Graham Davies

John talks about the Great Spirit in Native North American culture. Some years ago I went to a salmon barbecue hosted by the Coast Salish on Vancouver Island. The Chief said a prayer before we sat down to eat, thanking the Great Spirit for providing us with food and thanking the salmon for giving up their lives so that we could live. I’m not a spiritual person, but I thought this was a nice start to our meal and it made me think about nature, ecology, God etc. I have relations on one of the Canadian Gulf Islands and I have spent many holidays on the West Coast. The more I come into contact with members of the First Nations in Canada the more I respect their attitude to life. They are in much closer contact with nature than we are and seem to have a deeper understanding of what life is all about. As for science, there's so much about modern science that I don't understand that it amounts to blind faith on my part that modern scientists (I hope) know what they're doing.

Wearing my business hat (I am a partner in a business that has been developing and selling software to schools since 1982)... Sales of multimedia CD-ROMs to UK schools have dropped dramatically in the last two years. Sales began to reach a peak towards the end of the 1990s and then took a nosedive in the year 2000, forcing several small businesses into bankruptcy. Sales picked up a bit during 2001-2003, but now they have reached a record low. This appears to be a common trend among most of our competitors, all of whom report on similar experiences. How does one explain this trend? I'm not sure, but the director of one the businesses (Talkfast) that went into liquidation towards the end of 2000 blamed falling sales of multimedia software on free resources that can be obtained via the Internet and the fact that CD-ROMs don't wear out and schools therefore buy them once and once only, even when updates/upgrades are offered.

I have a copy of The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook on my bookshelf, compiled from authentic sources by Henry Beard & Christopher Cerf (Grafton/HarperCollins 1992). It includes terms such as "negative patient outcome" = "death" in hospital management jargon, and "siblinghood of persons" = "brotherhood of man". For "black" substitute "member of the African Diaspora". For "woman" substitute "person of gender". Yes, these are all authentic terms, taken from the press, and US government documents. Seriously though, I think John makes a couple of good points.

I wouldn't like to see this kind of separation. I used to teach German to boys and girls of Afro-Caribbean origin in HE. The girls - like most girls who study foreign languages - were hard workers and generally did well. The boys tended to slip back a bit - but boys in general often perform less well than girls in foreign language classes. One of the problems that we did identify, however, was our assumption that all children of Afro-Caribbean origin (1st and 2nd generation) had adequately mastered standard English. While this was generally true of the girls, the boys habitually used Afro-Caribbean dialects - street cred, I guess. Once we began to sort out their English it became easier to sort out their German too.

This is a useful article: Greenwich Local Education Authority, London: "Interactive whiteboards - a luxury too far?": http://www.g2fl.greenwich.gov.uk/temp/whiteboards See also: REvIEW Project: Research and Evaluation of Interactive Electronic Whiteboards, University of Hull in collaboration with Promethean: http://www.thereviewproject.org A laptop and a projector are more flexible than an interactive whiteboard, as they can be moved around easily. A whiteboard screen also imposes certain viewing restrictions, e.g. you have to be able to reach to the top of the screen in order to operate it, so it has to hung in a fairly low position on a wall, and the screen has to be of limited size. In a long room the screen may look small from the back row. The maximum group size for comfortable viewing is around 30 people. A laptop with a projector is the better option for larger audiences, as the projector screen can be much bigger. I have delivered presentations via a laptop and a projector screen to audiences of over 400 people. As for PowerPoint, do a search in Google for the phrase "Death by PowerPoint".

I think we've seen it all before - technology hailed as the panacea: Source: Oppenheimer T. (1997) "The Computer Delusion", The Atlantic Monthly 280, 1 (July 1997): 45-62: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jul/computer.htm I guess that both David Wilson and I are sceptical because, as language teachers of a similar age, we experienced what happened following the introduction of the language lab in schools in the 1960s.

Caterina writes: I agree. It is extremely frustrating. Have a look at the site and you'll see what I mean. A real-time conference is much more difficult to set up effectively than most people imagine, but an asynchronous forum like the Education Forum obviously works very well.

