Distance learning

Mouses ready!

  This last week I was engaged in active participation in Livemocha. For those who don't know, livemocha is a language learning website that connects people who want to learn a foreign language. While registering, I mentioned English as my native language and Spanish as the language that I would like to improve. Below are two highlights of the experience I have had. One is positive the other is ... well, you'll see.

Great Free stuff!

 Here's how livemocha works. Language items are first introduced, then recycled through activities that integrate all four language skills. What's more,you can get feedback for your speaking and writing task from the community and the experts. All you need for this are coins which can be earned via assessing other learners' work. The whole system is based on the idea of a "swap-circle": help the others and the others will help you! Fair enough, isn't it?

Lack of ... smth

  As great as Livemocha is (and I am sure we will have even better distance learning tools in the future), I can't imagine it to be a substitute of formal learning. This may be my Taurus traditionalism steering the wheel of my mind, but to learn a language without a face-to-face human contact takes away part of the pleasure for me. People, learning a language in a group, enjoy the process because there is typically somebody in the group with a great sense of humor, there is someone super clever, someone silly, someone bossy, etc. There is the teacher, who can never be as perfect as the computer software, who will sometimes make mistakes but who will also sometimes be funny or kind or encouraging, who will, in short, display a range of human emotions, unknown to the computer. Maybe I am just an old-fashioned human being. I want my teacher to encourage me when I succeed and to show her disapproval when I don't. I am an old-fashioned human being. I don't want a perfect computer software, I just want an imperfect, good-old human relationship.

 After all, imperfection, as the highly talented actress Helena Bonhem Carter once said, is underrated.