a broad selection of publishers and including scientifically unproven analytical techniques such as the Fun-to-Fluency Ratio. If you have ever really loved or hated a language product, this presentation promises opportunities for catharsis while also exploring, quite seriously, how specific product improvements could actually increase language-learning in an interconnected world.

The 4th annual Polyglot Conference took place on 29th and 30th October 2016 in Thessaloniki Greece, with 500 language enthusiasts, bloggers, learners, teachers, influencers, entrepreneurs, translators, and market-leading sponsors in attendance.

[abemagic]

yes - font size is a big ( small) problem

[rafaeltlv]

I really enjoyed listening to your presentation. I have also been learning Greek and I understand the challenge. I am fluent in French English Hebrew Spanish Italian and Portuguese. I must say that Greek is challenging. so far I have accomplished a fair level but I am not fluent yet. The main difficulty is the vocabulary that is not similar to other languages, however the grammar is not the main struggle once you are used to juggle with other languages.
The thing is that Greek native speakers systematically respond in English to Greek learners which can be frustrating. Finally we tend to buy too many methodologies and books that we never digest. I have made progress with a tutor on line where we teach each other our respective languages, Hebrew for Greek. We indeed waste plenty of time on line which could be used for more constructive purposes among which Language learning.

[DakotaAbroad]

YES! I've been wanting to work on something like those books with "sinning" characters for a while! I'm actually going to start making videos with language lessons with completely ridiculous sentences in them!

[Vlrud]

I think polyglot community should take the matter about quality materials into their own hands. The community has good experts in linguistics, teaching methodology, psychologists, even maybe in language and speech pathology, public speaking. We can help each other greatly. We can create some learning materials ourselves in our native language first of all and exchange it. Some of us who are good at languages other than their native ones can even create learning materials in these languages. Or we can cooperate and create some material together. For instance, a teacher of a second language can create a textbook, he or she can be proficient enough for that, but his or her accent is not perfect and it will not be the best thing if he or she did audio recordings as well. It would be much better if a native speaker helped to do audio. Or any other variant. For instance, there are very good English manuals and textbooks in Russia, especially old ones. They are really of very good quality, very substantial and comprehensive. But most of them lack audio recordings. If a native speaker took some of these manuals and did audio recordings of exercises, it would be a superb audio course. A good audio course is what most manuals lack. I mean a real audio course, which is not just recording of dialogues and texts, but speech exercises. The example of them are FSI and DLI courses, they are really great. And they can be made even better!

[QuiltingCrow]

What I really miss are books (I like so called "boring" materials - I started language learning in the late 80ies and back there, an illustration was a fancy thing to have in a book^^) that give you a 365-days-plan you can follow.

[parthbage]

Wow Marathi is my mother tongue. :o Never thought someone would be keen to learn Marathi.

[nathanpiazza]

I love the Routledge books too, and I just can't understand why Rosetta Stone is so damn expensive ...(but it's easy to pirate for free online).

[Runamoinen]

I know I'm five years late to the party but I'd like to point out that touristy vocabulary topics fit the needs of an A1 speaker quite well. Most of the people who study foreign languages are not polyglots or language enthusiasts. They are exchange students, migrant workers, business people, volunteers and tourists in love with a particular region. I am no fan of the phrasebookish presentation of many of these textbooks, and would personally prefer an index of grammatical topics any day, but I feel it's not the topics that are the problem but the fact that 10 words about renting a camping spot and a limited knowledge of grammar don't allow for satisfactory communication with native speakers on even that particular topic. It's either life or teachers that get the job done in most cases.

[saeidehrad]

Rosetta stone killed livemocha which was literally my home page website

man! I HATE Rosetta stone

[jjsih]

paper stuff is actually better, sorry, internet is just a place to lose focus, mp3 players are great for audio but the internet is just a distraction, this lady is so one sided

[M_SC]

so many good jokes, so few laughs. odd