David writes: They do. I have always been favourably impressed by their work in this area. In other areas, however, I have the impression that they are getting more and more inclined to be technology-led rather than pedagogy-led, combined with a top-down, "we know best" attitude.

I share many of David’s reservations about teaching a subject such as History through a foreign language, but it can be done properly. The university at which I last taught offered an Applied Language Studies degree course on which specialist subjects such as Economics, Law, Politics and Technology were taught and examined in the foreign language. But most of the teachers of these specialist subjects were native speakers or bilingual. I taught translation from German into English on the Applied Language Studies course, using texts that covered the same speciliast subject areas, so I could focus on the language that the students needed in order to follow the lectures and write their essays in German. I often consulted my subject specialist colleagues when I was unsure about the meaning of specialist terms. Other lecturers (native speakers) taught translation from English into the foreign language, and students were also introduced to summarising, interpreting and a variety of other practical skills. Students spent a whole year abroad as part of their course, six months in two different countries. They graduated having learned two languages to a very high level and with a very practical focus and, in addition, they had a thorough grounding in a specialist subject. Many of our graduates got high-flying jobs. The course was closed at the end of the 1990s. By this time the supply of students with good language qualifications from school had dried up. Regarding David’s comments on translating, most of our students could have got jobs as professional translators specialising in the subject areas that we offered on the Applied Language Studies course. Some managed to get jobs in translation departments with companies such as Siemens, which offered additional on-the-job training in technical German. It was also possible to do a one-year top-up course in translating at my university. Professional translators need to know the subject area as well as the language, and they normally work from the foreign language into their mother tongue or “language of habitual use”. High standards are set, and a professional translator will guarantee the accuracy of his/her work. Translators are usually well insured too. Imagine what would happen, for example, if the instructions for the administration of medication were incorrectly translated – the translator could be sued! But, stupidly, many companies skimp on translation. I recall the story of a company that translated the instructions on safety notices on an oil rig by referring to a dictionary rather than getting them professionally translated. Most of the resulting “translations” were hopelessly wrong and in the end they had to be redone by an accredited professional translator. Here is an example of a safety notice (in an Italian hotel) that has been badly translated – but it’s great for a laugh! “Fire! It is what can doing we hope. No fear. Not ourselves. Say quietly to all people coming up down everywhere is a prayer. Always is a clerk. He is assured of safety by expert men who are in the bar for telephone for the fighters of fire come out.”

Andy writes: Has anyone tried the BECTA "Ask an Expert" site? It's part of the ICT Advice section at: http://www.ictadvice.org.uk I've looked at it many times and I have not been all that impressed with the experts' answers and with the way that this service operates. Firstly, I have my doubts about the choice of "experts" and, secondly, there is no possibility of interacting with the experts online if they make mistakes or miss out something important. You have to write to BECTA direct or to the experts themselves (if you can locate their email addresses), but you are highly likely to be ignored. I have spotted several mistakes and serious omissions. On a couple of occasions I pointed out mistakes, which were eventually rectified, but on no occasion have BECTA felt the need to rectify a serious omission. As the "Ask an Expert" section says: "The experts will not enter into dialogue about individual cases." I joined the BECTA ICT Research Network discussion list for a while, but I don't like the way it operates. Contributions are censored, and it often takes several days for them to filter through. They also come in bunches, making it difficult to follow a thread. One of my contributions that criticised the way the discussion list operates was bounced back at me, so I decided it was time to leave. See: http://lists.becta.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/research What I like about the Education Forum is the free and open discussion that it offers - which is also true of other discussion lists to which I subscribe (all relating to Modern Foreign Languages): The Linguanet Forum: http://www.mailbase.org.uk/lists/linguanet-forum Languages ICT: http://www.mailbase.org.uk/lists/languagesict-forum EUROCALL: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/eurocall-members.html

I don't have a lot of experience with regard to websites aimed at students, as my main area of interest now is teacher training. The 600-odd hits per day that the ICT4LT site receives speaks for itself regarding the popularity of the site, but why do I get so little feedback from teachers who access it? The site is peppered with discussion topics, learning tasks and invitations to address questions to the site management team via a convenient feedback form, but we get no more than a dozen questions or requests for information per month - and about half of these have little to do with the topics discussed at the site. Conclusion: Web people are lurkers and don't appear to read very accurately. However, I do get enough congratulatory comments to convince me that I am doing a worthwhile job.

