Yesterday I visited a Private School in Stuttgart. The reason of my visit was that this school touts with “new methods of learning English”. I was eager to get out which ones.
What it turned out to be was actually a computer program. At first you should decide to how many people and in which situation you’d like to speak. On the big display appears a video scene in good quality, with chosen group of people and a “real” situation (in the pub, on the beach, business meeting and so on). You click on the person, who should be “you” for this discussion and talk with the avatars. The program is pretty clever, no matter what I was talking about; the other avatars supported my topic.
It made me feel more or less as a real peer and I found this method useful. Then you can change “your” person and do it again from the other point of view (e.g. you could be a boss and then an employee in the same scene). According to the school plan, all scenes are supposed to be repeated with real people in a classroom afterwards.
For the members of this school this resource is available online – it means the facility like this could be integrated in LingQ. Do you have any comments about this idea?
(for the correction of this post I would be thankful)
Ha, ha…or maybe not. I should have written “tweak” not “teak”.
Overall, your message comes across clearly.
The sentence shown below could be tweaked a bit.
“The reason of my visit was that this school touts with “new methods of learning English”. I was eager to get out which ones.” (Your sentences)
My suggestion:
I visited this school because it touts “new methods of learning English” and I was eager to
ferret out exactly what these methods are."
I chose “ferret out” because I think this verb keeps some of the original “punch” of your second sentence. Of course, you could simply use “find out” or “discover” in place of “ferret out”.
We have no plans to introduce this kind of technology at LingQ. We offer a certain kind of language learning. We cannot do everything.
Personally I would not like to engage in this kind of simulated discussion in a classroom. If it were offered via the computer I do not know if I would use it more than once. This has largely to do with my goals as a language learner, and my likes and dislikes.
I spend most of study time just listening while doing other tasks.
I prefer doing things that are natural. I enjoy listening to things that are of interest to me. I enjoy reading things that are of interest to me. I do not mind some vocabulary review to enable me to understand what I am listening to and reading.
When I speak, I prefer the situation to be real, a real discussion with a real person about a real subject, preferably of interest to me.
But by far the greatest amount of time is spent listening.
I would probably not want to devote too much time to this exercize, since nothing “real” is happening. It is like a make believe situation. I would not be motivated to participate. But each person has his own interests, goals, and likes and dislikes.
Some things just shouldn’t be simulated. If it’s all computer generated, I think that the feedback would be very poor. Talking one-on-one with someone over the internet is ok. But talking to a computer is really…fake.
With:
The reason of my visit was that this school touts with “new methods of learning English”. I was eager to get out which ones.
I’d go for:
The reason for my visit was that this school touts with “new methods of learning English”. I was eager to find out which ones.
With:
On the big display appears a video scene in good quality, with chosen group of people…
I’d put an “a” in there… “with a chosen group of people…”
@YLearner: hahah… thanks. Put my foot in it there, praising someone else whilst making mistakes.
With tout/touts, I’ve never used it before but I had a feeling that I’d heard it somwhere. Then I checked an online dictionary and that was enough for me.
Though…there’s nothing wrong with what Peter said, now that I think about it. It hit my ear weirdly as I said it but now it makes sense. That’s English for you!
