Global Trends in Language Learning in the 21st Century: Webinar Follow Up

July 27, 2010

With participants, from Canada, the U.S, Romania, Germany, Guatemala, this was an amazingly international, multicultural and interactive session! Thanks for everyone who joined in today.

If you couldn’t make today’s webinar on Global Trends in Language Learning in the 21st Century, generously sponsored by Elluminate, don’t fret. I’ve archived everything for you.

Webinar recording
Check out the webinar recording. Note that this link may ask to download Java onto your computer. If you click “yes”, you’ll be able to access the recording, slides and all the chat that happened during the session.

Handouts

Click here for a copy of the handouts from the webinar.

Research report

This webinar was based on a research report that’s been archived in 3 countries now. Click here for a post with links to the full article.

Original webinar info

Want the information about the webinar? See this post.

Slides
I’ve archived the slides on Slideshare, here:

Testimonials

“This was the first time I attended a webinar, apart from all the conference calls organised at my place of work. I found it interesting, first because it shared information from my area of expertise, and also because it addressed a stringent matter of all teachers nowadays- how to take the leap into the 21st century without getting severely bruised.” – Anca Costea, Little London Nursery School, Bucharest, Romania.

“Sarah Eaton set out the results of here research in a very well structured and informative talk that provided many useful ideas for engaging language learners – especially younger learners – more effectively.” – Carl Dowse, Germany.

“My work in family literacy is backed up by emerging trends of the 21st century according to Dr. Eaton’s meta-research. In all fields of learning, we need to keep current on why people are formally or informally motivated to learn and how they would like to be equipped to do so. This webinar advances us towards a clear plan of taking action towards a literacy that allows all learners to communicate through thoughts and actions and respectively be able to reflect upon them.” – Tracy Howk, Literacy for Life Foundation

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

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Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

Let’s stop forcing students to “puke out their brains”

July 14, 2010

Individualized, customizable, learner-centred approaches are becoming the new norm. Traditionally, education has been about developing a curriculum and teaching to students in a prescriptive manner. That made education easy for teachers because they could essentially teach the same thing, year in and year out.

That was not only boring for students, it’s ineffective.

It is said that one month after final examinations, students have lost 90% of the “knowledge” they had on the day of their final. That’s not learning. It’s stuffing information into a brain for it to be regurgitated on a test. And once it’s been puked out onto a test paper, it’s gone forever, it seems. Not exactly ideal, is it?

The good news is: learning is becoming more individualized and focused on the students and their needs.

Teachers of tomorrow will need to shift their thinking, stop thinking about how to get students to learn the curriculum and instead, make the curriculum work for the students.

Scratch that.

We don’t have time to wait for a new generation of teachers to understand that learning is about the students, not the textbooks, not the curriculum and most definitely not about standardized testing. Teachers of today need to learn that.

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

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Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

Global Trends in Language Learning in the 21st Century: Webinar

July 14, 2010

Did you miss this webinar? Check out the follow-up post for links to the slides, handouts and recording.

Global Trends in Language Learning in the 21st Century: Webinar
http://www.learncentral.org/node/86167
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Login start: 09:45 Mountain Time
Webinar: 10:00 – 11:00 Mountain Time

In this webinar we’ll talk about the findings of my new study that reveals what’s hot and what’s not in language learning in the 21st century.

The study, “Global Trends in Language Learning in the Twenty-First Century”, found, among other things, that public speaking and presentation skills, even for second language students, are enjoying new levels of prestige in the Obama era. “For the first time in decades, there is a U.S. President who is wooing young people with his power to communicate verbally. This is having an impact not only in the United States, but across the globe. Second language speech contests, debates, poetry readings, and story telling are particularly trendy,” the report reveals.

This is just one of a number of new trends in language learning you’ll want to hear about.  Join me as I share the highlights of this new research. The webinar will include a 20 minute presentation and 35 minutes for discussion.

