Teaching Languages Online - Part One.
Teaching second languages is some of the most difficult teaching there is.
Teaching second or foreign languages is hard because learning a second language is hard. Whether you’re the instructor or the learner, you’re juggling a number of balls because language involves a variety of inputs and a number of skills. Language is one of the most intricate human inventions (if invention is the right word), and most people don’t realize this. It’s certainly not on the radar of most university administrators, who have never really understood the complexity of languages and the concomitant complexity of their instruction.
Photo by Leonardo Toshiro Okubo on Unsplash
Language learning needs time to bloom, too.
Teaching language online is even harder. As Victoria Russell and Kathryn Murphy-Judy put it in their book Teaching Language Online: “Teaching language is different than teaching other disciplines online because students must engage in speaking, reading, writing, and listening practice while learning rich cultural content that enables them to develop intercultural communicative competence.” Most people intuitively grasp this; it’s why many shy away from second language learning. Students grasp it as well, avoiding language courses because they worry that they will not do well and end up with a lower g.p.a.
For many language teachers, shifting their courses online during the Great Pivot of 2020 was a daunting task. Second language teaching actually has a tradition of using technology in new ways - think back to the language labs of yesteryear or the apps like Duolingo today, and you’ll understand what I mean. But the pivot was still tough for language instructors who viewed the classroom as the best place to expose students to authentic language interaction (short of shipping them off to a foreign country, which right now, as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, seems next to impossible).
On the University of Waterloo webpage developed to help guide language instructors through the pivot, there is recognition of the complexity of online language teaching: “Yes, the focus of the course must be inherently different (more written, individual work as opposed to oral, group work), but with careful planning and design, the language learning experience can be just as powerful.” This is true, but it takes a lot of careful planning and design.
In the next post in this series, I’ll discuss some of the design strategies that can help language instructors. This post is simply a quick blast to make one point clear: teaching second and foreign languages is some of the most complex teaching going.
For Fall Term 2020 this blog will be exploring issues informing education during a pandemic. It is appearing as part of a graduate seminar on online teaching and learning. You can read more about the seminar or see the other posts.
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