David writes: This was one of the first tasks that we got teachers to do under the New Opportunities Funding training initiative that was in operation up to a couple of years ago. I trained teachers how to do this in face-to-face sessions, but I also produced a step-by-step explanation on a Web page that I used to back up my training sessions. It's still there at: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/lspinset.htm Task 2: Creating an annotated list of Web links - sometimes referred to as a webliography, a jump station or a portal. My personal "webliography" of language-related links started this way. I made it public a few years ago at: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/websites.htm I regularly use this page when running training courses in which I show language teachers what kind of materials are available on the Web.

As I have indicated elsewhere in this Forum - in the Modern Languages section - the BBC is abandoning the production of TV programmes for adult language learners in favour of more Internet-based resources. The BBC's websites for languages are pretty good on the whole, but they are no substitute for TV programmes - e.g. the recent interesting series on the Chinese language and culture. However, there are some signs that there may be a rethink as a result of pressure both from professional associations and individuals. The "rush to the Web" is complete madness. Sure, the Web has an important role to play, but it's not the only solution - or the best solution - to the delivery of mass education.

CILT and the Association for Language Learning (ALL) have launched a new website called Languages ICT at: http://www.languages-ict.org There is also an associated discussion list, targeting mainly teachers in schools. I think I may have already mentioned a document that I have been working on in collaboration with Paul Bands, Roger Frisby and Elizabeth Walton (edited by Terry Cooper and Claire Dugard, CILT): It will shortly appear in the "Guidance for Networks" slot at the above site and will be entitled: "Setting up effective digital language laboratories and multimedia ICT suites for Modern Foreign Languages". The document offers advice to heads of languages departments, to senior management and to ICT managers, covering hardware, software, training and copyright issues. Watch the above space! The information provided at the above site seems to indicate that there is more activity in CALL in the schools sector in the UK these days than in the universities sector. Who is driving CALL in the UK higher education sector now that the CTI Centre for Modern Languages at the University of Hull has closed? I have recently been looking at the list of postgraduate courses in CALL at the EUROCALL site: http://www.eurocall-languages.org/resources/courses.htm Many links appear to have died. The list of links that I have at my personal site has also shrunk: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/courses.htm

I must be telepathic. I fire off an email criticising the BBC and they announce that they are sacking the board of governors. Looking at the proposed changes, it appears that there will be less "reality TV" in the future and the BBC will be persuaded to stop chasing the audience ratings and concentrate on what it is good at, namely using its creative talents to produce high-quality programmes.

The annual conference of EUROCALL, the European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning, will take place at the University of Krakow, Poland, 24th to 27th August 2005. This promises to be an excellent conference, attracting 300+ people from all over the world. Early bird registration (at reduced rates) finishes on 31 May. Hurry! The theme of this year's conference is: CALL, WELL and TELL: Fostering autonomy See: http://www.eurocall-languages.org and http://www.eurocall-languages.org.pl

Derek writes: For the last three years schools in England have been given 1000 pounds plus 10 pounds per pupil to spend on educational software under the Curriculum Online initiative (e-Learning Credits - eLCs). There was a big underspend in the first two years, and the same thing appears to be happening again in this third year. I guess they have all the software they need. Yes, Windows crashes a lot. Older versions crash less. I like old things - which is why I still use Windows 98 and still drive a 23-year-old Mercedes that cost me a few hundred quid and runs beautifully, with 188,000 miles on the clock. I paid 40 pounds for the last computer that I bought: 350 MHz, 6Gb hard disk, 128Mb RAM, complete with Win98 and Office 97, including a 17-inch monitor. It came from a local business that was upgrading its systems and works perfectly. Schools, take note!