How to join the webinar:

1) Mark the date and time of the event in your calendar

2) at 09:45 Mountain Time (adjust for your time zone!) on July 27, click on this URL:
 https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/launch/dropin.jnlp?sid=lcevents&password=Webinar_Guest

3) Have a pen and some paper handy to take notes.

With thanks to our sponsor, Elluminate (www.elluminate.com), for providing the technology to make this webinar available to you free of charge.

Remember to convert the time of this webinar to your own time zone. You can do this at http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html. In the top of the box where it asks you to “Select time and place to convert from” choose “Canada – Alberta – Canada”. In the box under that, select your country and closest city.

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

Comments Off on Global Trends in Language Learning in the 21st Century: Webinar | education, ESL, Uncategorized, webinar | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

Global Trends in Language Learning in the 21st Century

July 13, 2010

If you liked the post I did a while back called Trends in Language Learning: What’s hot, what’s not , you’ll like this even better. At the urging of a few trusted colleagues and readers, I conducted more in-depth research into current and emerging trends in language education. The result is this full-fledged report, with three-pages of references.

Here’s an overview:

Global Trends in Language Learning the Twenty-First Century
Author: Eaton, Sarah Elaine
Date: June 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9733594-6-6
Publication Type: monograph
Total number of pages: 21

Abstract

Today’s language classroom is vastly different from that of the mid- to late 20th century. The study is a meta-analysis of recent research which provided the means to identify current and emerging trends in the field. Informed by this research, some identified trends that are shaping the 21st century language classroom are:

What’s out:
1. Vague, hollow promises that can’t be proven.
2. Saying that learning languages is easy.
3. Authoritative teacher attitudes.
4. Complaining about cutbacks and lack of funding.
5. Language labs.

What’s in:
1. Clear, provable demonstrations of learning.
2. Frameworks, benchmarks and other asset-based approaches to assessment.
3. Individualized, customizable, learner-centred approaches.
4. Proving the value of language learning through stories and speech.
5. Using technology for language learning.
6. Linking language learning to leadership skills.
7. Showing funders the impact their investment has on students and communities.

In short, the focus in language education in the twenty-first century is no longer on grammar, memorization and learning from rote, but rather using language and cultural knowledge as a means to communicate and connect to others around the globe. Geographical and physical boundaries are being transcended by technology as students learn to reach out to the world around them, using their language and cultural skills to facilitate the connections they are eager to make.

The full report is available free of charge. It has been archived by:

Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) (Accession number ED510276)

European Association of Education for Adults (EAEA)

Library and Archives Canada’s Electronic Collection

I will also be hosting a free webinar on this new research on July 27 at 10:00 Mountain time. For more information on the webinar click here.

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

6 Comments | education, ESL, languages, leadership, research, second languages, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

Got a language lab? Rip it out!

June 14, 2010

Language labs went out with the 20th century. Language labs came into existence in the late 1940s and early 1950s when modern foreign language programs were starting to develop in universities. Labs were constructed where students were gathered together and collectively followed a prescribed audio programs. This followed the behavourist model of language teaching. That was long before the communicative method was ever developed.

The purpose of language labs was for students to gain auditory exposure to the language they were studying. This was a big deal back then. Students had far fewer opportunities to travel. There was no such thing as the Internet. There was no foreign television programming. And phone calls to family members who were living abroad were horrendously expensive.

That’s all changed. In today’s world of digital everything, audio exposure to foreign languages is readily available at little to no cost. Satellite radio, Internet radio and podcasts are all available. Even as far back as the 1980s, visionary scholars began to see that one day, language labs would become extinct (Chen, 1996; Froehlich, 1982). They were right. In the twenty-first century, constructing language labs is not a wise use of a school’s limited money, time and other resources.

Note: This blog post was one of a number that served to inform a larger article that can be found here:

Eaton, S. E. (2010). Global Trends in Language Learning in the Twenty-first Century Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED510276.pdf

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

1 Comment | education, ESL, languages, second languages | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

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