Talk:Language education

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[edit] external links

I'm not very happy with the latest addition to the external links, "Learn Spanish in Mexico". This seems to be nothing but an advertisement and shouldn't be included in Wikipedia. Comments? <KF> 14:31, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'm not happy with any of the external links. Links to providers of EAL training are not useful. We are not a web directory. There are thousands of such sites and links to them are not useful or informative here. I suggest we do not link to any. I've added a link to the relevant ODP category instead. Angela. 03:41, Jan 23, 2004 (UTC)

"Around the World"

    Verified as historic, removed from contents. Robbiemuffin (talk) 02:52, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Since when was Europe the world?--ZayZayEM 02:15, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] plagiarism?

Either a large section of this has been copied BY another site, or a large section of this has been copied FROM another site. See [1] under Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages. 16:50, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Scroll to the bottom of the page. All's good.: "The source of this article is Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL. For a change history, click here" samwaltz 11:45, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pimsleur Advertisement?

The stuff on Pimsleur sounds like an advertisement. It needs to be shortened and sound less like "I bought it, so should you!"

This is unsigned and the paragraph on Pimsleur seems to now be in line with the rest. Robbiemuffin (talk) 02:56, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The nature of CLT

You write: "(CLT) is an approach to the teaching of second and foreign languages that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language. Despite the widespread failure of CLT to produce excellent results, it continues to be popular, particularly in Europe, where constructivist views on language learning and education in general dominate academic discourse." Now this is absolutely vital, but has no evidence to back it up. What studies have been done comparing the success of different language methods? It happens that I think CLT is useless,as it imparts no language regularities , i.e. grammar, but I believe it is prevalent due to the social class origins and hence cultural values: - fun, play,instant gratification, post-1968 "creativity" - of the (mainly) women who teach modern languages and are easy meat for the fraudulent publishing houses looking to make a buck by promising this season´s "Teaching Success on earth, now on DVD".

Now the text is more NPOV-friendly but it still lacks a reference. I'm going to put a citation needed flag in there. Robbiemuffin (talk)

[edit] Belgium's Frenchspeaking community

The article seems to give correct about information about the Dutchspeaking part of Belgium. I would find it very interesting to read something about the education of Dutch and English in the other part too.(age,etc..) Evilbu 14:00, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] codeswitching is particularly effective for L1 English speakers?

this last sentence in the codeswitching section needs a citation at the very least Glennh70 16:32, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Just a note that that's long gone now. Robbiemuffin (talk) 03:06, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New Language education on the Internet section

This section smacks of SEO - it is basically an excuse to link several commercial and borderline commercial websites with a few free site thrown in to make it difficult to argue against removing the section altogether. Wikipedia is not a directory and I recommend removing the external links from this section or linking only to free services. People are welcome to search the internet for commercial services - linking to them from this article does not improve the content and it would be impossible to say which links should be kept and which should go. Nposs 22:49, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I've just removed the external links from the new section, and I find that it does not diminish the content of the section. Nposs 23:10, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] telescope rule

I think we should mention in this "Language education" article the Wiki:TelescopeRule: the counter-intuitive idea that the best way to learn some given foreign language in 4 years is to first spend a year learning Esperanto, then 3 years learning the desired language.

I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't seen Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto.

--68.0.120.35 21:25, 2 May 2007 (UTC)


ANY language? you mean some european language used to construct espoeranto, no? How could possibly help it when someone wants to learn for example Chinese?00:26, 29 July 2007 (UTC)88.101.76.122
I agree that it seems counter-intuitive that learning Esperanto would help learning Chinese. But that doesn't make it false. After all, it seems counter-intuitive that it takes less time to learn Esperanto and then French that it does to learn French all by itself -- and yet that's what the studies listed at Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto show.
I would be happy to learn of any study that that definitely showed, one way or another: How does learning Esperanto effect learning Chinese? --68.0.120.35 20:16, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
In the above link, the EKPAROLI project (Melbourne, Australia, 1994-2000) is the only one listed regarding East Asian languages. It had some good conclusions, but they stop well short of making a direct claim like "has similar benefits". Some language teachers I knew from back at school felt the studies were destined to mislead: teachers are inspired by the project, on small scales like these they are intrinsically biased.
Another, serious question is, what is the Propaedeutic value of [insert other language here?].
While Esperanto can be taught to a higher degree of proficiency, it is because it is a simple, model language. In fact its power comes from the fact that it is those things. As such, it is probably useful to anyone who wants to study language, but the claim that it is better in general for L2 should be viewed with skepticism. — It's been about 100 years since the first of these studies, the fact that it isn't already the de facto standard in all education curriculums should be a pretty good indicator of the limits of its possible value. Robbiemuffin (talk)

[edit] Language education in Australia

It is inflammatory to call the arrival of Europeans in Australia as an "invasion". It is unnecessary in this article to even mention it. All the article has to start with is "Prior to 1788... etc". To be more expansive for the non-Australian reader it might have to say "Prior to 1788, before Europeans arrived permanently on the Australian continent... etc". Lets keep it unbiased as possible thanks.


I think the article (NOT the title) should indeed be posted under L2-teaching, but I think many things should be considered. Firstly, the title "Language Education" (LE), to my interpretation, is meant as it is: the teaching of ANY language. However, there are many different aspects we have to include here. L2 teaching, independent which language we will acquire, is just an aspect of the whole chapter of LE. Mother tongue (or L1) teaching is also LE, isn't it? After all, in which educational system the native tongue isn't taught? Also, we have to approach L2 differently depending the political situation. As mentioned before, in Belgium, as well as in other multi-language countries, the teaching of an L2 (or even L3 and L4) will have different (political) objectives and goals. But yet, the whole package is part of LE teaching. Therefore it might be handy to divide this chapter into the different aspects that LE embraces: not only the L2/LX teaching, but everything included: semantics, grammar, linguistics, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pietrubens (talk • contribs) 17:01, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with SLA?

I don't know whose idea this was, but it wasn't mine and I strongly disagree. See here for why. -- Hoary 09:15, 5 October 2007 (UTC)