Most computer users – and this certainly includes most teachers – do not have the slightest interest in their computer’s operating system or the browsers they are using. The term “open source” only means something to nerds like Derek and myself. My business sells software for modern languages to schools. When language teachers submit an order to us we often have to check which operating system they are using to ensure that the software that they require is compatible. 99% don’t know and refer us to their technical support staff. I just looked at my business website’s hit counter, which tells us which operating systems teachers who access our site are using and which browsers they are using. Here are some figures I extracted from our recent cumulative stats – which, in percentage terms, are roughly the same as the figures for the ICT4LT site, for which I am also responsible: http://www.ict4lt.org The ICT4LT is aimed at teachers and trainee teachers and receives around 600 hits per day: Operating systems: Win 98 – 16843 WinXP – 10674 Win2000 – 9289 Linux – 178 All others – 6500 in total, none exceeding 2000 Browsers Internet Explorer 6 – 22072 Internet Explorer 5 – 15911 Netscape 4 – 1394 Opera – 967 All others – 3200 in total, none exceeding 600

John writes: This is more or less what I used to do with advanced students of German - in German, of course. I also used articles from the German press for translation exercises and tests. My favourite sources were the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and "Der Spiegel". TV news broadcasts in foreign languages were also useful for exploitation in class or in our self-access rooms. ICT makes these kind of activities a lot easier. One of the degree courses on which I taught offered Politics as an option - which meant that the students had to follow lectures on German politics in German and read about German politics in German.

As we predicted, languages are definitely in decline. Two thirds of state schools no longer insist on languages being studied by childre beyond the age of 14, GCSE entries have plummeted, and only a smal minoroty of children now study languages beyond 16. This article appeared on 28 February 2005 at the BBC website: "Languages in schools 'in decline'. French and German lessons are in "chronic decline", with too many students dropping languages altogether at age 16, a study warns." http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/1/hi/education/4304099.stm I find this a bit ironic as the BBC is contributing to the decline by no longer producing broadcast TV programmes for adult language learners. I suppose it's a "bums on seats" thing. High-quality TV programmes of the sort that the BBC used to broadcast (remember "Buongiorno Italia" and "A Vous la France?) are expensive to produce and don't attract large audiences. I guess this accounts for the epidemic of cheap-to-produce "reality TV" programmes showing people making a mess of buying a property in Spain or setting up an Indian restaurant in France - and don't you just love it when everything goes pear-shaped? Now here's an opportunity that the BBC appears to have missed. How about showing a success story where, say, an English couple who have taken the trouble to master the French language (by following a BBC course) make a real go of setting up a B&B in France? I hope that we are all keeping up the pressure on Liz Cleaver at the BBC - as individuals and through this Forum and our subject associations - to review this short-sighted policy. It appears that a disproportionate amount of money is being pumped into broadband delivery of educational materials. I am not convinced that this is a sensible move. Firstly, who wants to be educated sitting bolt upright, two feet away from a computer screen? Not me. I would rather sit in a comfy armchair watching a TV programme with my dog's head on my lap and a glass of beer in my right hand. Secondly, in future will we be able to afford to be online for an indefinite amount of time? As I indicated in a previous email to this Forum, many broadband service providers are moving over to a pay-as-you-go service, along the lines of that provided by mobile phone service providers. My broadband service provider will introduce a sliding scale in April, whereby average users like myself will continue to pay around 15-20 pounds per month and the heaviest users will pay up to 300 pounds per month. It's the end of the free lunch!

Yet more doom and gloom in this story at the BBC website: "Languages in schools 'in decline'. French and German lessons are in "chronic decline", with too many students dropping languages altogether at age 16, a study warns." http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/1/hi/education/4304099.stm I find this a bit ironic as the BBC is contributing to the decline by no longer producing broadcast TV programmes for adult language learners. I suppose it's a "bums on seats" thing. High-quality TV programmes of the sort that the BBC used to broadcast (remember "Buongiorno Italia" and "A Vous la France?) are expensive to produce and don't attract large audiences. I guess this accounts for the epidemic of cheap-to-produce "reality TV" programmes showing people making a mess of buying a property in Spain or setting up an Indian restaurant in France - and don't you just love it when everything goes pear-shaped? Now here's an opportunity that the BBC appears to have missed. How about showing a success story where, say, an English couple who have taken the trouble to master the French language (by following a BBC course) make a real go of setting up a B&B in France? I hope that we are all keeping up the pressure on Liz Cleaver at the BBC - as individuals and through this Forum and our subject associations - to review this short-sighted policy. It appears that a disproportionate amount of money is being pumped into broadband delivery of educational materials. I am not convinced that this is a sensible move. Firstly, who wants to be educated sitting bolt upright, two feet away from a computer screen? Not me. I would rather sit in a comfy armchair watching a TV programme with my dog's head on my lap and a glass of beer in my right hand. Secondly, in future will we be able to afford to be online for an indefinite amount of time? As I indicated in a previous email to this Forum, many broadband service providers are moving over to a pay-as-you-go service, along the lines of that provided by mobile phone service providers. My broadband service provider will introduce a sliding scale in April, whereby average users like myself will continue to pay around 15-20 pounds per month and the heaviest users will pay up to 300 pounds per month. It's the end of the free lunch!

Andy writes: I also make free resources available through two websites that I maintain – both concerned with ICT in language learning and teaching: http://www.ict4lt.org http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/freestuff.htm However, there appears to be a growing problem with regard to teachers setting up their own websites. In another forum to which I subscribe a languages teacher announced that she had set up a website offering free resources for language teachers. Just two weeks later she announced that her broadband service provider had suspended her site for the remainder of the month as she had exceeded her bandwidth allocation for that month – too many visitors and too many downloads. The current trend among broadband service providers is to move towards a pay-as-you-go system, rather like that offered by mobile phone service providers. My broadband service provider has just announced that as from April 2005 it is introducing a sliding scale of charges based on traffic, ranging from 15-20 pounds per month for average users like myself to 300 pounds per month for “bandwidth hogs”. This is to stop a small number of heavy users clogging up the service and slowing it down for the majority of users. I know of two languages teachers who set up resources sites that were initially accessible free of charge, but they have now had to introduce a subscription service in order to limit the traffic at their site and to pay for their increased broadband fees. There are broadband service providers that still offer unlimited uploads and downloads for a fixed monthly fee – but I wonder how long it will last. It looks like it’s the end of the free lunch. The ICT4LT site that I mention above receives a lot of visits - around 600 per day -but it is hosted at a university and they do not (yet) appeared to be bothered by this volume of traffic. My own site receives around 40 visits per day - which is a drop in the ocean.

Terry writes: "One of my mentors reckons that the purchase of a couple of speakers and really ‘big screen’ projection via the data projector has transformed the impact of his collection of VHS video recordings." If a history department is considering the purchase of such equipment, talk to the languages department, as you’ll find a close ally. Such equipment is invaluable for language teaching. Language teachers make considerable use of video, e.g. off-air recordings made under the school’s Educational Recording Agency (ERA) licence, as well as interactive CD-ROMs and multilingual DVDs with subtitles and/or closed captions. Off-air recordings made under an ERA licence may be shared with other schools that have an ERA licence, without breaching copyright – but you can’t put them up on a publicly accessible website. Similarly, language teachers make considerable use of authentic texts from newspapers. A useful website that provides information on newspapers available on the Web – as well as other media – is Kidon Media-Link: http://www.kidon.com/media-link.

There is a sinister side to institutions maintaining control over their staff's Web pages. Some universities censor the texts that staff place on Web pages located on their servers. I suppose the university management may claim that it needs to exercise control just in case someone takes legal action against the university, for whatever reason. See: http://www.labournet.net/other/0406/censor1.html Many more cases are documented on the Web.

John wrote: Ogden Nash wrote: